What kind of an idea are you?

I just checked my cell phone and found this message from a new friend in an awful neighborhood in LA. I imagined him sending the message late last night, perhaps even as I was waking. Above my head stars were giving way to daylight -- above his was the menacing and intrusive search lights of patrolling LAPD helicopters. That's no exaggeration...I've seen them for myself, June too, it's exactly what hovers above your head when you live pinched up against the 110 freeway. Zoey was sleeping peacefully...Lula the same, while both of their fathers proved correct the notion, there is no them, only us.

Hey homes. I read this @#$%.

WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?

Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive - or are you the cursed, bloody-minded ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? - the kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits, but the hundredth time, will change the world?

I recognized the quote but had to Google the thing to place it. It's from The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Pretty impressive, and not at all what you might have thought given his gangbang'n past and his slowly improving present. Like I said, there is no them, only us.

Of course, it ended with, "That's some crazy shit, huh vacho."

No, the fact that I found this text on my phone is some crazy shit.