Here's a little reality for you.
"Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult "What is that?"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
I spent time on the streets. All streets are mean streets when you are in a certain condition. I was more interested in getting high than I was in keeping an apartment, in working, in bathing, in eating. I found ways to get by but I was literally starving. I weighed 148 pounds at 5'11". I would stand at a street corner and wonder which way led to more dope, which way to an escape from my trap. I knew I was trapped, that it would take an act from outside to get me out. I couldn't get myself out. I had dropped below the event horizon.
At one stage, I was living in the back of my car, a Rambler station wagon that only had second gear. The rest had failed somehow. That didn't matter because I didn't have any money anyway. I had parked that car in front of a vacant lot, so no one really objected. The car was full of my stuff but there was room for me to sleep. My toilet was where I could find it, but I peed at night in that lot. Later I snuck into empty apartments and hooked up with a guy who had an extra bed in his rented room, a bed that was supposed to rent out. The bed was terrible. Still later we went to jail for walking down the street late at night. My friend was carrying pot, less than an ounce but more than enough in those days.
I still marvel at one thing. We were all so broke, all so not into finding ways to make a living, all so out and out incompetent at keeping shit together. Just how is it possible that we could find all that dope?? We thought it was weird then. There is magic in the world and that is part of it. Every dope freak knows this. You need the dope. It is rare that it doesn't come. When it doesn't come it is a horror, an effing disaster and also it is like a violation of the law of dope. On any given day there is enough dope, often more than enough.
This poem is about that kind of life, but not about me.
Littering
I'm watching tv.
This ad comes on, tells me Stop
littering! Shows a
Red Man in full dress
with a sweet tear in his eye,
wounded at the mess.
This won't stop me now
any more than what happened
when I dropped my rig
in that field running
from the dealer I ripped off.
Turned out, was shit dope.
July 28, 2009 11:06 AM
Wow... thanks for sharing such a personal story. I can only say that I hope you've found that act from outside and that it keeps you safe and away from any and all pain, addiction, discomfort, and all over negativity.
ReplyDeleteOh that was long ago...what happened next was just as strange and threaded the eye of the needle nicely. I came out of my time smelling like a rose but headed into a different train wreck a few years later. I survived that one too, and then started a long term climb into life and all.
ReplyDeleteNow I have yet one more transition to do, called ending my work life and creating some kind of stable retirement.
I could have died but here I still am. I could have gone to jail for real crimes but didn't. I was in trouble with the Army too. That went away. I know I was on a Grand Jury Indictment list released to a local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, at one point a few years later than this time I wrote about here. That came to nothing too.
The whole rest of my life came out of that ferment. I basically held my college participation together through that time too. I didn't finish then, had to return eleven years later to finish. I even did that and got my Humanities BA even though it didn't mean anything except closure.
I like this: "Oh that was long ago...what happened next was just as strange and threaded the eye of the needle nicely. I came out of my time smelling like a rose but headed into a different train wreck a few years later. I survived that one too, and then started a long term climb into life and all."
ReplyDeleteIt's comforting somehow, and one of the positives of transparency...to share struggles...the comfort of witnessing anothers journey through and out.
Annie,
ReplyDeleteTransparency is a goal of mine, based on the AA aphorism that you are as sick as your secrets. But I never tell much at any one sitting. There are several minuses to telling too much. It is intrusive is the main one. I intrude on you as the reader if I am overly frank and in that intrusion I invite you to criticize me for being too self involved or too self indulgent.
I have told some of this in earlier posts, many times. I have told stuff I have not told here as well. If I were to be too thorough, I would defeat my own purpose.
You just cannot say it all at any given time. To try is just foolish.
brave and honest, and with that fierce poignancy that forbids anything superficial or tokenistic. thank you.
ReplyDeleteIt is reasonably honest but it doesn't feel brave. I have been telling that story in one way or another for 28 years, actually longer. More like 39 years.
ReplyDelete