Still Roadin': A Recap of Sorts to Myself

There's something you can always count on around Christmas, and that's nostalgia (probably a chemical imbalance resulting from too much time off and the fact that the calendar makes everything end in these few days, but I digress). So, per usual, I got the hankering to look at my own list of goals for the past three months, and along the line I had to confront the question: how much did I really get out of not having an apartment for a quarter? To wit, A world where the pros mix pros and cons in shiny silver shakers, and you only open your eyes when you pour yourself a glass.

I no longer own any furniture, and I count this as a benefit. There was something extraordinary about being able to carry everything you need in your trunk, and I played it generous too, which means I definitely could have cut more out of my life. You're more free, less tied down, and when you want to, you can just go. When I used to have work in downtown at 8AM, I would drive over to Chinatown the night before and settle in this nook that I knew about. Then in the morning I'd wake up at 7:45 and drive the five blocks to work, walk out of the car in my work clothes all footloose and fancy free, presto, no morning traffic, all the time smiling when my co-workers talked about having to get up at 5:30. Although to be fair I work mostly with women, and I hear there's some impediment where they need to spend a lot of time in the bathroom in the morning.

I stopped paying rent, although some of these savings are offset by other costs, like eating out at least one meal everyday and sometimes two. Towards the end I also found myself staying at one particular friend's place a lot, so I chipped in for their rent.

In hindsight, this is something I'm not too happy with: the fact that I eventually lost the sharp focus I had at the beginning. It's understandable, I think, when you're dealing with an increasing course load and worrying about other things, to take the convenient route and forgo the library for the comfort of a friend's living room. Still, I wish I hadn't so often. I remember waking up in the car one night, just shivering from head to toe, because I hadn't realized how cold it had gotten the past week. Then I realized I hadn't been homeless that week.

How much more do I want to do? This is a tricky question, because at the heart of it, I'm asking myself how satisfied I am with what I already did. The answer, like the answer to many of life's questions, is no. I've realized that my initial motivation was never enough to really go all out and do live-on-the-street homelessness. The only time I came close was sleeping on the beach for a night, and I recoiled so hard to that experience that I spent the next few days on various couches (that post is here).

Instead, I've discovered a lifestyle philosophy that's very appealing to me at this moment. I love the mobility of a drifter's life, and I'm going to try to incorporate aspects of it into my new found life as an apartment-humper. I'm still waiting to hear back from the Co-opt, but I think this would just be the perfect next step. It's cheap rent, squishing into small rooms with a lot of other temporaries, and with the possibility of leaving it all behind for a few nights (it's also furnished).

There's probably more, but not enough waking hours for it all. Merry Christmas! I'm three and a half hours into the holiday, and into about three months worth of nostalgia. Good vibes.

Home Life

I've spent the last few days nursing some sunflowers.

They are nothing more than a naive gesture to begin with, hatched from the recesses of generosity and youth on a rainy day at the supermarket. Why not send them?

Since then they've come the 350 miles from Los Angeles to San Jose in the backseat of a car, and if all goes according to plan, they will travel at least 150 more to Sacramento, stuffed inside a box next to some chocolates.

The whole thing, of course, is just ridiculous. Dried flowers will never survive the anxious trip through the ham-pounding mechanical robot that is the postal service during the holiday season, no matter how many peanuts you throw in the box. Then, when the girl finally gets the box, she finds a handful of destroyed flower petals and thinks 'Oh great, dead flowers that's cheerful,' but of course she can't find them anyway because of all the peanuts, and soon she gets tired of picking through it all, takes the chocolates and throws the entire fucking box out the window.

None of which was able to stop me from trying. But it's been costing me. You see, drying sunflowers is a difficult process. Unlike most flowers, they need to dry with their petals facing up and outward for maximum appeal. You can't just hang the suckers up by their necks, no, it requires torture. I took a couple of clothes pins, clamped them onto their stems to keep them from rolling around, then shoved one right underneath the base of the head of the flower to keep it from moving. So now I've got a mini Guantanamo torture rack on my dining table. Then what? Well then you say "sayonara sucker, have fun getting all the moisture sucked out of you by the air."

