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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More Holiday Joy

Another holiday looms ahead like a lousy Super Bowl halftime show: Thanksgiving. I think this and Christmas are he toughest holidays for homeless people, because most of us have no place to go to enjoy fellowship, comfort, and the traditional meals except at the usual bumfeeds. Well, there is fellowship to be found among our peers, but even those among us who are social sometimes get tired of hearing the same tirades, snivelings, dunderheaded discussions, and lame jokes all told over godawful malt liquor. I guess it's just hard to feel thankful while out here basting ourselves in false cheer, and the love of God and the fellowship of man both seem pretty far away when the yule log serves only as an impromptu seat and the mistletoe serves only to keep the rain or snow imperfectly at bay. Even as nice as it is to be gifted hand warmers and knit hats, such utilitarian charity doesn't really feel like presents, at least not like the cool stuff some of us used to get when we were kids.

Don't think that I'm maudlin; I'm actually pretty used to being a loner and eating instant mashed potatoes. I'm just saying that it's not much fun to realize that you're going to be pushing a shopping cart full of bottles and cans most of the day while there's people snug indoors, basking in the luxury of petty grievances about certain relatives and seasons-greeting repeats on TV. But, at the very least, I can say that I may spend the holiday season at least unmolested by my sketchy tweaker troglodyte neighbors in the area, which is indeed something to be thankful for. Until yesterday there was two encampments within a block of me and two vehicles parked on the street my loading dock lies on; as of last night only one encampment remains, which I will leave be until I start feeling like I'm being stalked by kleptomaniacal ghouls or am just getting woken up a lot by midnight noise and traffic.

In fact, yesterday afternoon I fired off a first salvo in a war I may or may not end up waging against the unsavory elements that have recently inundated the neighborhood. I printed out a dozen fliers and distributed them to the businesses near where I “live”, effectively encouraging their workers to call the police non-emergency number to complain whenever a meth-fueled compound gets erected nearby. Community policing. Half of the recipients commiserated with me as we traded stories of vandalism and theft; the other half gave me surreal glassy-eyed passive stares masking half-assed laissez-faire indignation and consternation as if I were espousing some kind of Endlösung for the homeless. We'll see how it pans out. I really don't plan on doing much more than expanding the distribution of fliers and calling the police whenever I feel too encroached upon; I can only effect my environment so much.

Another Casualty

Shitty Dave¹ died last night, The Abstract World (another Dave) told me. Dave was one of those hardcore street drunks, the kind who will pass out before 3:00 PM in painful-looking contortions on a set of concrete stairs around the corner of the local gas station. The kind of guy who had two (or was it three?) toes amputated a couple years ago because he passed out on aforementioned stairs before 3:00 PM on a snowy day without being properly dressed for the weather and without being with it enough to at least drag the sleeping bag off his shopping cart to cover himself. The kind of guy whose sleeping bags — and even the shopping cart he used to carry them — periodically got stolen. The kind of guy who hung out with jackass thieves, who for the past five months have waited for him to pass out so they could yank all the cash out of his wallet after he'd already paid for their beers; a $1600 a month disability check siphoned into a murky bog of douchebag addict opportunism. The kind of guy who could have used that money to get into housing, so he wouldn't have died on the street only fifty yards away from the hospital emergency room.

A somber reminder of how life on the streets can abruptly end. I don't drink like Dave did, but that doesn't preclude the possibility that I may one day mimic his disgraceful and tragic demise. Fortunately I've resumed participation in Central City Concern's various therapy modules: acupuncture, group therapy, one-on-ones with my counselor/case manager, and trying out things like yoga, art journaling, and whatever other classes and workshops pique my interest and strike me as being edifying. In a moment of an embarrassingly “Duh!” epiphany, it recently occurred to me that I haven't gotten anywhere because I haven't DONE ANYTHING! It's easy to be bored, bitter, and booze-saturated when all you're doing every day is canning and sitting at a local community center playing emulated MSX games while listening to Gwar. It's also an easy lifestyle to get used to, sitting around in between binges, scavenging for scraps and waiting for handouts. So, as I've said numerous times before it's time for me to fabricate some motivation and get serious about improving not only my health but the quality of my life. Which also means as soon as I get my food stamps on the first I'm going to start volunteering at both FreeGeek and Bike Farm, even if it's only to get out of the neighborhood and out of my head for a few hours a week. It's disheartening to realize that I'm going to have to psychologically ram a cattle prod up my ass to get started doing these things, let alone to sustain the effort; it's one thing to be too lazy to do one load of laundry at a time, it's another thing to be too lazy to do things that genuinely interest you and that enhance the quality of life.

As for Dave ... well, I'm honestly not the least bit choked up over his death. He kind of had it coming, and there's also the chilling but nonetheless valid argument that a life that wasn't all that worth living could hardly be tragically lost. It's too bad, though, because he was an okay guy, and if he'd have gotten into housing he probably would have lasted a while longer and died in relative comfort and dignity once his demise finally caught up with him. It's also a bit ironic, in that the jerks that took advantage of him and ripped him off are alive and well, and probably even eulogize the man they abused in drunken moments of skewed camaraderie and reminiscence. When in fact they can be considered partially, if only peripherally, responsible for his death.

---

1. He was called this because he tended to crap his pants all the time. The Abstract World thinks it's because he used it as a repellent to cops and CHIERS, ensuring that he wouldn't get hauled off to the drunk tank or jail whenever he got busted for an open container.

