Short Story - Another Day in Paradise

       Life on the streets was hard. Too many bad things surrounded me and my little family. Thievery, abuse, harassment, addictions and a feeling of want were among my biggest problems. Being a single mother with two young children never helped the situation either. I always wanted to prove myself and do something with my life, but drugs pulled me under the surface. I could feel myself drowning in my addictions. There was no way to quit, and no way to hold a stable job because of that. You can only guess what came next, but you do not need to guess. Heroin slowly lured me into the worst years of my life.

       I remember my first day in hell as if it was just yesterday. The old splintered park bench was not much of a bed, but I had to accept sleeping on much worse surfaces after that; to be exact, the next day. Living your life without friends or family for support must make you crazy because the old man who removed me from my temporary bed claimed that the bench was his summer home. To make matters even more strange, it was clearly winter. Fluffy white snow encompassed the ground like a large blanket. The last thing I needed was a blanket of freezing snow! But, I had to learn to accept the situation fast.

       I slept one more day without the comforts of the home I once enjoyed, after stopping off at the nearby soup kitchen of course, and decided that finding a temporary shelter was my next priority. My children could not survive too long in these conditions. Staying at the nearest shelter did more than just provide me and my kids with a roof to sleep under; it opened up my eyes. I had never realized how many homeless people lived in D.C. until I had become one myself. The number of people was my first realization, but certainly not my last. I would soon learn that the simple world that I once enjoyed was like paradise compared to this chaotic one.

       It was nice to know that at least some people who enjoyed that heavenly lifestyle cared for some of the less fortunate people of the world, but observing peoples’ kindness was, sadly, not going to help me with the new obstacle that I had to deal with at the time. I counted my most pertinent issues and found only two that I had not already dealt with; finding money and getting dope. I look back and I see a third, much more important priority; finding help for my problem. The obstacles seemed large at the time, but I managed to conquer them all eventually. How I did so is not important though, so let’s leave that part of this story out, shall we?

       Moving from shelter to shelter was not a problem because I did not care where we were, considering everywhere was horrible in its own way, and neither did the kids. We eventually found a nice house to squat in, obviously not alone, but that was expected. It was a decent size place and gave me the feeling of freedom once again, but that moment of happiness did not last long. In D.C., and I’m sure in many other large cities, being destitute of a home seemed illegal. The popo temporarily threw us in jail for almost everything; they threw us in jail for sleeping on public property, they through us in jail for squatting in abandoned houses, and they threw us in jail for being drunk or high in public. The world disappoints you, takes away the life you once knew, and shuns you because of it.

       I gathered enough money to buy a cheap car, again, do not ask how because I will not tell you. It was decent for the price, but we were not using it to drive anyways. This was our new home; an old Ford Taurus. I never was a fan of Ford when I actually owned property and had a job, but I could not afford to get picky (no pun intended). A death trap waiting to happen; that is all my life ever was. The car seemed to be the only object that would keep me from dying out here while at the same time it was the only thing that would make me feel as if I had the equality I believed that I deserved.

       I remember sleeping on the sidewalks the second day after I lost my rights as a human being. It was frigid, lonely, and spiteful. The bitter cold froze my every joint from head to toe. Cold stares burned into my body as the cool and warm feelings mixed with each other. A tremor shook my body. The last thing I remember seeing on that day was a man walk across the street. I asked him for help. I had only been gone for a little over a day but I felt so lost and confused. I pled and pled, but the man never once moved his head, or eyes for that matter, in my general direction, or any direction that may have contained my unworthy presence. Now that I didn’t own property, I was no longer considered a human in the eyes of property-owners. Drugs were the only thing I could turn to at this point. Black tar was my only friend.

       I skipped over how I got the money to shoot up. Do you feel left out, as if you’re missing part of the story? Well don’t; This will resolve it all. It will make you wish that you’d never heard anything at all. The wind rustles the leaves of the tree, but the life you hear in the rustling is all sentenced to death once fire becomes part of the equation. One night, not too long ago, a man was speeding down the road and swerving from left to right repetitively. It was a miracle, at least to the people who witnessed the accident, that he did not hit any other cars other than a parked one that was thought to be vacant at the time of the crash. Why no one helped is an enigma to me. A car is on fire and no one cared to call for help. Water is the source of all life, but you can’t save a life in a drought. Why was that drought surrounding me at that very moment? Life and death passed by me as if I was never born, and I left the world the same way I entered it; empty handed.

       Life is not always how it seems from the home. I always took my happiness for granted. The only solid aspects of life are ignorance and stupidity. It does not matter if you’re a scientist, writer, or philosopher; we all have it and show it from time to time. And what of the man who ended my life and the life of my kids? Well he was indeed one of the three, but which one doesn’t matter. All that does matter is the fact that he, despite being known for his brilliance in his specific field, made a stupid choice and ended three lives in a matter of minutes. Life fades away in an instant and years of living in this world is forgotten instantly.

She calls out to the man on the street
"Sir, can you help me?
It's cold and I've nowhere to sleep,
Is there somewhere you can tell me?"

