Life Matters (This Is Not a Political Post)

Being a parcel of humanity amidst nearly 3,000 flags is a sobering thing. Even without knowing the meaning behind them, when the only sounds are your own breath and the flags' flapping, something is stirred in you that makes you stop and realize that you are very small.

   "Hello." I turned over my shoulder, a bit miffed that someone would interrupt my sobering experience. He was a man with vivid dark hair and complex eyes that had seen a lot of life.
   "Hi." I responded in the friendliest tone I could assemble while trying to retain some of the somberness of the moment.
   "What do these flags mean?" I started to answer, and paused. I looked at him standing in front of me naively anticipating my response, and I knew that the moment I told him the flags' meaning his experience would change. I held power over this situation, and that was a strange feeling.
   "Each flag stands for a life lost at 9/11." I waited for his reaction. He looked down, expressionless.
   "Oh...wow." The silence was filled with the sound of the flags. "I buried my brother that day." My senses froze as all else fell away. "I was lowering him into the ground when those towers fell."

It felt like my throat had been stung by a million bees.

I evoked a very unauthentic sounding "I'm so sorry" as I knew nothing I could say would alleviate or be able to relate to what he had been through. Another few moments passed with the fluttering flags. "Would you like a popsicle?" I asked. He nodded. I ran down the hill to grab one of the melty pineapple popsicles in my car from my market trip. When I returned, we ate our popsicles in the 105 degree sun and talked about life and how pineapple was both of our favorite flavor. His name is Raymond, and I remember that because after a few times of trying to remember it he reintroduced himself as, "Everybody loves...?"

Raymond will never know the impact he had on me.

After that day, my thinking expanded to realize the flags' deeper meaning. Those flags are an absolutely beautiful thing that Pepperdine does to honor the lives lost in 9/11, and by no means am I undermining it. But Raymond made me realize that there were many other tragedies that day. There was probably a mother holding her still-born, a widowing drunk driving collusion, a heart attack leaving grandchildren with mere memories of their grandpa, and Raymond's brother was lowered into the earth. We are desensitized to the fact that every siren could be someone else's life-altering event.

The Matthew 10:11 verse of "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? But not one of them will fall to the ground outside of your Father's care" took a new meaning to me as well. It made me truly realize that life matters.

Gun violence has taken over 3,000 in Chicago just in 2015, so far there has been a 78% increase of police officers shot and killed this year, 194 African Americans have been shot by police just this year, 6,000 killed in interracial violence in 2015, 2,150 Americans die each day from cardiovascular disease (that's one every 40 seconds), 589,430 people died of cancer in 2015, and at least 212 homeless people died just last year. These few stats are barely scratching the surface of deaths in America, and they're not even mentioning the tragedies in other countries. Forgive me if these statistics are off, but even just one unjust or premature death is one too many for me.

Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, Gay Rights, Women's Rights... There are so many movements vouching for their place in humanity, and rightfully so. Humanity is twisted, and I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my mind around the discrimination that some have suffered. But the interwoven thing I've noticed throughout them all is that they allude to individual lives. When you look up lives in the dictionary, it just redirects you to the root word: life. Although life may be seen as an individual right (my life), grammatically, the word is the same when the adjective is plural (our life), and I don't think grammar has made an accident.

Souls are individual, and I believe all souls are just tapping into the shared existence of life, like many people drinking from the same river. Violence is high, health problems rampant and there are countless claims to the answer: Republican, Democrat, politics, religion, medicine. I don't know the answer, and as all these "answers" are formed in a minuscule, limited, decaying human perspective, I don't think I'll ever know the answer. But I know what is important. Souls are important. Life is important. And according to God (the all-knowing, life-breathing entity that is so much bigger than us), even the life of a sparrow worth less than a penny matters.

I don't know the right political action to take. I don't know if there is one answer. Maybe there is. But I know what I need to do: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another (Romans 12:13-16, but you should go read the whole thing, really)." I need to mourn with the souls mourning. However different they or their situation is from mine, whether I can relate to their pain or not, whatever depth or size of their suffering, my heart will break with theirs. I will mourn with our Nation, I will mourn with 9/11, I will mourn with those different than me, and I will mourn with Raymond on a grassy hill while we eat pineapple popsicles in the silence of the flags.

