January 27th: Joseph X Casillas
IN THE BRUSH OF TODAY
The Canyon of the Walnut Trees
My day started last night. I was on the porch when it went from 26 to 27. The barks of dogs flew down the mountain of Glassell Park and echoed throughout the neighborhood. Their cries came from El Cañon de Los Nogales, the canyon of the walnut trees. That could only mean one thing: coyotes. The coyotes of Glassellland come out at night and howl with the police sirens. Some unlucky dog must’ve got left out or fallen asleep on the lawn and soon became dinner. This was nothing new. Living across the street from the park means that coyotes are an everyday occurrence (if you pay close enough attention). But there, at closer to one in the morning, all I could wonder about was what I would write today.
There are records of the Glassell family – for which Glassell Park is named after – planting groves of flowers and plants and pine that still stand today. I’ve always wondered if they were responsible for the stands of black walnut trees up on the hill of Glassell Park. And as I listened to the dogs still crying at two in the morning, I wondered if many people knew that the Glassell’s were confederate sympathizers.
I looked down the way from my porch and saw that the lights were on at Partake, a ghost kitchen opening next door. They’ve been on at night lately. I wonder if they leave the lights on inside to make people think that there’s someone in there. I wonder if they’re scared of getting robbed. Partake symbolizes a much bigger shift in the neighborhood.
I stayed up thinking about this. I think about my changing neighborhood. About how 23 hours ago I was walking through the park, my pants covered in mud, trudging through the first rain of the year looking for a dog I barely met for a neighbor that didn’t even say thank you. But that was yesterday. The later it got, the more nervous I grew for the day to come. Leading up to the project, I thought a lot about how I would approach This Year. A lot of thought went into the meaning of the prompt. Up to this point, I’d read three interpretations of it. I didn’t feel like this was just about my life, though. I didn’t even feel like this was about today. I felt the piece needed to encapsulate the times as a whole. I kept asking myself, what will this piece say ten years from now? What part did nostalgia play in this and could anyone predict what would become nostalgic? What about today will the passing of time make profound tomorrow?
I didn’t fall asleep until close to 3 am, Pacific Standard Time. And I woke up earlier than usual, around 9 am Eastern Time. I thought it was strange that I didn’t hear any birds. The only sound in the house was my grandfather coughing – also earlier than usual. He was blasting his Spanish songs on the radio and yet it was already calmer today, as opposed to yesterday when I woke up to 84 texts in the family group chat. They weren’t happy with the state of politics, to say the least. And today, the sun was still not completely out when I opened my eyes. I twisted and turned for an hour or so. Then, at 7:14 am, I took this:
This was the first thing I saw when I woke up. A week before, I borrowed my cousin Alex’s Polaroid camera because I had the idea to photograph the first and last things I saw in the day. There was something unpredictable about a Polaroid photo. It might be overexposed, it might be poorly framed, and you only get so many attempts (with a 10-stock-photo pack costing $18). With all of that in mind, a Polaroid felt perfect for this project.
Like the Polaroid photos, I had no idea where this day was going. The plan was that I would scan and digitize any photos I took so that I could incorporate them into the piece. No digital photos were allowed, per my own rule. I managed to go to Downtown LA last weekend and grab the camera from Alex just before his shift started at ProAbition. All that was left to do was borrow the mini scanner from my aunt, who lived outside of town.
My grandpa, whom I live with, was going to stay with my aunt this weekend and return with the scanner. But at the last minute, the rain came and he decided not to go. This is how things have been for a while, at least ever since my grandma passed away. It’s been hard for him to leave the house like he used to.
But I shouldn’t complain. This rain was a blessing. Heaven sent, especially for some parts of the city. So after I took the first photo, I wondered how I would get them in my piece. Maybe Walgreens, I thought. Are there still Walgreens in the future? Amidst these thoughts, I debated whether to go back to sleep or start my day. On a day like today, it felt wrong to stay in. Hungover, I dragged myself out of bed.
When I asked to be part of this project, my only request was to be assigned a cold day. And it just so happened that today was the first post-rain day in LA in months. As Grace Toohey writes in their January 4th Los Angeles Times article, “Southern California swings toward a drought.” Toohey’s article feels eerily preemptive, as only three days later the Palisades fire broke out.