Arctic Incursion

I'm sitting in the Friendly House wondering where in hell this damn arctic blast came from. Well, okay, I know WHENCE it came — I just said as much — but I'm still reeling in incredulity at the timing and ferocity of the frigid tendril that crept down the Columbia Gorge the day before yesterday out of the middle of the continent. It feels like Portland's getting a prolonged prostate exam by some naughty jǫtunn! It completely blind-sided us (especially those of us living outside!), practically shutting half the city down when the freezing rain and snow flurries swept over us yesterday; you have to understand, this time of year the average low is just above forty (5°C) and the average high just above fifty (11°C). And, it's not over yet: wind chill will push temperatures in the twenties (-2°C) down into the teens (-10°C) starting tonight and lasting through until Sunday night, after which the weather is predicted to slowly creep back up toward the seasonal average. I hope so, and we end up with the mild winter, but even NOAA seems to be rather poor at making long-term predictions; it's certainly time to begin preparing for the worse.

Fortunately, I've only suffered mild discomfort so far, and that mostly yesterday when the Friendly House was closed all day because of how poorly equipped Portland is to handle ice and snow. I ended up canning most of the day because there's really not much for a person living on the streets to do when most everything's closed. Well, there is, but other than meandering from one grocery store to another in order to warm up while loitering an hour or two at a time the only places to go that are warm are the daytime warming centers, which are usually packed to the gills with the more cantankerous and malodorous ne'er do well among street folk. I'll have to be in danger of more than mere discomfort to bring myself to dine at a grim soup-line mockery of Valhalla's tables. We'll see how my gear holds up over the next couple nights, though, and even though I'm a dignified person I'm not so foolish as to risk hospitalization for frostbite or pneumonia just to steer clear of the more troglodyte among my kin.

I don't think it will come to anything more than maybe a repeat of yesterday's nickel-scrounging on Sunday when the Friendly House is closed again and the library's only open for five hours. And, even then, I can just jump on the light rail and ride back and forth between Gresham and Hillsboro reading and writing if I weary of the cold and the tedium. One nice effect of the sudden and lingering cold snap is that I'm less interested in drinking, and not just because I'm averse to dying from exposure; who in Dante's ninth circle of hell in his right mind would want to drink cold beer in freezing weather? Well, the likes of Captain Caveman would, and I'm sure did, but I'm not even fractionally as obstinate in my foolishness as the more hard-core drunk among my peers are. If it ever came down to having to steal to support my alcoholic habit, I'd simply kick my habit; even now, though I am surely an addict, I don't beg or borrow in order to alleviate the symptoms of physical withdrawals (which fortunately I only seldom allow to occur) — I just bite the bullet and feel like crap for a day or two if I can't or don't feel like canning up the money.

Wish me luck for the next two or three days! And feel free to flip off the North Pole with me in sympathy, or perhaps even solidarity.

Fuck This!

Sometimes I just don't feel like doing this. Sometimes I just don't feel like doing anything. I suppose that nihilistic apathy is caused by depression, and by that I mean the clinical depression that is a legitimate and life-diminishing mental disorder not just “feeling blue”. Insofar as this blog is concerned, it's because I get tired of talking about how much of a failure or fool I am, how hopeless and pointless life seems, and how annoying or boring people and life are for me. I never felt like talking about my feelings or about the adversities of life is cathartic; in fact, I've generally only felt more distressed whenever I did. It also seems like a futile and impotent gesture to me, like a torrent of words as purposeful and effective as a stream running uphill into the sky.

It doesn't help that we got suddenly slammed by a very early and uncharacteristic arctic incursion, resulting in 30 mph winds in freezing temperatures. Where in hell does this stuff come from? I don't remember these kinds of weather patterns occurring when I was growing up here! Is global warming going to turn my normally mild and damp winters into beachfront property along the shores of Lake Cocytus? I suppose I'm just mad that I didn't prepare myself for this; I wasn't planning on truly cold weather until nearer the end of this month, by which time I would have finagled enough money to get long johns and a better sleeping bag and a tarp. Not only that, but even though there are blankets being collected and handed out, there's massive lines for them and they're all being distributed two miles away and at night when the wind chill drops the temperatures down into the low twenties! I think I will take whatever housing I can get, whenever my number comes up on the wait lists, even if said housing is a psychosis-driven and alcohol-fueled roach hotel poisoned by lead and asbestos.

Fuck this; I'll talk to y'all next week.

The Monsoon of Gloom

Our lovely Monsoon of Gloom has finally arrived, though the way I'm saying it makes it sound like it's overdue, which it isn't. The climate here usually works is there's a spring of volatile weather — during which days coats are constantly being donned and doffed — that lasts from March through June, which is followed by a very dry Mediterranean summer that can get QUITE warm (temperatures in the nineties Fahrenheit, low- to mid-thirties Celsius) that usually doesn't end until near the end of September, after which there's two to three months of a gradual cool down and easing into rains until December, when it REALLY starts to get chilly and the intermittent rains of fall give way to a nigh incessant and often blustery deluge. We get anywhere between seven to nine months of rain during the year, which for the homeless presents the grave challenge of staying dry, or at least having a dry place to sleep. Failure to do so can result in chronic bronchitis or even pneumonia, on top of discomfort and logistical headaches such as finding dry places to loiter during the day and leaping over or walking around lakes that form when drains get clogged with leaves.