An Open Letter to the Pepperdine Convocation Office

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Ashley Ekstrum, and I am a concerned student. Let me tell you why:

I am an avid attender at Surf Chapel. I have been for two years now. And I can tell you that (although surf chapel can stand alone as one of the best convos in Pepperdine's convocation history), the smell of hot coffee at 7am on the beach makes the world of difference. I will list the reasons to continue providing hot beverages for the weary students of this mid week congregation:

1. Hot beverages make money. Providing free coffee inspires students to get up early on their day off, which makes them more productive, thus raising their grades, thus giving Pepperdine a better overall grade average, which makes it a more revered and competitive college. This will encourage more students to apply to and attend Pepperdine, thus the university will grow, which will provide the university with a higher income.

2. Hot beverages are good for the environment. When free hot beverages are provided at Surf Chapel, students are encouraged to come to the beach to get free coffee, thus they see how beautiful the ocean is. When they see how beautiful the ocean is, they are inspired to protect it. When enough students are inspired to protect it, you are raising a generation that will reverse global warming and bring back more natural resources.

3. Hot beverages save lives. When students ingest hot coffee so early in the morning it reminds them that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When students eat breakfast, it physiologically provides their body with the energy it needs to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Without maintaining a healthy lifestyle, people die.

I will now list the reasons to stop providing hot beverages for Surf Chapel:

As you can see, there are none.

The only argument I have heard to discontinue providing hot beverages to encourage students to wake up early on a day they do not have class in order to learn about God and pursue fellowship in a small group environment is that the weather is getting "warmer." May I remind you that Surf Chapel is at 7am. On a typical, warm Malibu day between 75 and 85 degrees, the low is approximately 55 to 65 degrees, and the temperature low of the day has consistently proven to be in the morning. 

I do hope you can find it in your heart to provide Pepperdine a higher income, protect the environment, and save lives.

Sincerely,

Ashley Ekstrum

The Blog with an Outline about Mammoth and Rap

I don't usually start these bloggings with an outline, but today I am.

• Gary
• Church
• Eminem

And that, my friends, is the most organization you'll ever see from me.

Quick backstory: my roomie and I went snowboarding this weekend.

Gary. So I guess you need to get gas before the 200-mile-ish stretch of nothing when driving to Mammoth. Or, if you find yourself in a situation like ours, you stop at the one Shell between civilizations and you use Dave's Mini Mart's restroom to brush your teeth and take out your contacts, as one had previously fallen out of your eye which then forced you to make your roommate control the steering wheel highway fiasco while you stabbed it back in. You'll probably make a joke about how the flickering neon sign looks like Dave's Mini Mar as the "t" is burnt out. And as you walk inside you will see Gary. He will be staring out the window as if he could see the world turning or the blackness breathe. He will have a bone-shivering horror music soundtrack playing and the store will be littered with clocks and mechanical middle fingers and tourist mugs. He will try to make a joke when you are walking to the restroom, one that is just as not funny as it is inaudible, and he will laugh morosely to himself as if to save his efforts. He will look down at his hands and metaphorically, but much too realistically, taste the familiarity of understanding that he is misunderstood.

Because that's what happened to us.

Angeli and I were in the bathroom. I was mid-tangle brush in the hair battle when we heard a knock on the bathroom door. We looked at each other. I opened it quizzically to find Gary standing there. He reminded me of Spongebob's Gary the snail... sized with a considerable round body, a sphere-like head sitting atop it, and a shaggy, rusty-colored bowl cut to (quite literally) top it off. I actually don't really know how he reminded me of a snail besides the name resemblance.

