[many apologies but my laptop went kaput this week and I spent hours on this long pretty plain diaryesque poem for you but the last save made everything ajumble. I will fix it anon.]
Losing Your (Street) Cred
It’s the end of an(-other) experimentalmonth at the beginingof an (-other) experi-mental year. Andwhat have you gotto show for it?This is a question I often ask myself (asI am obviously doing here as if truly add-ressing you.... Whatam I doing here?
Here happens current-ly to be the long line out-side the Tenderloin Hous-ing Clinic, which isn’ta clinic in the medicalsense, but rather, where I pick up my funds for myrent for my SRO (or, moreexplicitly, my transitional housing). There is always asmall sum left for my phone bill and maybe a razor or two.But this is all the cash I get forthe month after I pay my rent,($308 - yeah sounds amazingand it would be if I could justland a job).
I did have an interview thisafternoon. But I had twointerviews scheduled foryesterday that were can-celed last minute. One due tothe interviewer being ill, the o-ther because “We seem to havefound the right candidate”(woo hoo!). So I am off to astart, albeit a rocky one thisround. I do have severallined up next week. Theysound quite promising. I calmmyself, try to do my form ofmeditation, stay focused, answerquestions succinctly, avoid me-andering, concentrate onsuccesses rather than actions(whatever that means) and don’ttalk incessantly with my armsflailing about, thinking these maypossibly remove the obstaclesthat exist between me and thatperfect next cubicle.
My financial credit report is nogood. This check I’m waiting inline for is all the currency I getthis month besides foodstamps($194, so yeah, significant, but it’samazing how quickly it all goes).
So what is my conclusion? Isimply keep trying to live. I keepconducting these experiments,more and more of them, andthey get more and more randomand absurd as time goes by. ThatI am a lost man which (am I simplytrying to convince myself?) is nota bad thing.
Mostly broke, job-searching withhope upon hope, a fairly constantstream of unfortunate luck,tucked in my broken bed in mytiny apartment that I have livedin for eleven months, which wasimmediately preceded by twoyears of living in a shelter, andsix months of living on the streets.
But my street cred is somethingI never thought about until a fewshort years ago...well, in general.And on that, I have no idea. Thislife in which I wake up daily intoa new mystery and a newly burg-eoning preposterous lack of cred.Mostly broke, job-searching withhope upon hope, but always witha bizarre lack of luck, living lifewaking up most every morninginto a new mystery. And thesemysteries refuse to resolve, andtherefore accumulate.
All here in this small place calledSan Francisco, even with its ludi-crous or electric (depending onwhom you ask) influx of new peopleand the vast changes of recent, it isa place I am happy to call home. Infact, I have endured hardships justto keep being able to do so.
But with all of my friends locally saveone and three long term partners (andpossibly a fourth) having fallen de-cidedly by the wayside perhaps neverato be heard from (by me) again, andwith the additional loss of every material thing I kept for the first 50 years of my life now completelygone, whenever I do this walking,be it day or night, within thiscity that I love, around peoplewith whom I am either familiar orat least comfortable, I always feellike I have a bar over my head likeso many video games, or like ona battery-depleted mobile phone,and it's down to somewhere be-tween zero and 5%. That's howmuch juice I have left. I am in direneed of a juice station. I’m in needof life, of air, of water, of love. AndI’m definitely and clearly in needof some cred, in any form I canpossibly score
These words I am always conjuringout of nowhere and then sendingas long missiles to nowhere in themiddle of the night, no matter howhungry or low on percentage or inneed of cred that I might be at thetime, always give me some satis-faction, some comfort, some juice.My words. Always dying to escapecompletely word-sated, word-hungryand just plain wordy body. And soout they go.
So,Good night.God bless.And mayWe all ariseA’smilin’ inThe morrow.
Because I have so very muchyet to tell you.
