Category: Circling the Drain

So I’ve finished a couple days of work, haven’t really had to tutor much yet but I’m expecting my first victims to show up soon …

I’m tutoring and mentoring high school students, as prep for a career as a teacher.

Been thinking on the fictional writing project – “BIG FOOT WAR ONE” – and the first chapter that will likely be a back story, context, for all the grievances and issues, the moral justification for the war, and the initial plans. I can imagine the raccoon folk and crow/raven folk and the orca whales joining forces – the crow will be indifferent and cynical, as they enjoy the tossed out McDonald’s garbage that must invariably cease once the war begins.

My goal is to write one chapter a week – to attempt two “normal” sort of podcasts about “what’s up” and one podcast, or two, per week, on a chapter/serial basis. Sure, some might not get the idea of the Sasquatch, the forest people, the Yeti or Wookie, coming down from the slopes of the hills, filled with rage and glory, smelling of venison and pain … but some will get it, and if I can tell a good story, people will connect.

My boss and her husband have a property they manage for campers, “glampers”, and she offered to let my brother and I stay there – me in a camper, my brother in his truck but safer from boondocking and cheaper than the parks. It’s a real break from the running from one place to another, the frenzied search for SOMETHING LIKE what I left behind in Utah. But there is no replacing my friends Beth and Justin, there is no replacing their dogs, especially Boomer … I cry a little less now when I think about him, but I still cry.

So am I still circling about the drain? – sure.

Do I have some “solid plan”? – it would depend upon how you defined the word “solid”. I have a plan, I think I might want to teach. It would be great if I could make my podcast work, but maybe I suck, maybe I suck because I refuse to simply “entertain”. Maybe I’ll suck less if I tell mostly stories, because the reality of the situation is horrifying, best case, medium case, likely case. And, I know we’re being lied to on a historic scale, and the thing they are lying about is not good – that’s putting it in mild terms. But we keep going, we keep hoping, we keep dreaming, and we endure.

I could have avoided much of the “sturm und drang” of the last 6 weeks if I’d been able to simply pause, somewhere, for a few weeks … to take a sense of things. It’s a nice luxury for some that they can pause without falling off the social radar, without being cast, thrown, into the seemingly perpetual darkness that is STREET HOMELESSNESS … and the hatred directed at you because you simply made one too many mistakes … sucks to be you. If you HATE the homeless and you live in a city? – your rude awakening hasn’t arrived, but it’s coming. We could have made different choices, we could have CHOSEN NOT to treat housing or shelter like a financialized product – but our system tossed us a crooked bone, and so many, irrespective of political affiliation, picked up the bone. Should we be surprised that there is a boiling mass of human suffering below our feet? Rumbling, shifting, shaking the ground? – no, don’t be surprised when they show up at your door, and the cops show up to tag your bodies 5 hours later.

Yet – I have a camper, with a space heater …

I have the nature that surrounds me, and the bigfoot folk looking out for me or observing me … who knows what the forest people do.

I have food and water …

I have a radio and a Bible and Jesus looking out for me …

I have a lot to be grateful for, and I’m trying to remember that too.

I have a slice – not the whole pizza, a part of it, and for me it’s enough to keep going.

MIND JOURNEY: forgotten caverns of Nordstrom’s

1. cleavage hustlers slink their way to the underwear department.
2. bold pricks buy their briefs from Jerry.
3. skleb-trolls wander the dusty way, talking up purses and handbags and wallets and departed friends lost at the Rack …
4. Hoglon is leader of the retail death cult, he feeds on boob-cheese, he makes a bayonet wedding.
5. Stugger-mugger jerk squirrel meat being sold near the coffee mugs, not far from the jabbering fools of fossil …
6. PF CHANG’S is GONE …
7. Mustard dog deacon’s are moving the juice for the crowded revelers, Orange Julius is being sued for ecoli
8. Get your parrot suit on sale, and spy the next fall’s fashion – it’s grey and worn and red and deadly.

Yes – on the road, the plane, downtown NYC and Newark, on my way back to WA state. I had a good trip, got to meet one of my listeners in PA, and had a HELL of a ride on Greyhound (emphasis “hell”). One might consider the entire expedition to the east coast futile, absurd, pointless, but it wasn’t. I learned a lot on this jaunt, a week long trek, covering much of the country and meeting many members that occupy many strata of society.

I keep my listener’s situations private, but here’s what you need to know about our “friend in PA” – he’s a cool dude, prepared, in so many ways more prepared than me or most that I know. I had a break on the road at his home, which I needed, soaked up some of that country air, and I figured out that I needed to keep moving. It was not anything more complicated than my own demons chasing me to PA, and then chasing me down the road. It’s beautiful where our friend lives and I hope it stays that way, but it’s hard to say – troubling times for all on the death star.

The bus I took to the airport stopped near Madison Square Gardens in NYC. A filthy spot, surrounded by homeless and hookers and pimps riding scooters, running through the FLIX bus parking lot as the forlorn wanderers huddled together, waiting for our next bus. Nothing made sense, the numbers on the buses didn’t make sense, yet we, I think WE, found our bus and made our way to the next way point – for me it was Raymond Plaza in Newark.

As the bus entered Newark there were cops everywhere – seemed like hundreds on the streets …

As I grabbed a taxi to the airport, and we drove out of downtown Newark, more cops could be seen – new shiny vehicles, with magical strobe lights designed to ensure that anyone with the least susceptibility to seizure or epilepsy would be triggered, shaking on the ground, foaming at the mouth. I don’t know what was up with Newark on a Tuesday night at around midnight, seems like that runaway Brazilian (Cavalcante) might have made his way toward Jersey and someone wanted to bag the bad guy … maybe.

For my listeners: feel free to be disappointed in me if you wish.

A month ago I was still in Utah, wishing I didn’t have to leave, hoping the situation of peace and relative tranquility could continue – the morning walks with a dog named Boomer. But such things were not meant to last, especially these days. This old hobo would not be allowed to stay long in such a state of bliss – people like me are meant to “move on”, like the gangs of VFW and American Legion that would guard small towns during the Great Depression. “Move along hobo, your time has run out here”, and so I did, I moved on, and I’m still moving.

As I’ve said and written, I’m not giving up. No reason to give up, too many mistakes to make yet – but this weird trip, as resource costly as it was, probably helped me. I’m more at peace today with my situation than I was a month ago, the amount of stuff I carry is reduced, as it should be, not quite streamlined yet but getting there … I can imagine a day, in the not too distant future, when I’m down to a simple pack, tarp, sleeping bag, and whatever else makes sense for a traveler to carry.

So I say: “CHEERS TO THE UNDEFEATED HOBOS!”

Cheers to the GRAND ARMY of drain-circle’rs …

Cheers to the refugees and those struggling against the weight of the age.

Cheers to all who are unwilling to break, even if sometimes we must bend.

And CHEERS to all of you – somehow, we will laugh about this some day, I mean it …

(really)