Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Where's Robot Santa?

How was your Christmas? Mine was very much up-and-down, which is part of why I took so long to update this thing.

Christmas Eve started off on quite the high note, though how I managed to quaff significant portions of two fifths of Sinfire and make it back to my loading dock I ken not. The first was split with a newly befriended coleen whose reception of the unholstering of the bottle was one of the most exuberant displays I've seen in recent years. I wouldn't call her a NORMAL friend, but she's certainly much more so and much more agreeable company than the jabbering speed freaks, slobbering drunks, and skittish wingnuts I share my neighborhood with — I hope she turns out to be a keeper! (I'm not a relativist by any means, but I've observed a subjective orientation in qualitative judgments whenever lifestyles lie fallen off one side of the saddle of mainstream cultural norms.) Even better than that agreeable occasion was when later in the evening I paid a couple of my old neighbors a visit and split another fifth of Sinfire with them, whom I haven't seen in all the eleven months I've been gone from their building. Even though I despise that place enough to prefer exposure to turmoil and the elements over it, it's nice to be domestic and spend time with old friends ... well, acquaintances, actually; I don't do the friend thing whimsically.

Alas, Christmas day was rather awful: everything was closed, I only had enough money for three beers that I hadn't even the desire to drink, and the weather deteriorated to blustery almost-freezing rain. Even a bowl smoked with 5D at Wallace Park didn't help any, especially after I slid on some wet grass and sullied my typically well-kempt appearance with that poo-colored stuff god's green earth roots itself in. Even stoned I felt glum, bored, cold, and so disgusted with the day I trudged back to retire on my loading dock before the sun had the decency to sink below the horizon. To add insult to injury, my new dockmate absconded with ten dollars and never reappeared (and hasn't since), and I simply didn't have it in me to can up the money to souse myself into an appropriate indurate stupor. It brought to mind again my conjecture that Norman Rockwell depictions of goodwill, festive joy, and fellowship on Christmas are more the exception than the rule — underscored by a customer service incident a friend related to me about a woman so full of consumerist self-righteous indignation that she had the audacity to demand that my friend fix the corporate web site, all against the backdrop of cheery holiday music.

And, well, today's New Year's Eve, which means tomorrow's closures will result in another day of creative time-killing. I suppose if I'm to eat I'll need to can, since all but the worst of the downtown bumfeeds will be operating — which I'm not about to subject myself to. As for tonight, I'm not even sure I care. After I post to this blog I'll nibble on a can of chicken breast meat while gaming until the Friendly closes at seven, unless the colleen and/or 5D make good on their threats of chemically reinforced cheer. Holidays in general mean little to me, especially now that the cool pagan ones have been long christianized and both religious and civil ones are assembled in sweatshops, sold at malls and liquor stores and gas stations, and aren't taken seriously without schmaltzy world-devouring pageantry.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Still Waiting for News

Looks like I won't know if I've passed my background check — the first of the eligibility hoops for me to jump through so that I may return to living indoors — until Monday at the soonest; the Fountain Place building manager is out until then, receiving training according to the maintenance man. I'm pretty confident nothing will come up that will prevent me from being approved, since I have no felonies or even recent gross misdemeanors, have no evictions, and even though my credit is lousy I don't have a legion of collectors after me. I just wanted the next phase of the process to at least be underway before the arrival of Christmas and the inevitable closures and days taken off that come with it and the week following. Anyway, I was going to wait to post until I heard some good news, but I'm not going to skip what's been a somewhat eventful week.

Like I said before, I'm sick of living outside. It's not just that I miss my privacy, the security of having lockable doors and windows, paltry creature comforts and luxuries like mattresses and the ability to watch TV, and of course a fridge and an oven ... it's because it's gotten crowded out here, and by crowded I mean with thieving dope fiends, thuggish punks, and unpredictable and unsettling nutters. It's like Folsom Prison and Arkham Asylum are dumping their inmates/patients onto Portland by the bus load while the local meth labs are having a protracted liquidation sale. I watch people all the time now, and glance around me as I walk down the streets at night, and the only way I get sleep at night now is to swallow a pill of hydroxyzine and plug up my ears. To illustrate, one guy got hauled out of the Friendly House by a couple cops a couple days ago after he staggered in the bathroom shitfaced drunk and threatened to kick everyone's ass and started banging his head against the wall. As if we weren't getting enough grief in that place from the guy who likes to crap himself in the shower, the ex-con who enjoys chatting while pacing the bathroom naked, the bearded wingnut who entertains himself with guttural Morlock self-talk while conducting his ablutions, and the brooding California fugitive-looking creep who skulks in the bathroom in brooding silence!

