I moved out from beneath the freeway and away from the Maginot Line the night before last, my decision ushered along by the sight of the Midnight Creeper who woke me up with his flashlight Easter morning sauntering past the row of shopping carts and across the Wells Fargo parking lot while I was chatting with a couple of the neighbors there I'd gotten acquainted with. It was the last straw; I'd already had my backpack and sleeping bag stolen by a batshit crazy street girl who compounds her madness and misery with drug use, and the cops had begun to cruise through the area multiple times a day because the local tweaker scene had expanded its thievery to local residents and businesses. I wasn't about to deal with this guy again, especially since I suspect him of having stealthily unscrewed a couple of my shelter's carabiners the night before I spotted him.
I'm not sure how permanent this spot will end up being, but it seems promising so far because it's behind a chain-link fence alongside the Highway 30 that follows the Columbia River to beautiful and quirky Astoria (where I'd love to live if I came into sufficient money to do so). There's plenty of cover from bushes and small trees, the freeway is about twenty feet below me past a gently sloping embankment, and I'm at the very edge of the residential part of Northwest Portland; all factors taken together favor me remaining undisturbed through the rest of summer if no one else comes upon it and decides I need neighbors — which, this being Portland and therefore a traveling vagrant mecca, I'm half expecting. As soon as I determine the exact location to make into a semi-permanent camp I'll be doing a bit of cleaning up of the area with a shovel or rake, since there's half-decayed garbage from previous camps here and there; it would also behoove me to get a couple new tarps, nylon rope, stakes, carabiners, and maybe even add some camouflage netting and rig an intruder detection system out of fishing line and cans or something similar.
Of course, what I really need is some kind of work, if I'm going to successfully gear up so that I'm relatively safe and secure and comfortable living outside; canning just doesn't cut it in terms of income, especially since I'm gouging a significant portion of the earnings buying a couple beers a day. Since I'm looking for work through Central City Concern I can't smoke weed anymore, but I think I'm just going to try to save for some synthetic urine because frankly living on the streets is too much of a drag for me to be stone-cold sober every day. I actually have a job prospect at the end of the month, a seven-day desk clerk assignment at subsidized housing building similar to the one I used to live in. Which means not only passing the whiz quiz but also one of those annoying personality tests that are designed to trip you up for acting like a flesh-and-blood human being. You'd almost think that prospective employers really don't want to hire anyone, and I imagine many corporate elites would prefer their work places filled machines and bio-engineered drones.