Today, the we really needed this was in the air. By the time I’d gotten up and peeked out of my living room windows, around 7:30 am, the clouds were already clearing and it was fresh out.
The Doves of Altadena
As I sat in the living room reading through the daily news (scrolling Twitter), I remembered the smell of burning lumber. How the smell had still lingered in the air just a week ago. Yet this morning was the first that was clear. Last week, the ashes seemed impossible to dust away. Ashes of people’s homes, remnants of people’s entire lives, gone. Children’s toys, journals, books, laptops, televisions, all in the crevices of my driveway.
I imagined these things, these material items as ash, and how all of these things were washed away in just one night. And the photos. Outlines of what used to be houses are now downgraded to rubble. “You can’t replace a photo,” my dad told me.
Amid this mourning, I couldn’t help but notice that for the past week, a group of gray-white birds had settled in our area. It was hard not to correlate it to the fire just a couple of neighborhoods over. At first, I couldn’t make out what type of birds they were. The second someone says dove, you’re accused of pigeon. But doves and pigeons belong to the same family of birds, scientifically speaking. Today, I noticed that those doves were no longer settled here. Maybe they got the memo that it was safe to go home, I thought. After the much-needed rain, there were flash flood warnings. Yet today, somewhat significantly, was the first day that the Palisades fully reopened to all of its residents.
An Arrangement of Birds
Every time I tried to snap a photo of birds eating persimmons, the shutter would scare them away. This reminded me of the green parrots I’d always try to film as a kid.
Every few years the wild California parrots would make a stop in Glassell Park on their way to San Diego for the 71-degree winter. Their green, flocking feathers were loud in the mornings, and reminded me of the roosters in San Sebastián on my other grandparents’ Salvatierra Ranch in Mexico. Like the chickens, the parrots would wake the house up. They’d always come for the persimmon tree in our neighbor’s front yard. Their tree grew so tall that one branch leaned over the fence and onto our property. We enjoyed the strange fruit for years, at least my grandpa did. What my grandfather thought was lucky I saw as laborious, as I’d often have to clean up the spoiled fruit on our side of the fence. If you waited too long, they’d get stuck in the ground and when you’d accidentally step over them you’d never be able to get them off the bottom of your shoes.
The fruit was local to Spain, so I was told by the owner of the neighboring house a few years ago, although he hasn’t actually lived there in years. In Winter, the fruit would turn red like a spoiled tomato and during Summer they’d grow vibrantly orange. They tasted sweet and were originally served as a dessert in Valencia. But this year, no green parrots were waking me up in the morning. Yet there weren’t many persimmons, either. It was as though someone had harvested them. I know our neighbors, as much as you can know a house from next door, and they weren’t the type to pick fruit. I doubted they even knew the name of it, even though it resided just ten feet from their front door.
In my imagination, the lack of persimmons was due to the doves of Altadena. They must have been hungry after barely escaping the Eaton fire. I imagined them flocking in every direction they possibly could. The few that settled in Glassell Park had chosen that same tree the wild California parrots loved. The same tree Hux the Husky died tethered to just two neighbors ago.
The Crowd At 3
After reading through the morning news, I looked up what does it mean to live? The first thing it said was remain alive. So as I tried to remain alive, I decided I wanted to do so with some coffee.
If there was ever an excuse to buy into the ten-dollar iced coffee of Los Angeles, it was today.
I took this while driving to the coffee shop:
At Civil Coffee on Figueroa, I thought about the crowd. How the crowd at 9 am is different from the crowd at 3 pm. How the crowd at 9 has likely already had breakfast, while the crowd at 3 definitely skipped. I imagined that the crowd at 9 had seen half the city by now. But the crowd at 3 probably still had so much to do.
I ordered a Vanilla Oaty: Espresso, organic oat milk, House Madagascar vanilla, garnished with smoky savory Hawaiian black lava salt. Served shaken, over ice. It didn’t taste as pretentious as it sounds (and yes, that’s exactly how it’s worded on their menu).