   "How are you doing?" he asked... creepily, sheepishly, lonely.
   "We're good. Thanks for... asking," I replied.
   "Oh." His small, button-like eyes turned towards the floor again, "okay." I could imagine the mental attack in his head, beating him down, those little insecurities punching in his brain tissue with the self depreciation that I know all too well. We stood there, my hand on the bathroom door, his mass standing like a frozen tree.
   "What is your name?" I asked. If he was previously frozen, spring happened... a magical spring like the one in Narnia when Aslan roars and breaks the boundaries of the white witch. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone's face light up and literally produce illumination, but his was close.
   "Gary" he replied. His words were not words to me. I think his words were what life-hope would sound like if life-hope was a sound. He stood there, basking in the idea that someone actually cared about what his name might be, and then shook himself to come back to earth and the logic that goes with that.
   "What's...what's your names?" His tongue pushed out the words like they were too big for his mouth.
   "I'm Ashley." I stretched out my hand and he shook it, and for a second, there was a shared sense of community between human souls. There was a lightness in that strange little mini mart starting from the bathroom border that spread to the corners. I closed the door with a smile a wave and a "bye" and he left us to finish our nightly routines. I left him a "Happy Thanksgiving" note on the chalkboard in the women's restroom, but realized that he will probably never see it... because it is in the women's restroom.

Church and Eminem combined because I can't even stick to my own outline and my thoughts bleed all over each other. Angeli and I camped at Mammoth. We slept in the car the second night after realizing that no amount of layers could victoriously battle 19 degrees. Angeli and I always seem to have a theme song. It is unintentional. It has no reason, and definitely no rhyme. It chooses us.

Day 1

There is a Light that Never Goes Out - The Smiths

Day 2

Water Fountain - tUnE-yArDs

One of my favorite feelings in the world is waking up in my tent or the back of my car. And that second day I got to wake up in the back of my car in the bare-bone basin of the mountains. They surrounded us like they were the edge of the soup bowl and we were the soup. I love how gold glints off window dew and how ice forms on the inside of the car when you've been breathing all night in it. It melts, and the drops sprint down with their gravity incentive to pool in that little rubber lining around the window for such times as these. And then I got the stunning feeling that I was overwhelmingly small. That there is space and a globe and countries and that I'm a part of it. Later that day I watched the snow gusts snake their way along side of me while I snowboarded. When I paint, I see the artwork forming, but when I snowboard or wake up to the sun I feel as if I'm actually an active part of it. I feel as if I am a part of creation screaming the name of its Creator, and I feel close. Close to the intentional beauty meant for the world. Close to purity. Close to the God that orchestrates it together.

This picture represents a large sacrifice of body warmth.

Fast forward through two less-than-half-priced Mammoth dream days to the drive home. To the dark and those random neon lights as you pass through those random towns in that random cold desert. Through those five hours I discovered rather randomly that Angeli has a sweet-tooth for rap. Dare I say "old school" rap. A fresh Spotify playlist and a few hours later we came to Eminem. She showed me his song Headlights and told me how it was his response to his song Cleaning Out My Closet in his earlier years. Both are about his mom, and Headlights is his apology. 

A pre-cursor disclaimer: I believe church can be an absolutely beautiful thing in the way that it was intended. Encouragement. People meeting together with the same fire in their heart. That concept is a beautiful result in anything really. Two mathematicians create brilliant formulas. Just thinking about two chefs in the same room makes my mouth water. And there's something so beautiful about people getting together who understand what having a relationship with God is like.

I believe that God is omnipresent. But I feel that there is a beauty lost when people stagnate "worship songs" into circles like those round-about driving things. I see so many more of God's qualities in Eminem's song Headlights than I do in the production of many church services and modern "worship." There is so much more authenticity, repentance, and beauty in this song than in any wooden pew. I believe that the heart behind the words, including the explicit ones, overflows just as much, if not more beauty than a perfect harmony or fancy chord progression. This... the cussing, the thoughts, the repentance, the search for new life is the deepest part of who he is, and I believe that is a beautiful thing to the heart of God. Jesus walked a life worth following, and by stumbling, sometimes backtracking, often wandering from but returning to those footsteps I've found a depth provided by a God who simply wants our authenticity. And the closer I get to Him... there's a continual clean slate, growing depth, and thirst for more like I've never known before.

(I especially like 2:25 and on)

Aaaand some more pictures. Adventure on and live deeply my friends. 

 

 

It is Well

It's been a while. School started.

Today I woke up at five and, in my (literal) blind delirium, I decided to go to the beach. I grabbed my six foot egg-fishy, a red flannel, and some of the incense I got on Amazon. But I forgot pants, which made it mildly inconvenient to write this in a public coffee shop. You really realize your priorities at 5 am. I also realized that there are different shades of black in the morning. The small-room-stubbed-toe black and the early morning sleeping pavement black. There's the eye pupil black and the copy-cat pupil camera lens black. It's strange to think we're looking at black through black. Whether you take that at a deep metaphorical level or the shallow physicality it was intended in, it's an interesting concept to think about.

