The diamond of a wedding ring doesn’t reveal its true sparkle until mounted in a setting befitting the stone. In just the same way, the soul-destroying bleakness of the family law system can’t be fully appreciated until you’ve spent some time in the bunker of misery that is the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles—ground zero for the burning down of many Hollywood marriages to their foundations. Thomas Hobbes could not have imagined a drearier salute to the dyspeptic human condition. Fittingly, the main corridors of the courthouse are stone composites in total grayscale—stone floors, stone walls, stone benches. The dull gleam—maintained by some diligent nocturnal cleaning crew charged with washing away the day’s metaphorical bloodshed—doesn’t fool any of the stone faces shuffling through the halls during office hours.
© 2024 Greg Ellis
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