A flower sprouts, blooms, and fertilizes. The end can be seen as an end or the beginning and, as I hit the bricks outside the Hollyweird Cafe, I ponder, is this the end of my life at the Hollyweird Cafe or the beginning of my life in California day light, maybe both. As with the cards of the Major Arcana, the Fool’s journey waits at the end with rebirth.
I have always been a creature of night and the night shift at the Hollyweird Cafe appeared a fit shoe, I was also desperate for work. I was happy to get the job, but time heals all wounds and removes the layers of a rose colored separation. Where the smiles were once plentiful and the compensation a profitable affair, Now the moods have grown frostier and the tips reduced to pictures of presidents on round pieces of metal. We have grown apart and ended our tryst as lovers who’s ships have sailed. We passed in the night and decided to remain friends. I love the Hollyweird Cafe but I am no longer in love with the star lined griddle.
Have I ejected before the great fall? My fate to be one who left when the going got rough. I know subconsciously I had quit; emotionally then physically. The itch for freedom became too great and nagged at my better judgement. Inevitably the hand will fall and I have seen the writing on the wall. The end of a era finds it’s demise at an economic quake, when all the smart money was on the great earthquake. Maybe we are caught in a fictional reality where the illusion is magician’s false wall as we have seen with gas prices?
A year and six months in the utter insanity of the star lined griddle has bent my mind and I have no answers. I fell into its broken down jewish neighborhood and found the closet thing to home in the madness of America’s largest social experiment. L.A. is a town of tinsel town glitter and billboard morals. The Hollyweird Cafe remains a testament to the insanity of common sense. In a town built on million dollar dreams, blue collar work ethic can still be found.
The American Dream lives in the Hollyweird Cafe but the dream has turned into a nightmare. Oz has fallen on hard times and we see the offspring struggle to live and strangle the mother. The grim end result of Aryn Rand flawed logic is the institution’s strangle hold over the World. Rand asks “Who is John Galt?” and she should have asked “Who is Nikola Tesla?” She never saw the completion of her dream or the soul of fascism in the corporate system. She escaped Russia and its ills of a state run communism. She moved to America and gave birth to corporate run communism. Fight the beast long enough and you take on his face.
When they opened their doors, the Hollyweird Cafe was a family operated establishment. As generations pass, the Hollyweird Cafe has become a family owned establishment. A difference of one word represents a mountain from a mole hill. The owner once stood behind the deli counter and the menu price was reasonable. Now, the children stand behind a office door and the menu price has skyrocketed. The institution has bloated and threatens to take it’s own life. Darwinism is the truth of entropy. Those who decry socialism enjoy the merits of its dream.
Yet, there remains a heart and hope in the Hollyweird Cafe. The last bastion of reality where money changes hands for tangible items. Where the world makes sense and memos from the management never do. The modern world crumbles and the old googie shaped walls shift slightly on a solid foundation. Her business foundation is sound but her top has become bloated and teeters in the winds of change.
I will never forget her and will remain in love with her tired old form. She gave a po dunk kid from the Great White North a fighting chance in America’s largest social experiment. For this I will never speak a bad word against her. There are too many others in the sea of corruption to aim my mouth than her impending doom. She was birthed from the bright lights and has serviced all the stars. I was a footnote, a year bump in the life line of her demise and I will be there to place a wilting flowers on her grave.
WHAT TO DO NOW?