The scent I grabbed was called Sunrise. Figures.

After my climb-in-the-passenger's-door-due-to-my-bad-park-job shuffle, Bethel popped in my head. It more like burst to the seams of my skull because the name's been a bubble in my head for a while. It took the needle of 5 am for it to burst and make me actually look them up. My fingers stumbled on It is Well (Live). I'm really glad they did ---->

Fast forward to 6 am at Zuma watching the 20 billion people fight each other for the ankle biters and me burning incense like I was better than the quarter of their ability that I actually am. Whenever I burn incense it makes me think of the frankincense the wise men brought to Jesus or the burnt offerings in the Old Testament. Sometimes I wonder if that's what it was like to be God... He smelled the offerings and got that dull buzzing in the back of his head because the smell was so encompassing. I have no idea, but all I know is that moment was like a symbol of taking a moment (moment-ception?) to simply take time to sit in silence with God and give Him the first fruits of everything I find pleasurable... the best smells, the best part of the morning, the best place to possibly watch the sunrise... and I was so fully completely perfectly content. It reminded me of the gratification I get when I please someone I love... except that God IS the definition of love, and He gives us the opportunity to fully please Him when we will never be able to fully please people.

So have a happy, fulfilled morning. Please the One you Love today.

Happy Earth Day

Today is earth day. It's my favorite holiday... that I forget about until about 4 pm the day of. Thank God for facebook. I almost forgot my second-cousin-triple-removed's birthday too.

I find myself focusing on the "the things unseen" in a lot of my theocratic, pensive quiet time, especially when I want to be "spiritual." I believe in them with all my heart. Like love and a relationship with God. They're so potent in life, and I don't know what life would be like without them. That's such an arbitrary statement. Like the ones you hear in Sunday school stories while you're coloring Joseph's coat with broken crayons that have weird names like piggy bank pink.
     "Color inside the lines. It's a coat of many separate colors." You stop and look at your scribbled coloring-book cartoon adolescent. He looks back with bubble eyes and an overly friendly grin. The oh-so-helpful lady who helped your artistic juices flow now interrupts your pondering.
     "Let's clean up! Time for our Noah and the goldfish snacks!" You can hear the zingy squeak of Larry the Cucumber wafering in from the other room... My question is where in the Bible does it ever say that Joseph's coat was composed of separated colors?

But when I stop to think about it, I really don't know what life would be like without the things we can't see.

But... the earth. I think it's one of the few "beyond-our-understanding" things we can touch. We can see its mind-entrancing complexity on top of a mountain when the pines and boulders and ribbon rivers are laid out like a tea party. We can see it under a microscope in the life of a drop of water, which we drink every day without thinking. We see a myriad of colors and slithering shadows scratch themselves across drawstring curtains and we can touch the sun dancing on our skin when the wind coughs through an elderly oak's leaves. But it is all so much bigger than us... In every concept available. Yet I feel like we only have the perspective of a ladybug in a cardboard box (I used to collect those, poor things) in comparison to what God has planned for us.

Nature is tangible. Ask any tree house enthusiast. I can assure you that they won't be sleeping in a non-tangible tree. But it is so much more than tangible. There's a secret tree house in my neighborhood that we call Wonderland. Why? Because when you lay down and see the egg-shell sky held back by branches with little ants and birds breathing their little lives into the same air as you it's not just a tree house. It's an all-encompassing, jaw-dropping awe.

So, Happy Jaw-Dropping, Stupifying, Cali-fragil-is-tic Earth Day. May you hug many trees.

Sunrise from the base of Mount Fitz Roy

Can I have some Ranch with my Word Salad?

I'm coming home soon. I feel like my heart is being strained through a cheese cloth... with no emotions. My heart is just my heart. The cheese, cheese. The cloth, well, it's a cheese cloth... a cloth with a bit of specification... but you get the point. There's so many feelings that they all mutilate each other like rabid rats. At the Casa there's a plastic toy gun that's been on the couch for about a week. I know because I sit on it just about every stupid day. I was (emphatically) informed by Jacob, my 20-year-old colleague, that it was the "red power ranger's gun... Jason's gun." And yes, I googled that to refresh my memory.