Which is why I've been wearing plastic bags on my feet. I have a pair of cross trainers I picked up during summer, a nice pair of Nikes just sitting on a dumpster — practically brand new! (Even after decades of living outside I'm still amazed at what useful things people throw away or casually discard.) Well, they were great for hot summer days, but nowadays even a puddle only half an inch deep will soak my feet! Being shod in plastic bags is another one of those things I used to swear to myself I'd never do, by the way, alongside pushing shopping carts and rummaging in trash cans for food. In fact, I'm probably going to start wearing garbage can vests beneath my jacket on days when it rains especially heavily or I'm out canning in the more intermittent or light variety. You gotta do what you gotta do, as the Futurama poster guy over there so poignantly says.

Fortunately for me, a good friend of mine works for Dr. Martens and is going to hook me up with a pair of decent footwear tomorrow. Which makes the next hurdle in my race against walking pneumonia finding suitable and affordable rain gear, probably in a thrift store or the bargain basement of Next Adventure. That and a pair of good long johns are the only remaining clothing items that will cost me any significant amount of money; everything else I can buy, find, or get donated to me by local charities. Which reminds me of the scarf another good friend of mine has waiting for me to grab at TPI's mail room, which I need to do soon because when those fools aren't losing mail they're returning it (I seriously need to get a PO box one of these days!). In short, I'm probably more worried about getting through the winter than I need to be; I've always been a fretful soul.

In order to ameliorate some of my anxiety I've decided to whittle down my clothing stockpile to just two sets that will each be worn four or five days, leaving me with less belongings to attract the attention of the roaming packs of thieving tweakers that now swarm Portland's streets like a bad parody of a biblical plague. Other than buying another can of bear mace, which is forty dollars at Andy & Bax, I don't know what to do about them except avoid them and hope the rain and the police keep them at least a few blocks away from me. My buddy K— will be moving into an apartment soon and has offered me his spot, but his street sees a lot more shady midnight creeping than mine does so I doubt I'll take him up on it. God damned homeless “occupational hazards”; I'd better not wake up one of these nights with a face full of metal pipe because some dope fiend out of his mind from three weeks without sleep thinks my backpack will score him another bag. Only idiots of an astronomical scale get hooked on a kamikaze pilot drug.

Shadow of the Spectre

A pall has fallen over the streets of Portland, and the streets are all abuzz about it and its cause: methamphetamine. Poor ol' junkietown's gotten itself all spun out, hearsay declaring the Mexican cartels have flooded the market; I know one can buy quarters (of grams) for as low as ten dollars. (I don't do the stuff, though I used to on occasion for two or three days.) I've been talking about tweakers off and on since I've been out here, but I have a feeling I've only been seeing the shadow of the spectre all this time — the foreboding, as opposed to the menace per se. Last Friday I went to my old freeway confluence stomping grounds, in search of free boots from a church school bus from Chehalis, and I saw tents and tarp-draped shopping cart pillboxes strewn all over the place; I'm guess the average block held AT LEAST ten people. Piles of junk, too, of course; every single one of the slinking figures I saw had sunken cheeks and scabs on their face. Tweakers, the real children of the corn.

It is a menace, too. Not only are they negative attention attractors because of how much crap they accrue and nest themselves in and how much of a nuisance they are as around-the-clock scrappers and thieves, but they can get outright sketchy and violent. In fact, one of them called me out at the boot line last Friday when I objected to his claim of being at the head of the line (which doesn't even exist — it degenerates into a (literal) bum rush as soon as things are unloaded out of the bus)! Of course, I wasn't even about to deal with that crap; I just walked away determined to can up the money for something decent at Goodwill. A peer of mine just told me a couple days ago that he had a knife waved at him over four bottles he'd just canned. Considering the floodgates of heaven have finally opened up on us, heralding the return of our dark drizzly monsoon season, tempers are bound to grow more excitable.

One benefit to the otherwise inconvenient and uncomfortable rain is that it tends to wash most of these guys downstream to the overpasses and bridges, leaving those of us on loading docks or camped out in the woods alone for the most part; it really is nice to be able to stash stuff and not have to worry about it being pilfered! It's also good for washing the pollution out of the air. But, still, it would have been nice to have gotten a pair of boots that night! I managed to soak me feet pretty thoroughly in the cross trainers I'm still wearing from summer; so far today it's rained 1.20 inches. I'm going to have to start making daily trips to thrift stores as soon as I can up fifteen dollars, since the free lines now not only disappoint but also imperil. Yup, as much as wary as I am of the tweakers I'm more concerned about the rain, a concern which adds up in dollars I need to expose myself to the elements to get.

Caveat Emptor

Bed bugs. What I thought I'd left behind at that awful Fairfield roach hotel I used to live in crept back into my life a few days ago, hitchhiking on a pillow I bought at the William Temple. Well, it may have come from elsewhere, but the fact remained at the time that I had to do something about it, and QUICKLY! Especially after a few nights of feeling bugs crawling all over me and waking up with bites here and there, which may or may not have been real — it's pretty easy for me to freak myself out about that kind of thing, given my revulsion to most members of the insect kingdom.

