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Luis Rivas
The View From Mulholland DR
.
She hands me the camera and
- tells me to take a picture of
her sitting on the wooden
rail on Mulholland DR . I
focus in on her, keeping her
off center and to the right.
Don’t put me in the center,
she says. The view of Los
Angeles is yellow and ugly.
More and more people are
arriving in BMWs and Mercedes
Benz, crowding the Mulholland
DR view area. A well-dressed
lady takes out a crack pipe,
puts it to her lips and
flicks on the lighter under
it, inhaling hard and deeply,
the rock inside the glass
pipe melting and turning into
vapor, her eyes growing wider
and throws her baby over the
edge. People shout. The
girl who handed me the camera
continues to sit and wait on
the wooden rail. The high
afternoon sun starts bleeding
and explodes over us.
Cloudless rain falls mixing
in with the liquid sun.
People are burning and
screaming in the valley. No
one understands what’s going
on. More people take out
crack pipes and throw their
children over the wooden
rail. Rich fat husbands are
laughing. Their fat spoiled
dogs bark uncontrollably, go
insane and leap over the
wooden rail, biting after the
children. Everyone’s jumping
over now. She says, ok, take
the picture. I have to step
back to get everything in,
lining up the wooden posts in
the wooden rail so that
either side has the exact
amount of distance from the
edge in the picture, dodging
the children being thrown
toward us and remembering to
keep her off center. Don’t
center me, ok, she says. I
wait for something. She
turns around with the
bleeding sun in her eyes,
half her face and hair burned
off, the white of her skull
exposed. I snap the picture
before everything goes away,
before it all stops, in case
we forget this moment, here,
now, this, but the lens cap
is left on. No one will
believe us now.