At Civil Coffee, I sat and took in the scene. There, I posted a prompt on Instagram asking, “Wat about 2day do u think should be remembered 10yrs from now?” Responses varied throughout the day—
It’s a new day –
Ppl are coming over & I’m making an entire dinner from scratch 4 them, what’s more human –
The importance of farm workers –
The beer I’m getting with my homie later –
The consequences of Social Media –
How AI is taking over and is gonna be the next generation –
The paradox of people wanting money but don’t want to be educated bc it’s not “cool” –
That no one is going to save me –
I asked others, “What makes today special?”
Having my parents around and healthy –
It’s the first time it’s been today –
I am alive. I am working. –
The melting pot of cultures. –
After getting my coffee and reading through people’s responses, I walked around with the Polaroid camera. It was bigger than my hand and caught a lot of looks. The only thing I thought worthy of photographing was Chicken Boy, the infamous government-recognized statue sandwiched behind & between La Palapa and La Fuente Restaurant in Highland Park. In the photo, he looks menacing as he’s silhouetted behind bare winter trees. Towering over me.
On the way home, I wanted the opinions of the local baristas I’d gotten to know over the last year. Last dry January I found a new addiction in lattes. So I stopped at the second nearest Starbucks and as I ordered my first food of the day, a buttered croissant warmed up, Martin came over the intercom.
“You again?” He said jokingly.
I could hear his coworkers giggle in the background. They all knew me, which I didn’t like.
Martin is my younger cousin Alyssa’s best friend, though at this point he could just be referred to as a family friend. That being said, he will forever be known to me as “Martini” for ordering one the night he turned 21 (only to spit it up). At the time, he didn’t realize what a martini consisted of but had made up his mind years before that it would be his first drink.
All jokes aside, I did want to know what his coworkers thought should be remembered about today. Their answers also varied –
Edith said, “Starbucks is turning against its community.”
“We hate I.C.E.,” said Martin.
“We are human and not robots so be kind to us,” added Amaya.
The Glassellland Sign
After I drove back home, I decided to walk around Glassell Park – which I sometimes referred to as Glassellland. There was a woman playing fetch with her two dogs in the open field. As I circled the mysterious Glassellland sign, she watched me from the corner of her eyes. It was odd to be treated like a stranger across the street from my own home, but I understood why. So I kept my distance. By the time I’d finished taking the picture, her dogs had given up on returning the ball and retreated to rolling around in the mud.
Ball.
No response.
Ball. Now!
They didn’t care. They’d grown too comfortable rolling in dirt and there was clearly no going back. I didn’t manage to catch their names.
I say mysterious when describing the sign because most people don’t know how it appeared or why. Was it an art piece? A strange mimic of the Hollywood sign. Even locals thought it just appeared overnight. The truth was that you could find how and when it popped up just by doing a little research. But I suppose the mystery is more poetic.
Walking past the sign, I thought about how there’s so much happening right now. And yet today feels so quiet.
When I got back home, I helped my grandfather bring the water jugs in – and by help, I mean did by myself. I don’t mind as his back can’t take it anymore. But still.
Lately, my grandpa sits and listens to music by himself in the dining room. No TV. Sometimes no lights. Just a speaker he won in last December’s white elephant and Vicente Fernandez. I think about how strange it is that I haven’t spoken to him since morning because when I went to coffee, he was in the shower.
After I put the water in, I thought about how these are the kinds of days that are taken for granted. The majority of days are like this. Just him and I in the house. There is nothing extraordinarily significant about today or anything I’ve done. Yet today is the type of day I’ll miss, years from now. It was days like today that I didn’t savor when my grandmother was still here.
She passed away over two years ago. The house has been quiet since she left.
I wonder lately if these are my grandfather’s last days that we’ll be looking back on. The same way I look back at those final days of September, 2022. But another part of me thinks he just likes music. Like his son. Like me. He’s also probably the healthiest person in the house. And he’s vain. He walks more than us. And he makes health shakes for himself and my dad. He makes us return clothes he knows he won’t look good in. And his doctors would be the first to say that he has plenty of good years left. But as we all see him struggle more and more to complete simple tasks, you look twice and appreciate a day like today.
I’m left thinking more of my grandma. How maybe she needed to die first, as bizarre as that sounds. That’s silly, I can see my family saying while reading this part. But maybe my grandpa was always going to be the only one that grew old in this house. Not to say my grandma was young when she passed, but it certainly felt early. I guess it always feels early. And maybe these thoughts are just my brain's way of saying I miss her. My brain's way of making sense of her passing.