It's not a pleasant way to spend my holiday.

A Short Car Ride of Considerable Consequence

An early-model Nissan sped down the dark road. It had just rained, and the ground glistened under the glaring streetlamps. Very few people were out tonight, on account of the weather. And it was cold. The car left a trail of white steam as it accelerated around a bend, tossing leaves in its wake. It was an old soft-top, with all the dents that 16 long years of beating will give you. Not abuse, no, they were simply the beatings of existence, and as far as cars go, this Nissan had lived a full life; it had been used, loved, slept in, lived in, sold, bought, and taken to the beach on many occasions, and now it was an old, wrinkly man with a loose chin. Its windows were foggy.

Inside this car (which was now hurdling through the business district, plenty of streetlamps flying by, but still no people), a man, the driver, turned to look at the woman sitting next to him. The move did not mesh well.

"Will ya watch the road, ya maniac!"

"Don't tell me how to drive my car!" The man shot back. Like there's even a soul on this God-forsaken road, he thought, but didn't say. He should, no, he must be civil, because if there was ever an occasion for it, the time was now.

Just minutes earlier, the confession had caught him off guard. No, it was not even a confession, really it was just the one word, but that one word had come like a gunshot in the dark, or bird poop to the head, it just shocked. That word, the man had thought, it was all just that one word, the whole world is that fucking word. Still, it shouldn't happen to someone so young, the entire situation was-but none of this made it past his lips.

The car was raging now, barreling through the empty city streets, running recklessly through red lights and stop signs alike; there was no one to see, and no one to catch them. The shrieking engine note filled the cabin, where the woman now sat with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. She was younger than she looked, and still young enough for this to be flattering. Her dark hair, which ended just below her shoulders, curved upwards at the tip; a graceful curve, the likes of which she had many, even though she had lost some weight in the past few weeks. Now she knew why.

She was ticked off. Angry even, but it felt good, better angry than afraid. It had been worse those few minutes ago (how long had it been? 10? 15?) before she had said that word, and her entire world had crushed down all around. It had been like that since the beginning, shortly after she had first heard her prognosis, sitting around all the beeping monitors in those thin hospital sheets. She had the fear from the start, fear of not being allowed back to school, not earning her degree, losing her job, the bills, the incessant hospital visits, and the long confinements at home in front of the TV. Her livelihood was her world, all of it besides this man sitting next to her. Now she hated them all. She turned to face him.

"You'll have to cover for me at work."
"No way."
"What?"
"No way, because you're coming back to do your job."
"I'm not coming back, the doctors alread-"
"Then they'll hire someone new!" The man regretted the words as soon he uttered them. There is only a short space that separates two people in a car, and now he felt the venom between them. "Sorry," he muttered.

His partner sighed. "Look, don't apologize, alright? I hate it when you apologize, you do it so goddamn much. And slow down, will ya?" The man, almost on cue, pressed the gas harder. They had left the city now, and the roads were getting worse. It was dark. Every now and then the car would hit another pothole, bounce off its wheel, fly a couple feet, then drop with a sickening crash that shuddered the steel, creaking chassis, and it felt like the car might at any minute shred apart around its passengers.

"If you don't come back, you'll just disappear." The man sounded like he was pleading now.

"I never disappear, Mike." Thud. Lurch. Crash. "How do you think I got here? I know how to make people watch me."

The man looked over at her. This was Iris for you. Push her a little bit, make fun of her hair or find her on a bad day at work, and she could out-whine a formula one car. Have too many drinks with her on any given night, and she will for sure call in sick the next morning, and leave you to pick up her slack. But push her hard enough, threaten her, put her in danger, and you find she either doesn't get scared or doesn't show it, she just glows. Like some radiant siren song supernova saturated lightening hit her all over her face after she had had a couple of drinks and was glowing anyway, and then she would become crazy valkyrie minotaur woman. She could carry a fucking sickle, the man thought. Thud. lurch. Crash.

Iris was indeed glowing now, and she could feel the eyes on her, just one pair now, but there would be more. Oh, there would be more. "The whole world's gonna watch me, Mike." Her voice raised a little higher than normal. "They're either gonna watch me live or watch me die, but they're gonna watch me." Transformation complete. Minotaur woman lowered herself back into her seat, then closed her eyes for a while.