Anyways, I can't seem to focus on the big picture. I haven't blogged for a while because everything that rolls off my tongue (or more literally, my fingers) is word salad. That's actually a term I learned about in Psychology. Word salad. I can just imagine a bunch of men in lab coats discussing it at an over sized, rectangular very official table. Probably with rat cages blurred in the background.

     "Yes, yes, we need a term for this." A mouse squeaks in the distance.
     "Wordanoia?" a man suggests. His lab coat is one button off and his goggles are steaming up a bit.
     "No... no..." the instigator replies. "That's been used for the Wordophomous solomonus." Seemingly defeated, he puts his head in his hands. "They're too similar."
     "Spitography!" exclaims another across the table raising a finger. The instigator sighs in unison with another mouse squeak and just shakes his head, still in his hands. Suddenly the doors swing open and a boy enters. He's carrying a brown paper bag with little oil spots seeping through.
     "Dad, you forgot your sala..." The men sit up a little straighter and independently look off in the distance with glazed eyes. The rats stop running on their wheels. The boy freezes. Light suddenly streams down onto the boy's hand holding the bag. A rat falls over dead. The men then whisper in unison as if the lightest sound would break the magic,
     "Salad..."

I also learned about schizophrenia. My teacher showed us a clip of a schizophrenic man. The things he said were so disjointedly brilliant. They made such illogical sense to me that I started to frantically write down everything he said, starting with the "picture [on the wall] that had a headache." Afterwards I looked up expectantly to discuss what he said when I remembered we were analyzing the subject, not the subject matter.

That made me sad. Trained by society, I feel that we focus on analyzing the subject rather than listening to what it is saying. I guess that's what I'm unconsciously not doing. I'm not saying this to say I'm better than society, but rather, why I don't feel like I'm a part of it. I think I'm not feeling because I'm listening to what South America is saying rather than trying to analyze it. Of course I realize that everyone processes and deals with things in different ways. Mine isn't necessarily better or worse than someone else's... it's just different. I could go into one of my infamous rants about my love hate relationship with the cracks on the sidewalks, but I think you've heard that enough.

I hear South America saying many of the same things the United States would say. That I need to shower in the mornings. That the dust here is also made from skin cells and that gravity still keeps our feet planted in the same way. Don't get me wrong... there are definitely differences. Major differences. But that toy gun will probably still be on the couch when I leave, and life will go on, and that's okay. And somehow that's both a comforting and rip-my-body-to-shreds-ing concept that isn't soaking in. I don't know if it ever will because my head can only soak things in at one place at a time, which never really gives me the full perspective because I can only physically be at one place at a time.

"It's God, not me." I've been thinking about that concept a lot lately, and how much I've used it. I never want to use it again. It assumes that I was something in the first place. Why don't I just say "It's God?" Because I have to be in the equation somewhere. "Here God, I'll let You have the first respective subject in this non-grammatically-correct-sentence because I have reached complete humility." I want to replace that with what John the Baptist said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." Now there's some good grammar. It's a continuous action of decreasing. That's addressing the constant struggle for humility rather than saying I am humble. That's the authenticity I want.

I was going to talk about my English class and how we "analyze" things. The trick to the class is to use "teacher pleasers" such as idealized and passionate and suffering and despair. Bonus points for personification and reminiscence or if you can think of anything longer than 5 syllables. You could pretty much say the same thing about everything to deepen the class discussion.
      "Oh yes, I believe the author used personification to idealize the situation of suffering he was in when he was reminiscing in his passion." Maybe switch it up to add a new perspective. But make sure to furrow your brow a bit to make it authentic.
      "The author used personification when describing his suffering to idealize the passion because his reality was clouded by despair."

They like it when you use nouns as verbs with quick little suffixes, such as clouded. You could do that with just about anything. Shower-ed. Pillow-ed. Meth-ed... (Maybe not everything). How out-of-the-box and descriptive of me. But as I was writing this I realized it's all I do on this blog anyway. How sneakily hypocritical of me. I surprise myself at my abilities sometimes. Jesus really does deserve to be "increased" and I really do deserve to be "decreased."