I've had to deal with these particular members three times back when I was in housing; such buildings are pest (and disease and dysfunction) incubators and vectors. The solution then was to bag all clothing and bedding up and run it through the wash using hot water and through a dryer on high heat for a full hour and to have pest control spray your room, and hope that you don't have any of them holding up in upholstered redoubts like couches and reclining chairs. Bed bugs can survive up to eighteen months without feeding and can hibernate through temperatures down to freezing, which makes them very difficult to eliminate. Unfortunately, not all of my stuff can be washed and dried at high temperatures, and I don't have the money to steam or bake or freeze things like my thermal pad. So, I went with adding a LOT OF Pine Sol­­™ to a commercial washing machine's pre-wash cycle. I don't know if that will necessarily work, but I did read a few assertions as to its effectiveness online. I wouldn't be surprised if it did work, considering the stuff is used in institutions as a disinfectant and I have witnessed for myself cockroaches aversion to it. We'll see. I have plenty of Pine Sol™ left, so I'll probably just keep adding it to the pre-wash cycle of my laundry until it's used up. Bloody expensive, though: $4.50 for a small load of clothing at the local laundromat.

Which brings me to Dave's idea, that he mentioned to me yesterday while we were toking it up with another buddy of ours. Dave doesn't do laundry, he just buys new clothes from thrift stores. Considering during this time of year I can wear a pair of jeans and a hoodie for up to two weeks, and a t-shirt for up to a week, and free socks are given out everywhere, I can get away with spending only about $10 a week ... and not have to worry about the cost and logistics of locker rental or someone discovering my stash and stealing from me. I can just keep my long johns, winter and rain gear, and socks in my backpack with my sleeping bag. However, I'm a bit reluctant to try this because of the cost, considering a locker at the Friendly costs only $10 a month. Still, it's an intriguing idea.

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I'll stop being lazy about this blog and resume weekly updates on Wednesdays. Sorry to those of you who actually take an interest in this.

Pterodactyls & Geronticide Candidates

I haven't been very diligent in blogging and tweeting, I know. Sometimes I just get tired of sitting at the Friendly House, especially since it seems to have gotten much more popular with the local homeless and poor over the past few months. It can get rather noisy here when hard-of-hearing geronticide candidates get to bellowing at each other or hordes of wingless pterodactyls swoop in shrieking from Chapman Elementary. Not only that, but not much has been going on. Police harassment and fall's impending arrival have cut a swathe through the local sketchy street tweaker population, and I've just been lazy and hanging out with a couple of my peers drinking malt liquor. Well, for the most part; I've also been working on a blog for one of the aforementioned drinking buddies for him to use to help publicize his paintings. You should check it out.

I'll try to come up with something more informative or interesting next week.

Winter Preparation

It's that time of year again, time to start gearing up for what I often call the upcoming Dark Monsoon: the gloomy and blustery rainy months that turn the homeless experience here into a daily struggle to be dry at least while sleeping (almost impossible to accomplish during the day if walking around a lot) and avoid chronic bronchitis and walking pneumonia. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be outdoors all fall and winter, and perhaps even all the way into next fall even, so it would behoove me to use the next couple months of likely fair to middlin' weather (NOAA's Climate Prediction Center estimates a 33% to 40% chance of above-average dryness and heat through the end of November) to do a bit of pre-emptive weatherproofing.

What all does this entail? I remember reading once that the U.S. cavalry used to have a motto describing in ascending the order of priority of equipment: “First the horse, then the saddle, then the rider.” In the case of being homeless I suppose it would go something like this: “First the clothing, then the bedding, then the camp (etc.).” Even if you don't have a good tent or a good sleeping bag you can at least manage to get through the night curled up in layers of clothing on top of some cardboard and covered up by a tarp or whatever else is on hand in a windbreak or beneath an overhang; though chances are you won't be very comfortable and sleep will be at best fitful, you won't get soaked through or freeze. The main thing is keeping dry and sleeping dry; fortunately for us, low overnight temperatures and snow aren't as much a concern in this part of the country as in much of the rest of it. In my case I figure the following...

1. Clothing
• Long johns, specifically the expensive synthetic ones that can be washed by hand and hung out to dry.
• Rain gear, consisting of a poncho and rain pants.
• Heavier general-purpose clothing, such as a couple hoodies or flannels, a medium jacket, and jeans.
• Boots and a waterproof, wide-brimmed hat.
• Other items such as wool fingerless gloves, a scarf, and maybe wool leggings to sop up water dripping off my poncho.
2. Bedding
• A decent sleeping bag with a comfort rating of 10°F, or enough lighter-duty sleeping bags and blankets to keep me warm during the colder nights.
• A good medium-sized tarp for when the rain is driven by wind out of the north or northwest, with whatever poles or ropes or carabiners are needed to erect it. (A tent could attract unwanted police attention, even if just erected overnight, though a free-standing one-man may work.)
3. Camping (etc.)
• I'm either going to keep sleeping on my loading dock, take over another one nearby with better cover, or move back to the freeway confluence I used to sleep at. (Winter is no time of year to pitch a tent in the woods!)
• A tactical daypack with a good rain fly.
• Another can of bear mace, and a head lamp for when it gets pitch black by 5:00 PM.