This is the point in the day I lost. I don’t remember what I did between now and next. So I started to think about time. I put so much thought into what people would think about this piece years from now that I failed to consider what people did before. That’s when I did some research.
This photo was taken 96 years ago, to the day:
Lockheed Corporation plant in Burbank, January 27, 1929.
Courtesy of Doheny Memorial Library (public domain).
This photo was taken over one hundred years ago:
Closeup, New Year’s Day at the Rose Bowl, 1925
(Notre Dame beat Stanford 27 to 10), courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.
Now Comes Next
This morning I had woken up slightly less uncertain than the night prior. In that sense, I decided what today would and wouldn’t be. Ten years from now, I thought, I won’t care what I had for breakfast today. What I will care about are people. What were people saying today? How were people feeling? Will smash burgers still be a thing? And what will my neighborhood look like? I barely recognized the block today compared to when I was a kid. So what will the next ten years do to Glassell Park? With the state of Los Angeles lately, it felt like it could all change in a heartbeat. It could all go with the gust of a strong wind. That’s when I called Preston.
This is Preston sitting outside of Solarc Brewing (where I recorded a 30-minute audio clip of our conversation). The clip is filled with the sound of passing cars and laughter. But the most important part is when I ask,
“In the least dramatic way possible, what about today, if anything, do you think will matter? In ten, fifteen, twenty years?”
You know what’s nice about today? Is we had all these horrible fires all month. We’ve had nothing but horrible news. And then the rain came yesterday and washes all those fires away and today is the first nice day. You know? All that pollution and stuff – it’s been washed out by the rain. And it’s a nice day.
Preston and I drank weird IPAs as the bar was being set up for live music (which just consisted of long-haired men playing synthesizers). I loved the open barn doors to the place and the walls covered in tin foil but the beer – which we both had three of – gave me a terrible stomach ache (perhaps because all I’d eaten today was a Starbucks croissant).
After Preston and I departed, which was a big chunk of my day, I drove home, which was only 2 minutes away. I napped because I knew that if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to jot my thoughts down later. Then, after a thirty minute recharge, I ate my first real meal of the day: pot roast and Rice-A-Roni. My Tia Elena cooked it. Although it was never explicitly agreed upon, she and I took turns cooking dinner for everyone, particularly my grandpa. Even though during the semester I couldn’t cook as often as she.
At Around Eight
Gladlyinsane hit four thousand subscribers. It was while I watched a show with my dad. He and I kept track of who suggested more A+ shows and who forced us to watch duds. I was on a hot streak, as of late. But typically he’d beat me in the long run.
I looked at my calendar to mentally prepare for tomorrow: my mom has a biopsy, made only a week ago, where they’re going to scrape her uterus to test for cancer. Quite barbaric if you ask me, she’d later go on to say.
I kept myself busy with contrite tasks so as not to worry. I cleaned my desk briefly and a folded note emerged from the dust and paper. The Great Thirst by Norris Hundley Jr (which, through the handwriting, I originally thought was called The Great Thrift by Norris Hurley Jr.).
I remembered that this note is from campus, from grad school, where a wall on the seventh floor of Sierra Tower read leave a recommendation, take a recommendation. The English program is surprisingly fun in Northridge. I missed games like this in college: kangaroo pockets on the walls with someone’s favorite piece of literature – things I didn’t savor in undergrad. I left a recommendation, The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich, which I had just finished.
Now, I Thought
Eric’s instinct was to pose on a vacant bus stop bench.
He and I had done dry January two years in a row and this was supposed to be our third. But a roommate he’s lived with since he was 17 had a bachelor party and, well, things happened (this year we started in December so if you think about it, we did even better than dry January-ers… right?).
Now, with Eric at Dave’s Bar on Broadway in Glendale, almost a full twenty-four hours later, I think back to the walnut trees. And the howling dogs from last night. And how well-fed the coyotes of Glassell Park must be. All of this sparks memories of my favorite authors who sometimes wrote about trees in a very vivid way. Specifically, willow trees. John Steinbeck writes in The Grapes of Wrath, “How if you wake up in the night and know – and know the willow tree’s not there?” And Louise Erdrich writes in The Red Convertible, “I do remember this one place with willows. I remember I lay under those trees and it was comfortable. So comfortable. The branches bent down all around me like a tent or a stable.” Even Haruki Murakami had a series of short stories under the title Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman where he writes, “What the heck’s a blind willow? … There is a kind of tree like that.”
