Shop Cat

There's a new girl on the block, who visits me nearly every night and often in the mornings. I've named her Cordelia after the sympathetic daughter in Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear who was disinherited and cast out by her father. She's a dark little tabby with some calico coloration who appeared in the neighborhood a week ago and whom I discovered to be the shop cat for the Land Cruiser™ dealership and service center across the street in front of my loading dock. She's a very charming little thing, and while she tends to interrupt my sleep at times when she comes over to visit she's more than welcome company. I'm guessing she's about a year old, and it wouldn't be at all surprised that she's one of those cats who got abandoned after her owners realized she's not a cute little kitten anymore, and would cost money to take care of and who may not put up with as much of their child's crap as she did when small and helpless — this happens more often than you may think. She's a very affectionate little critter: she loves to sleep on my chest, oftentimes kneading it as though she were making biscuits. (I've even made a silly song up to sing to her when she does this, titled “But Where's the Gravy?”) And, she's a climber, too! She leaped on my shoulder one night when she felt I was insolently paying my cigarette more attention than I was to her.

I can't say I'm too happy about her living outside, even if she is being taken care of to at least some extent by the guys across the street. I don't think she's been spayed yet, even, though as a female she at least won't go tear-assing around the neighborhood picking fights with other toms; it used to break my heart visiting my little Moon Goddess' mom's house in Happy Valley — a popular dumping ground for unwanted cats — and watching Coby saunter up with a face torn open and covered in scabs from scratches and bites because he was fighting all the time because he hadn't been neutered! She doesn't look as though she's being ignored or is underfed, but does she have a safe place to sleep at or at least hide out in? Not more than a couple days before she arrived I watched a coyote trot down the street at 3:30 in the morning, and they're cat killers. There's also the matter of daytime vehicle traffic down the street separating her home from mine, which makes me so nervous for her that I make sure to leave my spot around 7:00 AM and to not return until at least 7:00 PM; cats are horribly stupid when it comes to dodging cars, and I'd be completely destroyed if I were to see her get run over by a delivery truck as she was trotting over to come wish me good morning!

What's with people treating pets like disposable commodities? It's goddamned despicable, is what it is, and indicates to me a crippled empathic nature and an appalling disconnect with reality. I can understand throwing away an old cell phone or junking an old car, but we're talking about living creatures with feelings and the capacity for pain and suffering here ... who are chosen to be companions, not as manufacture of crafted lifestyle accessories! All throughout my life I've been incensed at people who refuse to sift and change their cats' litter boxes, dog owners who keep their dogs out in the yard all day and act inconvenienced when the dog clamors for attention whenever they're sunning themselves or sipping their drinks on the porch; or street kids who jerk on their dogs' leashes and yell at them while walking down the street, and give them cheap garbage food given them for free while drinking beer that the dog panhandled for them. Don't even get me started on the assholes that fight dogs or the evil little shits who think it's fun to microwave gerbils and cats! I would have little qualms with killing such people; anyone so cruel as that is sure to be a wretched golem of a human being the world would be much better off without.

Institutionalized

You know, it's funny, but I remember for years and years I used to tell myself there was certain things I'd never do while living on the streets, spurning such things as if they were beneath my dignity and even ridiculing other homeless people for doing them. There is a certain ugly quality to human nature that impels us to raise ourselves up kicking others down, even if only metaphorically and cathartically. However, this time around on the streets I'm finding myself doing a couple of these things that I forswore so vehemently in past dereliction sojourns, and I can't help but wonder if maybe I'm not suffering from institutionalization and am embracing diminution.

Pushing shopping carts is one of them. We used to mockingly call them Burnside Cadillacs, at least us natives who remember the days when the entire length of West Burnside was a homeless camp and people walking up its length would have to gingerly step over and around junkies, bottles of wine, and the aforementioned shopping carts. It's a strange thing to vilify, for when you think about it it's eminently practical for a homeless person to portage his worldly possessions somehow, especially if he's older or in some what disabled; I suppose it's just another example of hostile group identification, like metal heads' disdain for Dockers. I only push a shopping cart when canning, when it's hot out and I'm going for a big haul or when I anticipate picking up a lot of glass bottles. I hate it, though, because they're damn noisy to trundle and cause me — normally inconspicuous — to appear on the radar or mainstream respectable society and parade my disgrace.