He walks on, doesn't look back
He pretends he can't hear her
Starts to whistle as he crosses the street
Seems embarrassed to be there

Oh think twice, it's another day for
You and me in paradise
Oh think twice, it's just another day for you,
You and me in paradise

She calls out to the man on the street
He can see she's been crying
She's got blisters on the soles of her feet
Can't walk but she's trying

Oh think twice...

Oh lord, is there nothing more anybody can do
Oh lord, there must be something you can say

You can tell from the lines on her face
You can see that she's been there
Probably been moved on from every place
'Cos she didn't fit in there

Oh think twice...

Wake Up - Rage Against the Machine

Come on!
Uggh!

Come on, although ya try to discredit
Ya still never edit
The needle, I'll thread it
Radically poetic
Standin' with the fury that they had in '66
And like E-Double I'm mad
Still knee-deep in the system's s***
Hoover, he was a body remover
I'll give ya a dose
But it'll never come close
To the rage built up inside of me
Fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy

Movements come and movements go
Leaders speak, movements cease
When their heads are flown
'Cause all these punks
Got bullets in their heads
Departments of police, the judges, the feds
Networks at work, keepin' people calm
You know they went after King
When he spoke out on Vietnam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot

Yeah!
Yeah, back in this...
Wit' poetry, my mind I flex
Flip like Wilson, vocals never lackin' dat finesse
Whadda I got to, whadda I got to do to wake ya up
To shake ya up, to break the structure up
'Cause blood still flows in the gutter
I'm like takin' photos
Mad boy kicks open the shutter
Set the groove
Then stick and move like I was Cassius
Rep the stutter step
Then bomb a left upon the fascists
Yea, the several federal men
Who pulled schemes on the dream
And put it to an end
Ya better beware
Of retribution with mind war
20/20 visions and murals with metaphors
Networks at work, keepin' people calm
Ya know they murdered X
And tried to blame it on Islam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot

Uggh!
What was the price on his head?
What was the price on his head!


I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard, I think I heard a shot

'He may be a real contender for this position should he
abandon his supposed obediance to white liberal doctrine
of non-violence...and embrace black nationalism'
'Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to
pinpoint potential trouble-makers...And neutralize them,
neutralize them, neutralize them'

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

How long? Not long, cause what you reap is what you sow
       Zack de la Rocha, singer and lyricist for Rage Against the Machine, went through hardships growing up. His grandfather was a Sinaloan revolutionary who fought in the Mexican Revolution. When he was only a year old, his parents separated. De la Rocha moved to Irvine when he was only a year old. He described Irvine as one of the most racist cities imaginable. He may have used this built up rage to fuel his passion for writing politically-charged lyrics for Rage Against the Machine. In the song “Wake Up” Rage Against the Machine uses many allusions regarding the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to basically tell people that it is time for everyone to open their eyes.
       Zack also believes, as expressed in the song, that the government has assassinated more than just one Civil Rights leader. He also believes that they ordered someone to kill Malcolm X. “Networks at work, keepin’ people calm/Ya know they murdered X/And tried to blame it on Islam…And then came the shot.” He also makes his point known by saying “Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to/pinpoint potential trouble-makers…And neutralize them.” The potential trouble-makers would be the people standing up against the government for wronging a large amount of people, or standing up for some part of the government that they see wrong in general. In the song, the Civil Rights activists would be these people. The use of potential trouble-makers refers to the more radical activists, but de la Rocha uses the word “potential” to suggest that the government cannot tell the difference, nor do they care to find the differences, between the violent activists and the peaceful activists. If the government actually did kill these two men, then clearly they truly could not tell the difference between the two.
       De la Rocha stands firmly behind his beliefs, and in this case he is not the only one. Many people believe in the same conspiracy theory, but I think that he used these theories to convey a much deeper, but broader, topic. Both of these theories seem all too plausible, and several people have the same thoughts as de la Rocha, so I think that he used these examples to tell people that governments, or people in general, are always going to do things behind your back and all you have to do is open your eyes. He wants people to stop being so blind to everything that the government could have opposed in the past or what they will oppose in the future. He always seems to show the point he wants to get across by using repetition. “What was the price on his head?…I think I heard a shot…Wake up!” The “price on his head” would represent the opposition, the “shot” would be the government’s response, and he wants the world to “wake up” and see that the government hides more than the average person would think.
       De la Rocha’s lyrics often have a political view that can be also viewed on an everyday level. In “Wake Up” he wants people to realize that governments are full of more lies and more wrongdoing than the mind can perceive, but the song can also be taken from a completely different viewpoint; Listeners can use his advice everyday. To wake up does not only mean to be more aware, but to see past the conspicuous. People should not just take a fact and throw it around. They should dig deeper and find the full meaning, just like he is asking on a political level.       
       Zack de la Rocha, in the song, suggests that the government makes decisions behind the public’s back when they know that nobody will support what they want. For example, he says “Standin’ with the fury that they had in ‘66” to introduce his main topic for discussion, and gets his main point across by saying “Networks at work, keepin’ people calm/You know they went after King/When he spoke out on Vietnam…And then came the shot.” Many people were racist back then, and many people are still racist, but not many people would support assassination. Martin Luther King is not the only prominent Civil Rights figure that de la Rocha suggests that the government ordered to be killed though.