Leading up to this project, I thought a lot about the state of the world. But I only found one reading to be relevant: Travels with Charley (In Search of America) by John Steinbeck.
I found myself returning to Steinbeck often. After a dry streak of not having finished a book in years, he was the one to pull me out of it. Not only did he write about California in a light I aimed to replicate, but he had a way in which he described things. Situations. He was funny. And he never gave any answers, especially in his nonfiction. He gave us a story and presented characters how he saw them and he let them speak for themselves. I appreciated that. As I was told years ago, writers aren’t here to provide any answers, they are simply here to further explore the question. I believe that.
I could open any page of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and find something relevant to This Year. The book chronicles Steinbeck setting out on a road trip with his dog in 1960 to see the America that the East of Eden novelist so often wrote about. One line stuck with me today:
“Maybe understanding is only possible after.”
When trying to assess what great conclusion Steinbeck came to on his cross-country travels, he writes:
“It would be pleasant to be able to say of my travels with Charley,
‘I went out to find the truth about my country and I found it.’
I wish it were that easy.”
Steinbeck concludes, “We are a nation, we are a new breed.” And “It is astonishing that this has happened in less than two hundred years and most of it in the last fifty.” When talking about the American identity, Steinbeck claims to have been a starving man to see the country and the country feeling the same. Everyone wants to go somewhere, he claims. Everyone wanted to get up and travel America. Today, almost 65 years after its publication, I can’t say the same.
Of course, this could have to do with the fact that Steinbeck was a white man in the 1960s. I can assume that he saw a much different country than all people of color ever have or ever will. But there’s something beyond the color of his skin in his words about the United States. He describes Americans as being “much more American” than anything else. That the American identity was much stronger than being a Southerner or a Midwesterner or a Californian or a New Yorker. He claimed that being American triumphed over all of those things. I don’t think the same notion applies to our nation today.
As my day came to a close, I reflected more and more on all that had gone through my head. I can only speak on the fear. I can’t say what the American identity definably is or isn’t. I can only speak on the divide I see. Today:
I thought about the state of the world.
I thought about Los Angeles and Glassell Park.
I thought about how living across the street from a park meant I’d always have to deal with mice.
I thought about how everyone else was approaching this project.
I thought about another coffee.
I thought about Partake and what the ghost kitchens meant for my neighborhood.
I thought about how I wanted to put Glassell Park on the map again.
I thought about willow trees and wondered if there were any in the park.
I thought about Louise Erdrich.
I thought about how in some Native American cultures, a willow tree is a symbol of wisdom, balance, healing, and adaptability. And I wondered if walnut trees carried any of those same meanings.
I thought about Taylor Yard and how its existence is probably the only reason Glassell Park is on the map in the first place.
I thought about all of the train workers who woke up early and sipped black coffee.
I thought about all of the passengers who took the Southern Pacific Railroad who I will never know about.
I thought about the flour advantage Glassell Park gained by hosting Taylor Yard.
I thought about the Van de Kamp Bakery down the street from my house now being a charter school.
I thought about grad school.
I thought about the death of the magazine.
I thought about how most people who want to be writers don’t know that they actually have to write.
I thought about David Foster Wallace and how he talked about how difficult it was becoming for people to read. For America to foster quiet spaces. How “loud” America was becoming.
I thought about my classmates who worked in classrooms. And how, when I asked if the literacy problem in America was real, they quickly replied “Not only is it real, it’s an epidemic.”
I thought about how years from now we’ll say today was the middle of the “booming small press era” for literature. And how creatives “finally decided they’d get the final say in their work,” even if it meant less money and recognition.
I thought about how I wished that was the state of the film industry. But the more independent films became, the harder it became for young filmmakers to break in.
I thought about Sean Baker.
I thought about Gladlyinsane.
I thought about how COVID was over and no one wanted to hear about it anymore.
I thought about a piece I never finished titled Teen Angst explaining how the indie music scene in Pomona exploded after the pandemic.
I thought about all the music venues I’d been to across LA and how fun it would be to write about each and every one of them.