The other thing I swore to myself I'd never do is dumpster dive for discarded food. Not only is it gross and shameful, it can potentially send me to the hospital if I catch an especially nasty foodborne illness (like salmonella, norovirus, and toxoplasmosis). Honestly, I'm pretty surprised that I ended up taking to this, though in reality I do it infrequently and only when I have neither food nor money for Jack in the Box. Still, even though I haven't made it a daily lifestyle choice, it does worry me somewhat, especially because I've gotten sick from the food I've dived for a couple times recently. Then again, I've also gotten sick from food served me at various feeds throughout town, so in that respect it's actually not much more dangerous for me to eat left-over Korean cart food than it is for me to sit down at lunch at Trinity Cathedral. I didn't start doing this until I moved out to Northwest, my last stint indoors at the Fairfield having inculcated in me an antipathy for downtown Portland; most of the free meals are served there.

One thing I'm learning is that it can be difficult to determine whether or not a habit of thinking and behaving is borne out of expediency or is a habit that's become ossified into an institutionalized pattern. I say institutionalized because I can't help but fear that the past couple decades of living on and off the streets, struggling with addictions while picking up and throwing away people and jobs like so many cans of malt liquor, have worked on me similar to a ten-year stint in a prison or a psychiatric ward. I suppose any kind of lifestyle can be regarded as an institution of sorts, but of course not all are edifying or ennobling. I can say for certain that living on the streets isn't very much so; if you don't maintain vigilance and discipline out here it gets easy to become embittered, entitled, self-absorbed, opportunistic, addicted, lazy, and small-minded.

No Rest for the Wretched

I'm guessing I may have only gotten three hours of sleep last night. The Land Cruiser shop across the street from me saw some late-night activity manifested in engines occasionally thundering as musical motor vehicles was being played in the parking lot and the street between us, ending on dissonant note with the squealing metallic shriek of the gate being closed; Burlington Northern cast four of its freight trains out into the night, whistling plaintively (though at least I didn't get one of their engine cars trundling down the street my loading dock abuts, which happens every two or three weeks); but worst of all was the fleet of garbage and recycling trucks that roused me out of my fitful slumber at least eight times and filled me with consternation because I hadn't noticed them before and had always thought that Tuesday or Wednesday was the neighborhood's trash day. I even had my ear plugs in! So, I ended up getting hour-or-so coast-guard ration increments of sleep, starting around midnight and ending in frustrated resignation with my nose in a book at 5:30 AM, waiting for the Friendly House to open.

Fortunately for me such insomniac nights are foisted on me few and far between because my spot is for the most part comfortable, safe, and quiet. I remember when I used to sleep near the Union Pacific tracks on the east bank of the Willamette River, beneath the I-5 freeway, and how miserably impossible it was to get more than maybe a couple hours of sleep and that I often had to be pretty drunk to keep my eyes closed through the din of the steam whistles and semi trucks. I also had to get pretty buzzed when I was below Naito Parkway and lay my head next to a tunnel wherein trucks and buses roared and growled like guttural banshees for all but the wee-est of the wee morning hours, which annoyance was exacerbated by the heat radiating from the concrete above on hot summer nights. Even when I slept in a tent in the woods off Barbur Boulevard I'd often get woken up by the crashing of dead branches tumbling down nearby from the English ivy-strangled trees, which also encouraged tippling. Sleep may well be the most precious and fickle commodity in the lives of people living on the streets, at least in terms of physical well-being and comfort; seasons and the weather change, and we inevitably are forced for whatever reason to move from one spot to another — some worse and some better than others — but sleep is a daily necessity.