Sounds involved and expensive, doesn't it? Not so much the latter, but a bit of the former because I'll be doing a lot of scrounging, finagling, and shopping for most of what I need. I can probably get a sleeping bag or other bedding for free, also the boots (I know where there's a massive give-away of them every third Friday of the month); and aside from the rain pants and poncho, clothing is pretty cheap in thrift stores if you check them regularly for colored-tag sales and items the Russians and Mexicans somehow managed to overlook in their locust shopping sprees. In fact, the only things I figure I'll end up canning money for to pay for out of pocket is my long johns, rain gear, hat, the hoodies or flannels, the jacket, boot socks, bear mace, head lamp, and backpack (or at least the rain fly for one). In the two months I figure I have to get ready, I think I can manage at least most of the more crucial items on this list. I hope.

So Much for Treatment

I only lasted three weeks in DePaul, having stormed out of the place in a huff Labor Day morning because some milieu counselor (what staff members there are called that aren't real counselors with degrees and certifications; basically the guys that tell you what to do, search the rooms and conduct UAs, and dispense mail, etc.) thought I was being a jerk because I complained about having to watch some schlocky mainstream Hollywood chick flick on a holiday instead of being allowed to read my book. I suppose it's a shame, since I was doing pretty well there and was due to graduate in the middle of this month and move into a unit in housing. It wasn't that I wanted to just keep on drinking; I just didn't want to have a bunch of twelve-stepping cultists and drones telling me who I am and what how I need to live my life, forcing their quasi-Christian protean “spirituality” down my atheist throat, while being surrounded by a bunch of punk kids full of gangsta bravado and buffoonery and rock 'n' roll ex-cons strutting around with giant limp dicks flopping out of their mouths ... only to end up stuck in some lousy housing building downtown full of these people and enclosed in a blockade line of bums, yuppies, and tourists. In other words, it was a mistake.

Fortunately for me, my loading dock hasn't been inhabited by any unwelcome interlopers, and I even found one of my old sleeping bags that I'd left behind before I went into DePaul in a nearby field and still in good shape and reasonably clean. It sucks that I lost my locker at the Friendly House and have to carry most of my stuff in a large backpack, but I still have access to a day locker there and I'm not carrying too heavy a load anyway. I'll have to do a little gearing up for the rainy winter, but that won't be too big of a deal because there's probably still a month left to summer and I expect fall to get off to a slow start. I really don't need much, anyway: some long underwear, a couple hoodies, boots, a poncho, a knit hat or headband, a couple fingerless wool gloves, a wool blanket for the colder nights, and a better rainfly for my backpack. Okay, that looks like a lot, but there's a lot of free stuff in this town for us homeless, and there's always sales and lucky finds. The big thing will be not to spend all my canning or day labor money on booze, of course; so far I'm doing okay staving off the temptation to drink by substituting strawberry Fanta™ or Arizona™ iced tea for malt liquor whenever the devil's thirst comes over me.

Which begs the question, “What now?” I've made appointments with both my Central City Concern case worker and supported employment specialist next week to discuss this with them, and I have to go to the DHS office to get my food stamp card returned to my custody (DePaul has inpatients sign over custody of them to defray meal costs, which you'd think would be factored into bills sent to the insurance companies!) and to sign up for free web-development and coding classes online (my supported employment specialist thinks I can land a job in a computer field by doing this). I'm on the wait list for four or five subsidized low-income housing units, but I have no idea when I'll actually get into any of them, nor if I'd even WANT TO live in any of them. And, well, I don't know how much of what kind of work I could do with my asthma and messed-up legs and hips. All I really know is I can push a shopping cart full of bottles and cans once a day, and that so far I have a half-ass decent place to sleep outside ... the future is no less uncertain for me than it was when I left my last place over seven months ago. Oh well.

Time To Go

Going to residential drug and alcohol treatment tomorrow morning. You may not hear from me for three months or longer. When you do, it may be a pretty long post. Yeah, I talked myself back into it; it's been getting too damn stupid outside, or rather I've been.

Kinda I Want To

I've been getting a little crazy recently with the drinking, to the point where a few nights ago I ran around brandishing a metal pipe screaming at invisible thieves and traitors — which fortunately didn't result in anyone getting hurt or me getting jailed — and the next night I maliciously chucked a just-turned homeless girl's belongings onto the nearby freeway because I didn't want her around. Alcohol can easily make people weird and aggressive when consumed in sufficient quantities for long enough. It's not just getting black-out drunk and being a creep or jerk to whomever; when one drinks all day every day for long enough — and on top of that eats hardly any food, a common problem among all kinds of substance abusers — one slides into a dark fugue similar to drug-induced or trauma-induced psychosis. In my case it starts off with mad gibberings about being fae-blooded or some other kind of otherworldly creature, proceeds to black mutterings about the attainment of immortality and demiurge glory, and then progresses to animosity toward the world around me that often culminates in drama and violence. I remember how one time I was shot at by the owner of a bar when I fled the establishment after having assaulted a patron with a broken bottle because I believed the man held some dark design against me!

This brings me to the subject of this post, which is the title of a Nine Inch Nails song I used to like. After I woke out of the madness three mornings ago I was shook up about my miscreance enough to initiate the intake process at the De Paul addiction treatment center.

Which, incidentally, I'm highly ambivalent about. In order to enroll in the inpatient program I must either transfer over from their medical detox facility or sit on a twelve-week-long wait list. However, to be medically detoxed I have to suffer from withdrawal symptoms, which entails continued drinking! Not only am I sick of that rotten habit (for now, at least), but it seems absurd to me to achieve forward motion by pedaling backwards. Indeed, what's with the long wait, in the event I'm not deemed properly boozesick? Because I have health insurance; is this what Obamacare was supposed to accomplish? A man can change his mind and an awful lot can change in his life in three months. There's also the matter of the program being only anywhere from thirty to ninety days long, which probably isn't enough time for room in a clean-and-sober housing building to be found for me; I'll be giving up my spot — which despite the air pollution and noise has been decent — for a dubious and short-lived prospect that may very well result in me being back out on the streets at the beginning of the rainy season and having to start over again from Square One in terms of finding a spot and setting it up and securing it.