That's all.

My Respect, Argentina

I am studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and it has become a part of me. I deeply love Israel as their history is a crucial part of my definition as a Christian. So, January 18, 2015 was shocking for me.

I don't want to pretend to be an expert in Argentine politics, or any politics at all really. But the gunshot to Nisman's head was like a blow to mine. Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, declared it a suicide. But why would someone commit suicide mere hours before testifying evidence of a collusion between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Cristina Kirchner government? Nisman's report of nuclear connections between Argentina and Iran suggested provisions of uranium and nuclear cooperation during the suicide bombing on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992. Evidence, which if revealed in court, would be strong enough to force Cristina to resign.

I met an interesting man the other day in a cafe that played Chet Faker. He was sitting at our table as I was struggling through pluscuamperfecto. He shifted his weight, tilting his head back a bit.

"You know they only use that in Spain." Perfect English. A deep voice. I looked up. My bangs were rustled from the integration of my nails through my scalp like little inchworms, and I quickly saw them sticking up like straw in the mirror by his head.

"I have a test on Monday" I replied, distracted as I tried to bat down the rat-bed disaster.

We started to talk as the pages of my notes stagnated. I'd rather engage in what's in front of my nose rather than have it buried in a book, as fascinating as books can be. Alex is from Israel, lives in LA and works in Buenos Aires. Suffice it to say, he has surfed the best breaks on three continents. I eagerly gave him my phone to type out suggestions all the way from places to go to books to read. He looked down at his list on the screen before giving it back to me.

Surf Wise
Surf Sex and Fun
Forces of Nature

"Well, you got yourself a poem there."

Naturally, we started to brief on politics. We have quite similar views as our passions align. We talked about the march on Wednesday. I listened as he told me his views on Nisman and Cristina and Israel and how passionate he was about his country and the desolation there.

The march on Wednesday. I told him I was there too.

I was plastered against an angry old man on the supte (subway). He sniffed disapprovingly and barked at me to provide him more room (in a less polite and more gesture-filled way then I choose to write). I weaseled out a "sorry" or two as my hands were tied, or more literally, barged between another lady and someone else's armpit and plastic pearl bracelet. But I stood determinedly on my 2-square-inch plot of supte ground as Alex (different Alex) earlier had to yank me inside the closing doors. The suptes here allow as many people as will fit. Some will force themselves in the moment the doors close, with nothing the 500 other protesting people crammed inside can do about it (except wait till the next stop to forcibly push them off again). I looked at Alex and tried to gulp down some of the underground air drizzling through the cracked window as the rails whisked by.

After disembarking that torturous transportation device, we climbed the steps to the street. I noticed what was coming at us. So did the Porteños (Argentine locals). I looked to my right and Alex to her left and watched like wet cats as they simultaneously and expressionlessly popped out their umbrellas. I guess I should have checked the weather that day, but I guess it doesn't matter as I don't have an umbrella anyway. We were doomed to direct exposure to the elements. I wrung out my already sopping hair. Thunder cracked in the distance.

We were there for the silent protest. For the people. We were there for the ladies on the sidewalk with tears disguised as raindrops. We were there for the men in suits and the ones in jeans. We were there for the honor of Argentines unknown to us, and we were there under the same rain and the same zapping thunder. We were there for the chanting of "AR-HEN-TINA" and "JUS-TI-CIA" rumbling up through 400,000 individual throats to collaborate with the contributing thunder. It was beyond powerful. My own throat swelled as I stood there, helpless. I won't pretend that the corruption has effected me in the same way, but I want to give every single step I took and every single step I will take here to that silent march. To the Argentines who's hearts and stories have stolen parts of mine. I want them to know that I am with them, in every possible sense of my understanding. I want to share the in the pain of the corruption that we blanket term as "life."

There's something powerful about that... being connected with Argentina and Israel and the States in one silent march. About how different lives can come together to stand for one thing. For justice. For freedom and honesty and righteousness to solidify in our world again. I can't do much, but I want every footstep I have on this soil to count for something in pursuit of validating what the people want it to stand for; because once you have lived in Argentina, a part of you will stay in the wire-lines of the supte cars and the cracked sidewalks forever.

*photos taken from Google search