Alas, alcohol is an inelegant solution to the problem of a good night's sleep, because alcohol interferes with its restorative function, particularly REM sleep. I don't know but can easily imagine other depressant substances inhibit or frustrate adequate sleep similarly (though alcohol isn't exactly a depressant but acts on the brain in complex ways). What ends up happening is we spiral into dependance and ultimately addiction while magnifying our long-term sleep debt, degrading our cognitive capabilities, and picking away at the already frayed edges of our psychology; we become dumber, more mentally unstable, more socially maladroit, and get hooked on a substance that eats away at our bodies and our souls and run the risk of compromising our ability to climb out of the well. Unfortunately, it's an easy trap to fall into, especially for people predisposed to substance use; ideally one would seek out natural sleep aids or non-habit-forming medicine, but it can be tricky to figure out what really works and there's also the issue of money and insurance coverage ... whereas a forty of malt liquor costs at most three dollars (in Portland, Oregon, at least) and requires no painstaking research or experimentation.

Forever Alone?

Not too long ago I read A Street Cat Named Bob, wherein the protagonist bemoaned his isolation from society, stating he felt utterly alone most of the time, like a ghost passing through the streets of London mostly invisible in the daylit world of suits and shopping bags. (I paraphrased perhaps somewhat egregiously; the author isn't very eloquent, though this doesn't detract from the book's overall merit — in fact, I recommend it.) Sounds familiar, doesn't it? It should: I used to tell myself this walking back from the chow hall at Ft. Gordon, an army base larger than many small cities; I've known kids in high school who thought this while texting friends in cacophonous cafeteria; in fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if at this moment there's myriad people in shopping malls, at board meetings, attending weddings, etc. thinking the same thing. But, is this ubiquitous angst based on anything real? Sure, some of us are pretty cut off from the world around us, but for the most part each of us not only has relatives and friends — and the occasional lover — but even people locked up in prison or bed-ridden in hospital deathbeds regularly experience human contact.

It's hard not to feel alone, even when engaged with people, but is this not merely a manifestation of the illusion of the ego decried in Asian philosophies, essentially a perceptual delusion based perhaps on a few of the starker realities of human existence? Even though we're each of us cellular members of a social super-organism we're still individuals, and it is in our nature not only to co-operate but to compete ... which must create a natural conflict within us that begets an unstable perception of both self and our relationship to the world around us. There's also the simple fact that each of our minds is locked inside our skulls, with only shoddy language available to bridge gaps (don't be too hard on yourself when misunderstandings occur; communication is like trying to transmit bit-by-bit The Garden of Earthly Delights via semaphore during a rain storm). Even more unfortunate is the fact that like all members of a greater organic whole individual human beings can perceive themselves as being rejected from the social body — often as a result of psychological trauma errant brain chemistry — which triggers numerous self-destruct mechanisms much like the programmed cell death in human bodies that's crucial to development and health; also which often results in feelings of alienation and social maladroitness. In other words, we are indeed alone to a profound degree, are ambivalent in our orientation toward others because of the more selfish aspect of our natures, and are prone to morbid and masochistic patterns of thinking and behaving whenever we feel as though we're cut off from or useless to the people around us.

Which strongly implies that the illusion isn't so much an illusion but a frustrated response to our biological reality and a troubling glimpse at a frightening aspect of life that like death, terror, and violence we feel inclined to shirk or overcompensate for. I do feel alone much of the time, and I certainly feel cut off from the more healthy body of society, but at the same time this belief of mine is belied every time I joke around with J— at Jack in the Box, drink beer with G— and D— or smoke bowls with K—, am chatting up a pretty girl while canning, or am discussing absinthe recipes with that guy who works at Oil Can Henry's. Which means I'm no more alone than anyone I'm likely to pass by on the street, and in fact I may even have a more robust and supportive peer network than many people occupying more respectable and affluent positions in society. Still, it would be nice to play a game of koi koi or Arkham Asylum with a handful of “normal” people, instead of quaffing bad beer with a congenial street drunk or joking about old Portland bath houses with one of the local meth addicts.

But, beggars can't be choosers, so I deal with what I have and dream of the day I don't harbor such a diseased self-esteem and worldview, am not beholden to self-diminution, am engaged in activities more productive and stimulating, and have a peer group that isn't one I often avoid because they're annoying or wasted or I'm just tired of hearing them spin their broken record player. Of course, I can also be a bit more proactive and put myself out there more, and work more diligently on that self-development business that tends to be stunted when in thrall to irresponsibility, avoidance, and chemical hedonism.