And then there's the fucking tweakers in my neighborhood. Even though they've been all but removed from their intermittent encampments within a three-block radius of me, lately there's been a MARKED INCREASE in Skeletor's bastard children prowling my street during the wee hours, which is probably what's been rousing me out of slumber into that state of shallow closed-eyed restlessness that feels like night misspent in drunken catatonia when I get up in the morning. It's gotten bad enough that I've decided to bring another person to sleep there nights with me, as a sort of discouragement for miscreant opportunism. Her name — rather her nickname or street name — is Mouse, and yes, she's a girl. No, she's not a girlfriend; the streets are probably about as bad a matchmaking tidal pool as a trailer park in the soggy outskirts of Lovecraft's Innsmouth. A pity she wasn't there when that asshole swung by while I was in my bedroll reading a book, who screamed curses at me as he rode off on his bike because I told him the spot was taken and I didn't know who the hell he was when he started up the stairs leading up to my loading dock; she showed up later.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Is it any wonder I'm such a misanthrope? Where are the quality people? Among the homeless and the poor that would be someone who isn't larcenous, a thug with a boar's temper, a sexual predator, a pathological liar, or mentally unhinged ... and, that's it. Sure, some of us are reading Voltaire and Murakami, but they're also dating crack whores and flipping out on their drinking buddies or they chase away the voices that plague them with China white, etc. Sure, the One Percent is my TRUE enemy, but it's not the yuppies, the politicians, or the cops that are trying to con me, steal from me, or intimidate or beat the crap out of me. I may never fully immerse myself in society; forty years of observing and experiencing first-hand the vileness inherent in human nature won't get whitewashed by housing, cognitive behavioral therapy, or even a woman's ardor. Human beings aren't roughshod angels; peel away literacy and education, safety, the comfort of largess, and nurturing fellowship from a any of them, all that remains is a vicious carmine animal.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Housing Jerk Around

I received a letter in the mail at TPI yesterday that informed me that I'd been removed from the Fountain Place subsidized housing unit wait list, so after grabbing some stuff shipped to me by a friend (a rain poncho, a second pair of long johns, and a pair of military wool fingerless gloves!) I headed immediately over to find out what the deal was; remember, I was just there a week ago checking in on my wait list status! Not only was I reassured that the letter was something I could completely disregard, he went so far as to say that he'd be able to tell me today how much farther up the wait list recent notices given have propelled me — implying rather strongly that a one-bedroom subsidized unit will be available for me. Which I took to be good news, because I'm sick and tired of living on the streets, now that everyone from all over the country is moving to Portland diminishing our local charities and importing their barbarism and madness and criminality.

Of course the manager told me today that he should know for certain tomorrow, and handed me an application form for me to fill out in the event he bears me tidings both punctual and glad when I return to his office. I'm not counting on either, and in all honesty I feel as though I'm just setting myself up for disappointment bothering with low-income housing wait lists; at any given point between now and the day I walz into a housing unit with a lease agreement a wall can be thrown up in front of me or the rug jerked out from beneath my feet. Hell, I'm expecting at some point for the good people of America and its (not quite) representative government to decide to let the trickle of social services run completely dry, tossing me out on the streets again because the world needs more military hardware to harry its beleaguered people with.

That's what happens when you're not a single mother, an immigrant, a minority, a vet, or disabled. Which wouldn't even be an issue for me if there was a job market for unskilled people like me whose youthful follies have caused us to mature into vinegar instead of wine; also if the cost of living would at least match pace in its increase with proletarian wage increases. How many people will be living on the streets in ten, twenty, or even thirty years? The world of livability is shrinking toward the gilded vertex of the socioeconomic pyramid, and I see it clearly because I was out here while the middle class had only vague apprehensions about its financial future, whining about credit debt and college expenses while still aglow with savings-strategy optimism. In a recent speech Ursula K. Le Guin eloquently expressed contempt for the apparent inexorable might of today's capitalism, but sitting on my loading dock I see it sneering smugly back at her and all the rest of us.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Interview with Father Dan

The following is a short interview with Father Dan, a man who evenings Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays feeds people living on the streets in Northwest Portland beneath the I-405 freeway and in the industrial area, along with his son John. He also hands out socks, blankets, and other necessities and comforts whenever he has them. While until recently I've only sporadically partaken in his dinners — which range from pizza and Jack in the Box chicken sandwiches to home-made soup and the coveted last-Friday fried chicken — I've always been impressed with his hands-on personal dedication to helping the poor and the homeless; a far cry from the impersonal institutional approach offered by most charities and social services. I was pleased when he agreed to answer some questions, which I typed out and gave him to answer at his leisure, busy man that he is.