Am I talking myself out of it? It's not that I don't wish to become sober, or to at least get a handle on the problem, but I balk at immersing myself into an institutional non-solution. Years ago I did some research into the subjects of addictions and treatments, and it appears as though inpatient and outpatient drug and alcohol treatments and even vigorous participation in twelve-step programs are either as or LESS effective at delivering people from addictions than simply quitting is. Additionally, the twelve-step saturation of treatment programs and environments reeks of a coerced conversion of addicts into a nebulously ecumenical religious order wherein individuals are taught not self-sufficiency but appalling reliance on others and some kind of protean but vacuous "Higher Power" — which as an atheist and a strongly independent person I find repulsive, and I can't see how it's nothing more than trading one addiction for another; like the treatment of opioid addicts with methadone. Effectively setting us up for failure. And, frankly, I don't care for the recovery scene; I don't want to live in a building full of anti-intellectual and boorish overgrown children, many of whom are macho ex-convicts whose mentality still stalks the prison yard.

In short, while I realize I've been at the quitting drinking business off and on for over two decades and have as a result an appalling record of failure and disappointment, I really don't think inpatient or outpatient treatment or AA meeting attendance will do me any good. I also strongly suspect I'd be jeopardizing my sobriety much more by moving into clean-and-sober housing than I would by remaining on the streets. So, I HAVE successfully talked myself out of treatment, haven't I? I'm not sure what I'm going to do, if there's even anything proactive I can do about it other than realize that I'm sick of wasting my money and time on alcohol, ruining my health on it, skewing my brains under its influence, inhibiting myself from attaining a healthy and functional and rewarding life, bringing upon myself peril and disgrace by it, and disappointing and worrying my friends. I guess I'll just have to figure it out; I'm not going to do it in accordance with The System's wishes — not unless a judge orders me to, at least.

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.

Hospital Duty

Spent the last three nights at Good Samaritan Hospital, sleeping on the floor next to an acquaintance's dog. The patient was the fellow homeless person K— I mentioned in the last post, whose lung had apparently collapsed Saturday after a fit of screaming at Portland Patrol security personnel (for whatever perverse dissident grandstanding reason). I ran into him at the Northwest neighborhood public library branch on Sunday, whereupon he told me about the collapsed lung and that he discharged himself against medical advice earlier that day because hospital staff told him that unless he could find someone to watch over and walk his dog it would have to stay at the pound until he's released. I sympathized with his refusal to let his dog go to a Guantanamo detention facility for animals where a simple mistake can result in his dog being lost or even put to death, so I agreed to help him out when he asked me to return with him to the hospital. Alas, I've never been good at refusing people.

I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into, though I dreaded the certainty of it being an ordeal for me. This was confirmed by the charge nurse of the emergency ward, where K— had to go to be re-admitted. I was under the impression that I'd simply have to swing by three times a day to walk the dog (named Shorty), but she fixed her flinty Baba Yaga gaze on me and insisted that I remain in K—'s room all the time I wasn't walking Shorty, else the hapless companion be forced to sojourn x-amount of days in Doggy Gulag. When she went so far as to say that I wouldn't even get a cot to sleep on, I almost asked her if I had permission to stand in the corner at parade rest or would I be required to stand at attention the entire time! The reason I was needed was because all of K—'s friends that live indoors have dogs, and Shorty tends to forget that he's small and twenty years old in his Charles Bronson posturing with other — often much larger — dogs, which could easily prove disastrous or even fatal. Fortunately for me, leveler heads prevailed upon the whimsical winds of hospital policies when we were admitted upstairs in the intermediate care ward: I only needed to walk the dog three times a day and remain with him in the room overnight and when K— underwent surgery.

Shorty's a good little dog, and charmed the babes in scrubs to an enviable degree. (If you can put up with K—s confrontational ranting, here's a YouTube video that shows his dog.) Considering how anxious he was while at the hospital he certainly would have been terrified in a cage surrounded why barking and whining dogs! But, K—'s getting released this afternoon sometime, so my tour of duty is over and I get to gleefully divorce myself from human proximity, bask in my usual day-to-day selfishness, and return to less exotic and more familiar and (perhaps dismally) comfortable environments. Whatever good karma chits I garnered from this fit of nobility I'll just leave at a bus stop; I don't believe in that thimble-headed nitwittery, anyway, and it's not like it'll buy me any beer.

Isn't it funny how hospitals can be comforting when you're a patient but are almost invariably vaguely distressing to visitors? I'm reminded of when I was drinking with some neighbors back at my old place, how I glibly remarked once that I always had a good time whenever I went to a hospital. This must have been a recent development in my life. After all, I watched my dad die in a Veterans Administration hospital in Seattle at the tender age of ... nine? ten? Well, it's obvious that I stuffed that traumatic event deep beneath the cushions of the couch of my memory. But, yeah, I didn't exactly enjoy myself at Good Sam; apparently I need to have surgery done, liberal application of pain medicine, and delicious room service to properly enjoy myself in hospitals. Making my besotted assertion of at best only halfway true. I'd even go so far to say that if ever hospitals were to be run entirely by artificial intelligences and robotic machines, the vast majority of us would willingly succumb to injury and illness and end up dying on the streets or in our homes.