I thought about pulling something from an old document but concluded that it wouldn’t be genuine.
I thought about everything that makes me, me today. All of the days that have led me here. And how many days were ahead.
I thought about all of the things I wanted to do this year.
I thought about how my younger cousin said “TikTok is basically Google” and how the older I get, “younger” doesn’t necessarily mean young anymore.
I thought about my dad and how a lot of people still see him as a “young dad”. And I see him, maybe for the first time in years, as he’s on the cusp of middle age.
I thought about how, at my age, he already had a 7-year-old. He already had me.
I thought about my younger brother, Dyami. How his father is bipolar. How I grew up with his father. How I knew his father. How I walked into the bathroom with my mother holding a towel to her head. How he had a temper. How I remembered that temper growing up. How everyone in my life is in therapy but me. How I’m scared to say all of this out loud.
I thought about how Dyami said the most important thing to remember about today were the I.C.E. raids, the same thing Martini said.
I thought about the next four years and what they’d entail, politically.
I thought about the illusion of sanctuary cities and the advocation against professors advocating against Nazis.
I thought about how we’ll feel it less in LA even though I saw the I.C.E. trucks on my block.
I thought about Trump being inaugurated exactly a week ago today.
I thought about Dave Chappelle’s speech two days before his first term. How there was a similar feeling in the air some eight years ago. Uncertainty. Fear. Anticipation.
I thought about how everything felt back in 2016.
I thought about how Dave’s monologue brought me comfort back then.
I thought about how I grew up watching Dave Chappelle.
I thought about how I have family members who still don’t have citizenship.
I thought about how this country was made possible because of my grandparents’ free labor.
I thought about my grandma again. And how much of her life she spent working for pennies.
I thought about how it’s not even the fact that it’s happening that kills me, it’s that we all knew and couldn’t stop it.
I thought about how voters cared more for a stimulus check than the safety of their neighbors.
I thought about the bible.
I thought about how much that speaks to the times we’re living in and what it says about the current state of our country – of America as a whole.
I thought about how next door’s flags are still at half-mast, even though Jimmy Carter died over a month ago.
I thought about The Plot Against America on HBO. And how the father in the show refuses to leave this alternate reality where Nazis have taken over the U.S. government.
I thought about how some shows don’t feel like an alternate reality anymore.
I thought about how comfortable Nazis have gotten in America and how sad that makes me. And how that sadness makes me more American than they ever will be.
I thought about the people who blindly defended fascism even after Jewish leaders were assassinated in front of them.
I thought about my family members who blindly supported racism. And how in the face of it all, still claim it’s something else.
I thought about if it ever gets better.
I thought about the commitment it takes to notice nice things. To take the beauty in. And how much effort it all takes. How, if you lack that effort for even just a moment, the bad settles in.
The anxiety. The nerves. The tension. The tension. How you have to work so hard just to notice the changing colors of the leaves.
I thought about how much it all costs. How it’s so much more than I thought and I knew it would be a lot.
I thought about how the state of things seemed so bleak and how the quality of life felt so low. And how you can probably find someone saying that in every generation.
I thought about how history tells us that when life gets bad, there is less space for culture. For movies. For literature. For art. And how maybe that explains the downfall of literacy. How maybe there isn’t the luxury for it anymore. And how, for god’s sake, it can’t just be the phones.
I thought about how I usually don’t notice what time of day it is.
I thought about how this place wasn’t made for us.
In The Brush of Today
Below the canyon of walnut trees, after the frost and fog settled in Glassellland, I thought about the state of the world.
Today. 45° low. 60° high. Partly cloudy. The sun rose around 6:52 am and set around 5:18 pm.
Today, I was here and I was there. I sipped coffee and I talked to strangers. I had a beer with friends and I ate a home cooked meal. I talked to my father and I talked to my grandfather.
On January 27th of the year 2025, I was here. And I lived in the brush of today.
Joseph X Casillas is a Glassellland native. He is a writer, director, and founder of the sketch comedy group Gladlyinsane Productions. Joseph is an Academy Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalist, Austin Film Festival second-rounder, and Creative World Awards winner. You can see what projects he’s working on at Gladlyinsane.com. Joseph reads for Shore Scripts, is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing, and seeks representation.