There would have been a full moon that night, where it not for the clouds. At this moment, though, part of it peeked out and illuminated a single red car, still shining from the rain, speeding along an empty highway. Of its two passengers, neither one knew the entire route, but the trip was over before they knew it.

I Spent Years Reading These Tombstones

Light rain fell on the sidewalks of Westwood. I commandeered the sinking boat down the jagged cement streets, but parking was nowhere to be found. Thus forced away from my destination by honks and a screeching blond-haired twig, I settled for a spot two blocks away. It was a fine spot, if I do say, and it proved quite receptive to my receptacle, which I deftly maneuvered inward between two towering steel monoliths, swung my leg over, and finished by inserting a quarter into a slot.

With this in mind, I strolled down to my destination with my heavy burden, but they wouldn't accept what I had to offer. "None of these books will be used next quarter," said the shopkeeper. A shorter man, very nice allocation of facial hair, looked Middle Eastern with the twinge of boredom.

Books are the only physical reminder of the years I've spent here, but they have become the heaviest, most burdensome things I own. In the past I've felt indebted to them, to a degree at least that halted my hand from selling them like I had sold my furniture. Those times seem so far behind me now, that I am left with a box of eulogies, and I find myself making increasingly concerted efforts to bury these a pawn shop.

December 1st

Hello December! You are an end of sorts, and this makes you extra special in my heart. Please take care to sweep everything out the door, as there's an awful lack of room in here lately.

The Tribal Chief

You hear a lot of rumors about the tribal chief, and like any good Angelino in the public eye, he does nothing whatsoever to clear them up. Some say he has resided over the beach for 30 years, others say since 1962, back when the drum first started to beat, the beach attracted nudes, and “everyone was naked” (this last point is a source of heavy debate). One wide-eyed drummer piped that the tribal chief only kept to the sandy side of the 33 block boardwalk. “He never leaves the beach,” in hushed tones. Later I learned that none of these rumors were true, except for one: the beach really is about 33 blocks. It’s a big place to be looking for a little chief.

The only place you are guaranteed to find the chief is right in the midst of the drum circles, and he cuts quite a figure there even amongst that crowd. He comes to you in shiny black pants and a black motorcycle jacket, the kind with foam padding at the shoulders and elbows. A lot of foam is poking out, like someone dragged the thing halfway across a football field paved in hard concrete; then I realized, highly possible. On the other hand, next to the baggy handouts some of the others are sporting, the chief looks—well, he looks like a chief. The jacket fits. Talismans hang from his neck over his exposed chest. And the pants are cut from the same imitation leather that women so often find disagreeably sleazy in nightclubs. The chief is one of those rare homeless people who have found a function to their dress besides keeping them warm.

The End of the World is Lasting Forever

These baby blue, cinnamon apple red and lemon colored candles that I keep around me are burning out. I go to pick up the bright yellow-colored one, the one with a butterfly shaped into the wax, but it hides sparkles in my palm. Now I have sparkles all over my face. My mom laughed, but the ones in my hair will probably be there forever.

My keyboard is sparkling.

Speaking of home, it's my last night here, and then off for a few more weeks. Time in a real bed has been something of an ironic twist. I sleep on a twin, circa middle school, sitting on a classic wooden frame from a garage sale re-finished in a garage to look like kiddie beds from the movies, covered with flowery sheets from the 80's (in China). I wake up every morning with a sore back. My body is more used to sleeping bags on carpet and lightly cushioned gray upholstery. Not for long though. Two more weeks and I'll have to get acquainted with this bed again, and to my last quarter here.

Everyone has those moments when they look back and wish they could have done more in the time they had. The difference for me is that I set the time limit. Maybe I'll cheat and set my deadline back a little longer. Two weeks into winter, maybe three or four, and by then I will definitely be done with 'social projects.' Until then, I still have to couch-surf a week with strangers, spend more time at the beach, and sleep with the top down once. I'll miss the candles.