  • How long have you been doing this?
    • Over twenty-eight years. My wife and I began in August of 1986; Johnny was five and Joey two.
  • Why do you do this? Is there any specific reason?
    • Besides be[ing] the right thing to do, we have the right temperament. It also what we view as the highest form of worship.
  • You're called Father Dan. Are you a pastor of a church or congregation?
    • After completing my m.Div. (Master of Divinity) we were commissioned to the street and made a vow to stay, and so I was assigned the title of Father.
  • What do you think are the three main reasons people are chronically homeless?
    • Mental illness
    • Economical
    • Criminal behavior
  • What three things do you think can be done to best help alleviate homelessness and poverty?
    • A change of government [policies], taking an aggressive role in [addressing] the three primary causes of homelessness.
    • God's people [Christians] to shift their revenue from buildings and properties to [ministering to and assisting] people in poverty.
    • Creative methods of employment, allowing a place for those struggling.
  • What one piece of advice would you offer anyone living on the streets?
    • Get on every [housing] list, apply for every form of assistance, and never give up. Eventually you have to trust someone to help you through this process; keep trying until you do.
  • On a more frivolous note, what's YOUR favorite soup?
    • Home-made chicken noodle. The way our volunteers make it with home-made noodles.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Cusp of Hatred

Once upon a time there was a boy whose heart was a churning cauldron of viscous black smoke, who was filled to overflowing with self-loathing and whose eyes cast a baleful gaze imbued with arrogance, prejudice, and hostility out onto the world around him. Early on in life the neglect and abuse he endured taught him that he was discarded refuse, that people were either threats to avoid or (at best fickle) resources to exploit, and that life was ultimately a Darwinian hamster wheel driven by entropy. Jesus and the Buddha were frauds buttressed like cardboard stage props by apex social predators and deluded fools wearing blinders the size of traffic signs. As this boy entered adolescence he fell so deep into the well of his fire-ringed despair he went mad, spending much of two years in psychiatric wards daydreaming about incest and rape, walls of steel encircling an ocean of human squalor and suffering, screaming lunatics wielding weapons stolen from gods, and nightmare legions trampling the beauty of the world under scorched feet.

Fortunately for him and the world around him, he was never a violent person — in spite of the violence that ruled his passions and thinking. He never understood why, or how it came to be such a deeply-ingrained facet of his being, but the mere thought of raising his hand to harm or destroy sent him recoiling in paralytic revulsion. Unfortunately for this boy he became a convenient punching bag for those who gloried in barnyard swaggering and back-alley cruelty; even to this day he's no good at defending himself except in the avoidant manner of furtive songbirds, which fills him with shame for being a coward and a weakling and fuels much of his mistrust of others. Also fortunate is the fact that as he matured into adulthood he seemed to get better; he stopped isolating himself in books and solitaire games of Risk and Monopoly and started hanging out with friends, and he even stopped wandering the streets by moonlight holding hateful conferences among his fractured selves.

Or, did he get better? As an adult, he became a shameless self-justifying opportunist, slid from problem drinking into full-blown addiction to alcohol, went through jobs like a pitcher of hot tea goes through cubes of ice, embraced a lifestyle of chronic homelessness and reliance on social welfare and services, and never did get the hang of healthy relationships with (at least moderately) functional members of society. Sure, he managed to spend a few years on the president's list at Portland Community College, but during this time he also failed miserably as a boyfriend and ultimately slid back down into his dismal comfort zone of drinking himself to sleep with boorish buffoons beneath a highway overpass. Even when he got into subsidized low-income housing he succeeded brilliantly in sabotaging an opportunity to engage in therapy, explore productive and rewarding lifestyle options, and eventually crawl out of the well of poverty.

Worse than that, the hatred snuck its way back in, unannounced and unnoticed like an insidious incursion of plague-bearing rats. It started a few years ago, following a heart-rending break-up and the crushing defeat of a promising academic career wherein financial aid money was washed away in a roaring tide of Potter's whiskey. When he realized that he'd just dropped his last ball into the “Too bad, so sad” hole in life's pachinko machine, that from then on it probably wasn't going to get much better than an SRO and a job picking up trash. Now he talks to himself again, but at least this time in only one voice and using a cell phone so as not to appear unhinged. He also holds a great deal of animosity toward Californian real estate pioneers, black thugs and creeps (there really is a lot of black-on-white intimidation, predation, and violence among the poor), job-stealing Latinos, smug yuppies driving their SUVs wearing $500 in outdoor clothing, the religious right, the spiritually enlightened progressive liberals toting their yoga mats, Portland city council ... the list is as long as Bad Santa's bar tab, and getting longer.

My life is poised on the cusp of hatred. It scares the crap out of me sometimes, when I catch myself snarling like a riled basilisk in an inner monolog tirade full of such fierce invective you'd think I was flailing in the river Styx. I need to do something about this, and badly; merely failing to be a pugilistic jerk just isn't going to cut it, not if I want to be a decent person worth even a long shot at a middlin' decent life. Who likes to be around perpetually fuming people with chips on their shoulders and blinded by that pernicious delusion that the world owes them something? I don't.