The Big Four-O

It's my fortieth birthday, and I'm looking out the window of the Friendly House at the rain sliding down out of the gray sky, looking like the kind of misery that precipitates daily in the third circle of Dante's hell. Actually, it's not all that bad out, but it's awfully dreary and reflects my feelings about the current state of my life and what I've managed to accomplish in the years behind me. It's just plain depressing sometimes, being a bum living beneath a freeway, having for some reason I don't understand (but sometimes think I do) such a difficult time dealing with the normal world where people hold jobs and have relationships and live indoors. It's almost perverse to me, that I can't seem to manage to accomplish what thugs, boors, dolts, creeps, slobs, and jerks have little difficulty in doing. I guess it's just demoralizing, is what it is.

So, yeah, I just didn't feel like posting Monday. I get sick and tired of not having anything good to report. Not only do I not want to come across as being one of those fools who is inescapably isolated in a dark bubble universe of self-loathing and -pity — which seems to be what happens to people after enough years are spent outside and the world transitions from a punk-rock vacation of puerile rebellion to one of malice and failure and disdain — but it would just be nice to have something upbeat to mention. While people quickly notice how wearying others' negativity can get, it often goes unnoticed how draining one's own negativity can get to oneself, whether it be expressed or left to fester in silence. I'm going to see someone at Central City Concern about advocacy for social security benefits tomorrow, and maybe get a load of laundry done. It could well be that my morale will improve some after I've cleaned up a bit more (I seldom get noticeably dirty, but the dust and vehicle emissions from the freeway above can leave me feeling gritty).

And, after I've tried out my new sleeping bag. Thanks again, Audrey! It's never a bad exercise to pause to appreciate your friends, assuming of course you have real friends and not just mere acquaintances, and that they're good for you. I'm blessed with two, in fact, and in a way that sets me apart from many of my peers; most of the other people I've met who are homeless seem to only have drinking buddies and meal-line acquaintances.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

So, today marks the anniversary of the day ol' St. Patty drove the snakes from Ireland. Actually, today is a traditional feast day celebrating the death of an uncanonized saint of the Roman Catholic Church who apparently was also a missionary responsible for — alongside his disciples — re-introducing Classical Greek and Roman literature lost in the fall of the Roman Empire to Continental Europe. For me St. Patrick's Day marks the beginning of spring, even thought it occurs three days before the actual vernal equinox; the onset of Daylight Saving Time mentioned in last week's post actually denotes a sort of pre-spring to me, a reminder that the still cold and dormant world is poised to waken out of slumber. Spring can actually be a rather unpleasant time of year for street people here because of how variable the weather can be; often you'll have balmy days followed by bracing days of miserable horizontal rain, even during a single day you can find yourself peeling off your flannel just moments after shaking off your umbrella! The only constant is the (welcome) addition of two to three minutes of light to each day.

But, the signs of spring are all around for those with eyes to see and ears to hear and noses to smell. It always starts with the plants, with trees like cherry and magnolia budding unnoticed until suddenly the streets explode in whites and pinks and other colors that make me think of bridal beds in honeymoon suites; not to mention the exuberant flowers and even normally well-behaved shrubbery sprouting blossoms in unruly bunches. Which is shortly afterward followed by the emergence of animal life; rather annoyingly in my neighborhood in the appearance of flying ants, while downtown male pigeons puff themselves up and pester the poor womenfolk of their kind with their insistent and guttural-sounding cooing that reminds me of the occasional aggressive panhandler you see trying to shamelessly intimidate petite women out of their money. That's how it is in the city, at least, with its relative paucity of natural life compared to the more rural outskirts surrounding outlying suburbs; no writhing balls of snakes mating in the fields to mock the chastity of Roman Catholic clergy! Something I'd definitely like to see in person one day.

All this brings home the fact that as a homeless person I'm much closer to nature and its rhythms and manifestations than I typically am whenever I'm living indoors. Even if I were to tend to a community garden plot sometime after I get back into housing, I wouldn't be quite as in touch with my environment and its elements because I'll have air conditioning and be enclosed in four walls that isolate me from the world outside even while making me feel safe and comfortable, and even able to be sometimes more the self I would act like when in sight of judging eyes. Even when sleeping on concrete beneath asphalt and enclosed (for the most part) in a lean-to contraption constructed from a tarp and a bivvy tent I can feel the winds blustering about and hear the rain drumming against my shelter and the pavement around me, even feel the light of dawn worrying open my recalcitrant eyelids. It's a subtle but profound difference, even when it is an inconvenient pain in the ass — which attitude probably indicates that even when living in the elements I'm divorced from them spiritually by my cultural upbringing born out of civilization.

Perhaps we humans are transcending this current Holocene biosphere and will create new worlds suited to our different nature, that will themselves be fascinatingly uniquely complex environments no more or less "natural" than the ones we evolved out of. If we survive.

Five Days of Salami

No, I didn't JUST eat salami, but I did consume about four to five ounces of the delicious stuff each day; three different kinds of excellent artisan charcuterie: traditional Italian, Alsatian, and Spanish chorizo. Donated to Trinity Cathedral by Olympic Provisions, in apparently U.N. food drop quantity. Talk about an angioplasty waiting in the wings! A pity I never canned up the money for cheese to accompany it, alas. Still, even despite all that salami — not to mention the overall high fat content of my providential diet — I managed to slip into a pair of thirty-two-inch waist jeans donated Saturday, and without any blue-faced tugging or writhing! I can't recall a time when I wore jeans this slim … maybe fifteen years ago? Well, anyway, I made up for the salami binge on Sunday by eating nothing but cottage cheese and salad (after finishing off the last of the chorizo) — hell, I even went on a lengthy four-hour canning run that day.

