I know that during these times there are families all across Los Angeles struggling to wage past this unlikeliest of changes in their lives. I know that not all of these families can simply take this crisis “on the chin” and boldly trust in the way forward as their more privileged counterparts might be able to.
I know that many teachers in Los Angeles are wavering past isolation that existed between them and their departments well before the crisis, and that this is only more pronounced now in the scramble to learn the how-tos of leading courses online while also needing to check off other long lists of personal needs as adults and professionals.
I know there are many students spiraling through a myriad of emotions, yearning to leave the nests they’ve been stuck in these last few weeks, alongside siblings who are similarly disconcerted, and close by parents who are also harboring emotions they might never have expected of themselves amid so much time with their loved ones.
I know there are tears blossoming across eyelids throughout the days into evenings between the small places we call home, that there are windows being rattled and sometimes broken, and that there are heart rates and blood pressures tailing off the Richter scale in dizzying spells with no end in sight at this point.
I know it’s not fair. And that there’s very little poetic justice to sound bells for in yet another call to persevere again.
But I also know that this is not the whole cuento.
I know that with each bitter evening, no matter how sour the sting of defeat might be, the fact is that for every last one of these families, individuals and more, a better day is not long from them.
I know this because I’ve lived this. And I know this because I’ve seen others live through their own winding roads of unimaginable loss and discord, only to still somehow rise again the next day to greet another bright morning in Los Angeles.
I don’t know exactly when I came to know this, nor precisely how resolutely I’ve memorized the lesson plan, but I do know that it’s for the purpose of continually uplifting my community no matter the distance, as my community has done for me during all these years mysterious flowing past my brainwaves.
I now recognize my community, even if only to let them know that their cries do not go unheard, that their tremors do not come and go in vain, and that their cuentos will continue. Words, like most things, are only temporary utterances, which can sometimes provide just temporary relief from the weight of the world. But I believe we can find all of the life of the universe imbued in such precious intervals. Indeed, that’s how I arrived to this conclusion today.
Onward we continue Los Angeles,
J.T.
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