“Between Two Worlds" 

Living on Skid Row, my Dystopia. Actually, living on Gallery Row now, my Utopia. I'm living on the border between Dystopia and Utopia in the midst of Downtown L.A.'s Gentrification. On the threshold of poverty and prosperity with one foot in the gutter and the other on the upward grade. On the road to recovery from a Psychological slash Physiological brain disorder universally known as mental illness. Hovering on the brink of insanity while lusting for lucidity.

If it wasn't for affordable housing provided by the city, I truly believe that I would be dead right now, my Dystopia. I benefit from what I have already have put into the system for consistently over thirty years. I was gainfully employed by the same corporation, paid my bills, debts and taxes and I've been a productive citizen in the American society, my Utopia.

However, for the last six years I have succumbed to life's dysfunctions, my Dystopia. Does my brain disorder give me the right to receive public assistance for the rest of my life? Or is the system designed to rehabilitate the mentally afflicted to achieve full recovery and become totally self-sufficient? Ah, there's the rub! It depends in the current system and my ability to take advantage of all the resources and opportunities made available to me by city, county, state and federal government, my Utopia.

So, let's not lose sight of this altruistic ideology. I emphatically implore to all of you to not go out and throw the mentally ill homeless to the wayside like a broken machinery taken to the city dump. Out of sight, out of mind. Let us keep project- based housing assistance programs for mentally ill homeless persons so they can be taken off the streets, lest we revert back to the days of my Dystopia.

that engulfs it "Today's Utopia: U-top-yeah"                 

I had been questioning the places I lived, question the relativity of the place in comparison to other places, other people, other cultures, other customs that exist on this planet and the ways of getting by the art and business of daily living. I had been impressed by the so many of us, so many walks of life and how we all try to control or be controlled.

The shelter, the food, the clothing, the water, the places of work, the places of play, the money that goes along these "needs" and the bigger question all, how do we do it?

Since I know that in the act of understanding life and progress we live jammed up in cities, there are more extinctions of species, accelerations of cycles between cold and hot weather, ripping the ozone layer, more hunger, less health, enough for me to feel that It's here where I want to pitch my whole being in mind and spirit with a sense of guidance. I want to exist in a place where humans respect their existence and the ones around them; where humans realize daily that we are part of a whole and there's no whole without its parts; where by use of intelligence we get to understand balance and its delicacy and intricacy amongst and between everything that exists on this planet and beyond. A place where the total of 24 hours in a day gets divided into hours consciously dedicated to the environment of the individual with a spectrum covering the neighborhood to Mother Earth; other hours dedicated to the family, significant others, leisure without the obvious hours of resting and sleeping. The hours of production and activity will employ the creative part by allowing rotation of tasks, trades and professions that each individual will be free to acquire and deliver in an organized way where merit gets compensated by effort and accomplishment.

Lastly, I want to live amongst humans who realize that for now there's only one Planet Earth to live on, this life is the only one we have to live for and in this uniqueness there's me, the only me and there's you, the only you.