But, who cares? It's Spring Fever time! Not just for me, either; an increase in aggro has been effervescing noticeably on the streets recently: in the past week I've seen three altercations that didn't quite escalate into violence. In meal lines, too, of all places to choose to lose it and pull a baseball bat out on someone. That was Friday night; there I was in between the two testosterone emitters, slouching against a chain-link fence having a pleasant conversation with a volunteer … blissfully unaware of the thunder rolling around me until HOLY SHIT! Look, there's a bat being waved at someone just a couple feet in front of my face! I suppose this could all be blamed on the waxing of the moon, which is what Crazy Michael suggested when I ran into him at a streetcar stop yesterday. But, the moon won't be full until the sixteenth, and that's all hogwash, anyway. Whatever be the cause of tempers flaring on the streets, and whatever connection it may have with Spring Fever, all I know is for me the season begins with Daylight Saving Time when I'm living outside; a blessed end to premature gloamings!

Humans are tidal creatures, nonetheless, whose ebb and flow is directed by a restless and protean geography, the changes of which often are subtle and operate largely on a subliminal level. At least metaphorically.

The tides seem to have washed me ashore in the Northwest neighborhood. I've been sleeping in the no man's land beneath the freeways that border the Pearl District to the east since a few days after I left the Fairfield but I didn't start to consider myself a local resident until I joined the Friendly House a week-and-a-half ago, which is located on the western edge of the neighborhood. I forked over fifteen dollars for a year's membership and a month's locker rent, which provides me with a place to shower and get online six days out of the week and to store my excess stuff throughout. Much of my first year in town (this time around) was spent in this neighborhood, back when my youthful charm weaseled me into girls' homes; when I thought I was punk rock enough to panhandle and drink in public, even mix benzos with pitchers of Pabst and shamelessly court a big-breasted junkie in an open relationship with a boyfriend busy at the time growing pot in Switzerland. I like it here, even though I feel very out of place in an area where software designers play dodgeball and a cheap weekend brunch is found only at Jack in the Box.

Foodlandia

For those not in the know and curious, my diet is supplied almost entirely by free meals; "There but for the grace of God," and all that jazz. I suspect when people think about the homeless dining experience many of them still hold images in their minds of black-and-white photos taken during the Great Depression of blocks-long lines of men in tattered and faded garb winding their way up to a giant pot of soup doled out in metal ups; or perhaps Oliver Twist springs immediately to mind, with his audacious request for more gruel from the scowling orphanage worker; then again, I bet some people aren't even aware that there is free food given out on the streets and just assume we all root around in dumpsters or panhandle money for fast food. Alas, I don't go around asking people, nor is this sort of information typically volunteered in casual conversations between strangers.

If you're interested, though, I've taken it upon myself in the past week to quantify my dietary intake in a spreadsheet on Google Drive. (Since I'm not feeling well, however, it may not be complete until sometime Tuesday. Indeed, the blog may also not get updated until then.). I don't know first-hand how it is in other cities in the U.S. but not only does free food abound in the City of Roses, it's often far above and beyond the Rapunzel rations typically expected by those unacquainted with the city's offerings; pesto chicken and spicy Mexican casseroles are two of my favorite examples. Of course, for every nice risotto or stroganoff there's two or three baloney sandwiches and tuna casseroles; you have to know who serves what you like when, in other words being the chooser that beggars are supposed to not aspire to. So much free food is available here, in fact, that I and others among my peers shake our heads in incredulity at the Road Warrior kids whenever we pass by them and their panhandling signs claiming to be hungry; except during the night a meal is seldom more than four hours and ten blocks away. Unfortunately most of even the more gastronomically sophisticated and palatable stuff is made from processed ingredients, so it's not the most healthy fare in terms of vitamins and minerals and such health-jeopardizing elements as fats and sodium and cholesterol; in particular are lacking fresh fruits and vegetables. While it's certainly a poor candidate for the next diet fad, it keeps us alive and even tastes delicious much of the time, so I'd be a fool to be ungrateful. But, I'm still buying some multi-vitamins as soon as I can afford to.

So, I'm certainly not starving to death, and even if I am malnourished it's probably not severely. Eventually I'll use cash to augment the diet with fresh fruits and vegetables, and perhaps also fresh garlic and ginger and peppers to boost my immune and circulatory systems. Unfortunately, though, I'm finding that as I approach forty my legs are starting to cause me problems, most likely due to my flat feet and one leg being slightly longer than the other. Thanks to the orthotics I bought some time ago my feet don't hurt nearly as much or often as they used to even when I didn't walk much, but the shin splints have returned with a vengeance and apparently I now have bursitis in the hips and am stressing my knees to the point where I've started walking with a slight limp in the left leg pretty regularly. Carrying that damn backpack around every day isn't helping, of course, even if it's only a little over twenty pounds in weight (compared to the thirty it was before I got the locker at the Friendly House). Breathing vehicle exhaust while sleeping at night is probably also causing me some damage. As tempted as I am to attempt to learn how to live entirely off the grid, I know that I'm getting too old for this vagrant lifestyle and eagerly await to move back into housing.