The Jack Pack

The nearby Jack in the Box is a locus of traffic for local tramps. Every morning and evening I see up to half a dozen in there: munching on value menu items and sipping on coffee, reading, waiting to use one of the bathrooms, or just loitering for a bit to rest tired feet, gather the morning's addled wits, duck out of the rain, or formulate or reassess plans. For some reason, the Council of Elrond comes to mind whenever I think about it, even though that was a much more sober gathering. It's nice to have access to such a place, especially one that's closed for only five hours a day and which sells two tacos for a dollar. Management and employee reception is warmer and they're more lenient toward facility use than the handful of McDonald's are downtown — not to mention the old Carl's Junior was that went so far as to remove bathroom stall doors to discourage IV drug use. Don't get me wrong; I completely understand a fast food restaurant manager getting sick of legions of the more egregiously disgraceful and disagreeable bums repeatedly trashing the bathrooms, making the more domesticated and monied customers uncomfortable in the lobby, and aggressively panhandling outside the business doors. I suppose what this treatment really indicates is how much better the street scene is in the Northwest neighborhood than in downtown. Perhaps I ought to introduce some of my fellow Jack Pack members to you:

• K—
  This is the guy at the Friendly House who drives me crazy with his obsession with the corruption of city hall and the police, sex offenders, and contempt for "yuppies". While we generally get along with each other and I agree with many of his views, I get sick of incessant negativity streaming out of the mouth of a person who refuses to acknowledge obvious lack of listener interest and prattles on when it would have been more considerate to get the hint and zip it. Ah, well: we homeless are all socially challenged in one way or another.
• D—
  A former Maginot resident who has managed to successfully kick a heroin habit (thanks to methadone) and is also trying to get a grip what may be an alcohol problem emerging to replace the old drug habit, and with the help of Antabuse seems to be doing pretty well at that. He's the guy I chased the Midnight Creeper into Crack Town with in an attempt to recover his stolen backpack. A smart, funny, guy who walks with a limp and speaks with a sort of nasally East Coast-sounding drawl. He camps with a friend who is also one of the more upstanding members of the local bum community.
• G—
  This guy's lived in the Northwest neighborhood FOREVER, or at least for the fourteen years I've lived in this town this time around. A quiet guy who keeps mostly to himself, all I've ever seen him do is push a shopping cart full of bottles and cans and drink malt liquor all day. I think he's a Vietnam vet, but I'm not sure; he's certainly old enough to be one. A good, generous guy to run into when you're out of smokes or feel like drinking with someone who is more mellow than the average street drunk.
• S—
  This is the guy who used to stay around the corner from me when I was beneath the freeway and kitty-corner to the disbanded Maginot shopping-cart Compound. Also the guy I saw pull a bat out on someone once in a nearby meal line and sock his girl in the face one morning down in Crack Town, it's obvious he has serious anger issues and has probably had a REALLY rough life. Still, he doesn't do any serious drugs and hardly ever drinks, and is industrious, responsible, and looks out for his neighbors. His girlfriend is almost a Silent Bob to his more subdued interpretation of Jay.

Sitting in the lobby of Jack in the Box last night, chatting up all the above people while munching on cheap tacos drenched in Chipotle Tabasco® sauce, brought home to me a recent realization that the poor comprise more colorful communities than those in your average suburban enclave or hill-cresting ziggurat. Is it that security and comfort, and having settled early on into a predictable and monotonous lifestyle trajectory, makes for cookie-cutter personalities and social modalities? I suppose, but I've met a few bland drones who lived much more exciting lives than I ever conceivably could. It may have more to do with the fact that there's a lot of troubled and unstable people who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and life experiences, whereas along the cul de sacs and in the gated communities you find yourself where birds of a feather (truly) flock together and among those who have embraced the status quo. Put simply, we tend toward hard-headed independence or outright rebelliousness, are generally more screwed up, and the petri dish wherein we eke out our squalid lives gets shaken up too much to settle into a state of fractured homogeneity. While it makes for some interesting characters and conversations, it also makes for a lot of contention.

All Quiet on the Northwestern Front

At least under present circumstances, it feels pretty awesome, having nothing much to say about my life. A lack of excitement is usually a good thing when you're homeless. It's not that nothing's been going on, it's that I'm not watching cop cars prowling around or parking nearby and spying on me through their side-view mirrors, I'm not shirking before shadowy figures engaged in theft by the light of the stars and street lights, and I'm not getting my tarp blown down the street by an icy wind or getting rained on while lugging a heavy bag full of bottles and cans. No news is good news.

I moved again, this time even farther out and actually inside the industrial district of Northwest Portland, instead of being perched on the edge of it like a vampire lurking outside a cottage window. I'm also doing something different this time: I'm sleeping on a loading dock. It feels a little bit like sleeping in a doorway, only a very large one with better overhead cover; I haven't slept in a doorway in fourteen years and have until now considered that kind of practice to be for noobs, nutters, and burn-outs. A small tent in a thicket and out of sight of any roads or residences — and far enough away from freeways or railroad tracks to be at least reasonably peaceful — is what I consider the ideal; or, rather a feasible ideal, because a boat or a utility van would undoubtedly be preferable, especially with access to electricity and potable water. Still, I like this spot, and hope I can use it for at least couple months: there's almost no traffic on the road in front of me, even during the day, and I'm concealed from view from one direction and even from the other direction a person would have a hard time noticing me because I'm tucked away in a dark corner in a black sleeping bag.