Speaking of candles, there's a big difference between ending something and just having something die out. I have a friend who will never bow out a candle once he's lit it. The wax will settle in weird ways, and when you come back to light it later you just get weird light. In Buddhism, blowing out a candle is often related to achieving Nirvana. Everyone is surrounded by an overwhelming light of feeling, pain, 'being,' but you can make this light smaller, into the light from a candle, so small that you have no possessions, no family and no attachments, and then extinguish even this. Suffer no more. I am of the crowd that does not like to blow out candles. It all seems more poetic to cap it, cut off the air, and watch the light fade.

Harrrrrt

For all his exploits, explorations, exhortations, and other such extremely exaggerated events of swashbucklery (exacting revenge and the like, you know), the pirate came back to the same room year after year.

This particular room was special for a couple of reasons. First of all, no one, no matter how hard they looked, could ever find it. It was hidden inside a house, that was built along a street of identical-looking houses. Ten houses on the left that differed only in the shade of brown paint used on the walls, twenty more on the right with a slightly unique lawn gnome as the only indicator that you were anywhere different than you had been eight houses back. And when someone did chance upon the right house, the pirate's house (which never happened), they couldn't find a way in, because they didn't have a key. Now this may seem silly to some of you, but for a pirate a key is a pretty precious thing that doesn't come along all the time. A lot of pirates out there don't have a single key to show off to their friends.

Perhaps the reason the pirate kept coming back, though, was that this room never, ever, ever changed. The pictures on the wall had been there for ages. They told a story; a portrait of a pirate as a young man. When the pirate came into this room, this eternal room, he stepped into a simpler time, where a feller didn't have to worry about bad wenches and sea monsters and scurvy. It was so simple, that sometimes this pirate would just sit in this room, from morning until nighttime. Then, when it was dark, the pirate would take off his hat, then his boots, then his breeches and overcoat and unbuckle his sword and take off his rings and jangly bracelets and just disappear.

Perhaps You Should Sit Down Before You Read This

9 weeks into this, and the 'project' is still the biggest secret I keep from many of my friends. I decided from the beginning that it would be a 'need-to-know' basis, which meant either I could sleep at your place or I could keep stuff at your place. Since then I've revealed to a lot to people where there was no benefit, and shied away from it when someone truly could have helped me out. Every now and then someone overhears something, finds out that way, and everything turns into a sitcom for about five minutes. Neither of my roommates from last year have any idea. Maybe half the people I work with have heard from one source or another. Most importantly, my parents have no clue and I intend to keep it that way. I don't tell most people I meet, and when I'm pressed, I lie about it. So, here I come clean.

"I live on Veteran. Near Strathmore."
Well, actually... the graveyard side of Veteran is the best place to hunker down for the night because no one walks on that side of the street. So I "live" there as many nights as I can find a spot. The vague area around Veteran and Strathmore is also where Jack lives, and this has become a second home for me.

"I get a nice view of Westwood from my place too."
From any angle you could possibly imagine.

"I don't cook much anymore. No time."
No kitchen.

"I'm more of a morning person myself."
The sun is up by 7. On hot days it takes a good two hours before you can start to cook something in that sun. I'm up around 8.

(To the boss, interviewer, or judge) "Traffic wasn't bad this morning."
I slept in your parking lot last night so I wouldn't have to 'drive here' this morning.

"I'm going to bed, goodnight."
I've slept on a bed once this quarter. It was the night I spent in the hospital.

"Yeah you should come over sometime."
I'll show you around the trunk.

A Question of

I'm sitting in a long, low room that is dark, inside a dark mansion with brown walls located in a place that I can only describe as resembling North Carolina. The bad part of North Carolina. And a third person has just barged noisily into this room.

Alarmed, I stand bolt upright. Someone knocks my chair down. An empty wrapper rolls across the floor, and I stoop to pick it up. A shadow engulfs me on the way down. In the darkness, I vaguely make out beads, tattered silk, and a pale, beautiful face.

Hope twitters into my head, then the sharp prick of a new idea, but the rest of my head is so far away, it won't be here for some time.

