I guess this type of blog is for the person outside of Compton; essentially my life here in Compton is pretty mellow for the most part, and a part of me wants to show the mellowness, the mundane-ness of life here partly as a counter-image/narrative to the dominant narrative/image of gangsta rap hardness.
I feel like life here is like life anywhere in the US; we all live in mini-tribes called our households, occasionally re-unite with people mostly through internet or phone communications and/or physically driving to actually be with those people.
To show how life can be mundane (or not), I kept times and activities of yesterday, a Sunday.
A Sunday Morning in February. Not cloudy. A bit sunny. Typical LA Winter, except for the whole kind of in a drought thing.
On my academic mind, the day before on NPR TED there was a podcast about how violence can be almost epidemic. That is the patterns of violence can resemble patterns of epidemics. If violence affects someone, that someone can be tempted to spread the pain felt from that violence onto others.
On my mind that thinks about every day survival, I wonder how I'm going to make enough money to support a g-dang fam, especially with the Sunday that we just had.
It appears this Sunday was a shopping Sunday, and we didn't spend much time at home at all until later in the day, which is typical.
7:15 AM: Woke up. Late, because I'd actually been up till 2:30 AM.
7:45 AM: Pulled out of driveway on our journey to Kaiser Permanente in Harbor City. We go up Central to the 91, to the 110 South. Traffic's pleasantly light as it typically is for early Sunday morning.
8:05 AM: Get to Kaiser for quick lab work.
8:11 AM: Done with Kaiser lab work. We get in the car on way to our sweet hipster morning treat, 85 degrees in Gardena along Artesia Blvd in a plaza with an Asian supermarket, Daiso Japan, and McDonalds.
8:24 AM: Get to 85 Degrees. Slightly annoyed by the tightness of the parking lot combined with the fact that cars are always passing through, making it difficult to back out.
8:40 AM: After marveling at the selection of sweet breads, gathering selected ones, standing in a line for 5 minutes, we finally pay for our loot at 85 Degrees.
8:43 AM: Depart the 85 Degrees/plaza parking lot.
8:51 AM: Neighbor offers us an avocado, 2 big ones for $1 dollar.
9:25 AM: Teacher arrives at our house and we begin classes. Shocked that she could find parking on the block. Serve her up some 85 Degrees.
11:30 AM: Another neighbor has workers do yard work with very loud machinery, which kind of distracts us from our class with the teacher.
12:30 PM: Lessons with teacher finish.
1:45 PM: Leave to buy stuff from Costco in Torrance on Rosecrans.
2:15 PM: It's actually Lowe's in Inglewood that we end up going to.
2:35 PM: End up at Ross next to Lowe's.
3:01 PM: Leave for Costco on Rosecrans.
3:10 PM: End up at Costco, get annoyed at all the traffic and people we have to fight through.
3:50 PM: Exit Costco, only for wife to tell me that were going to Babies R Us, about 4 minutes away.
4:49 PM: Get home, finally. Day pretty much ends in front of the TV and respective computers as the wife gets ready for work for the next day.
All in all a fairly quiet day in the neighborhood, at least the time we were here at home.
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