Which begs the question: when will I get back into housing? Answer: in a VERY LONG time, probably at least one-and-a-half years, though I suspect it may be more like around two years. I just went to the Fountain Place recently to check my number on the wait list, and discovered to my dismay that after over three years I've only gone down one to #8 from #9, where I stood four months ago (I started out at #20). Even if I allow for an average of three months per number I'm looking at a two-year wait, especially considering there's only fifteen subsidized studio units in the building ... which means two more winters spent outside. Not only that, but even though the wait list is currently frozen because it's so long, if it gets unfrozen any time while I'm on it I can easily start crawling back up in the list because of tenants transferring from unsubsidized units to subsidized ones — they're given preference, you see. The housing coordinator at Central City Concern has me on wait lists for two or three other places, but I can't help but think that they'll end up being as bad or worse than the last dump I lived in. Under such circumstances it's pretty hard to feel optimistic.

But, in the meantime, it's almost summer and the past week has been absolutely gorgeous to live outside in. I may as well enjoy what I have and keep plugging away at improving my living situation and seeking employment. Fretting over long housing wait lists will only serve to ensure my heart is drenched in a soggy winter even whilst strolling down a sunlit street on a balmy July evening. There is, after all, such a thing as borrowing trouble, to use another apothegm.

Going Nowhere

I've been outside for a little over four months, and I'm not getting ANYWHERE at all!

I was supposed to wake up at the luxurious hour of eight o'clock this morning in a nice two-man tent concealed in some underbrush or a thicket somewhere in North Portland, sprawled atop my air mattress next to a book and the headlamp I used to read it last night, firing up my propane camp stove for a simple breakfast of chorizo hash and Irish breakfast tea, getting ready to break everything down and jump on my BMX to head down to Breakfast in Bedlam's fifth year anniversary to play meet-and-greet with the visiting therapy llama. Instead I woke up at a quarter to seven in the makeshift lean-to I make out of my Backpack Bed™, beneath the freeway I've spent most of the past three months beneath when I haven't been trying in vain to move to a location that's less tweaker- and cop-beleaguered (the last spot I tried turned out to be a mosquito-infested pissing ground for a couple street drunks!); cursing myself for my addiction to alcohol and my spendthrift ways, the city of Portland for its corruption and this summer's war on the homeless, and life in general for having made me so screwed up and the world so enthralled to ignorance and greed.

That's right, instead of canning and saving money and using it to improve my lot, I've been going on wild four- to five-day binges of Four Loko and other awful malt beverages. I started out just fine, with the intention of abstaining completely from alcohol because of its prohibitive cost and its role as a potential liability to a precarious lifestyle. Then that snow storm came and I got bored and wandered around in the snow quaffing hobo antifreeze until it was time to lay down in an emergency warming shelter. You know you're an alcoholic when you can't pick up a drink without falling down a ravine and into a gully of backwash and B.O. I used to think that I could learn to become a social drinker or be one of those guys who sips at red wine every dinner to keep his heart nice and healthy, but for some time now I've realized that's simply not the case: I can't drink even a thimbleful of watered down Boone's without being cajoled by a black goat to join the witches' sabbath whirling intoxicated on the dark Bavarian hills looming on the eastern horizon of my heart. So, now I'm back to Square One, but wondering if perhaps it may not behoove me to seek some sort of treatment for the addiction. Alas, my materialistic disdain toward anything religious or "spiritual", my discomfort around people, and the obsessional nature of my thinking, seem to conspire to force me to tough it out alone.

I'm going to have do something if I'm going to recoup my losses, get the hell away from the encroaching police dragnet and the inevitable refugees of my more shady and troubled peers, and figure out how to eke out a meaningful and productive living. Every year it gets more difficult being poor and homeless, with no end in sight; wallowing in a mire of malt liquor isn't going to make it any easier.

---

But, who wants to be sober while sleeping in a tent by a freeway or wrapped up in a tarp like a derelict tacquito beneath an overpass? When having to disgrace yourself in public by spanging or canning whenever the need for money arises? Having to deal with mosquitoes eating your face during the warm months of summer; what would normally be a blessed season of respite from the rain and snow, the dampness and cold that no cover or clothing can stave off permanently? Lining up for a plate of tuna casserole and a cup of coffee less potent than what Confederate soldiers woke up to? The fights, threats, and thefts by your peers, and harassment by security personnel and cops? With little hope for upward mobility above and beyond landing a lead-poisoned ten-by-twelve cell in a roach hotel, pushing a broom for chump change part-time (unless you're young enough to go to college and have the gumption to get a degree in a field that won't end up in Asia within the next ten years)?

I don't, but it's a choice between alleviating the boredom, hopelessness, shame, and anxiety of the streets in alcohol and subsiding in a state of abject stagnation or gritting my teeth and holding back my tears every day so I may have a chance at landing a job through day labor. I'm probably going to buy a twenty-four of some of that delicious elixir of Kill The Poor, but if I'm going to be doing that it would certainly be wise of me to limit my consumption of one daily and in the evening when bed time approaches.