Update on Bigfoot

Right foot still large. Supersized. Left foot thankfully still small, plain-Jane dollar thirty-nine regular-sized golden french fries. Can't see veins. Pain still there. Cankle, overwhelmingly cankle. Cankle cankle cankle cankle cankle cankle. Balloon? Hippopotamus. Round, rotund, rolly-polly, racked-up, rear-end biased, re-sized to the extreme, really really really cankle. Cankle!

Fragme

He is not famous. He is not widely known. Most people would not recognize his name, are unaware of his past, are unaware that he exists. They will never see him in US Weekly. Yet he is a public figure. He is a public figure in that everyone in a room knows exactly when he enters and when he leaves. If there was a coffee shop, and Helen Keller was inside drinking a French roast, and this guy walked in, Helen Keller would know. When he dances through the crowds, he looks straight ahead because he can feel the eyes drilling into him from left and right. If you had been with him for any one of these instances, you could see this too, but then you would not see it, because you would be too busy, looking at him.

Alive

I've spent the last several hours alternating between feeling very cold and very hot.

You see, my right foot is infected. The infection began with a cut, a scrape really, that left untreated turned my right foot into a balloon. The infection led to bouts of fever, which explains the shivering and sweating. The fever led to delirium, which I always consider quite enjoyable, but this is besides the point. Pointedly, I have undergone what I would call a mild fatal experience.

There are things you learn when you are this close to death: water is the tastiest substance on Earth, eating is overrated and debilitating pain in the foot can be conquered by laying down. My right foot is so big, my Crocs which are usually a size and a half too big now fit snugly over said foot, and I admit this is kind of a plus. But the most important thing you learn is... love.

This piece just fell flat. I hope my shoes fit tomorrow for my court date.

The Problems of Smell for Derek Liu

The problem with being homeless and being by yourself is that you never truly know how good or bad you smell at any given moment. Sure, you're usually a pretty clean guy, but then again you got your clothes this morning from a suitcase sitting in your trunk next to your shoes and dirty laundry (which sits in another suitcase, which sometimes you intermix). Or maybe you got your clothes yesterday morning, who knows? Then there's your car. I've done all I can to make it smell nice. There's an odor-deleter hanging from the rearview, a bag of pina colada scent under the drivers seat, and two (two!) vanilla scent sticks in the vents. But sometimes I still catch a whiff of something... strange. Is it the car? Is it me? Or is it the car, and by transitive property, me? Maybe I'm lucky and it's just my nappy hair.

Fortunately, no one cares if you smell bad when no one's around. I suppose you might, but you don't smell yourself that often, and honestly smelling bad sometimes is just one of the sacrifices I've come to accept with this lifestyle. I'm just afraid that I'm stinking up everywhere I go and none of my friends are telling me. Because seriously, I'm not sure I would tell my friend that dude smells like rot. That's just rude.

Return Of The King

The Bag King is back!

He's got three this time. Disguised bags, or rather bags in a bag. Somewhere in there, he also has clothes, yet when I see him he's always in the same outfit. Same blue Adidas sweats with dark brown mismatched blazer, draped over his long, wispy shape. When he stands in line he stands a head and a half over the people around him, softly grasping a mangled five dollar bill with both hands. He holds the money out the way a thirsty man cups water from a basin to drink; his skinny elbows make such sharp angles that if he were to suddenly thrust one back, I think he might impale the face of the girl behind him.

When he gets to the counter to order, he briefly lowers the scarf that hides his mouth. I hold my breath- finally!-just as he takes a deep one, then another, then one more deep breath. He has a short, scraggy mustache, very defined cheekbones, and no beak.

He bears a passing resemblance to Dave Chapelle.

It's 11 O'clock. Do You Know Where Your Face Wash is?

The showers in the gym are public. They are partitioned into sets of two, side-by-side, running down a white linoleum hallway. They resemble cells in a cloister. During the day these get a lot of action, as in you're showering next to one guy and across from another guy. And the past few times I've walked out of these showers, I've been forced to leave a little part of me behind.

It pains me to write about these experiences, considering the preciousness and sanctity of what I've lost, the sheer embarrassment was almost enough to silence my voice. But no, I just can't let this dark secret eat away at me anymore.

Those of you who have no stomach for grotesque descriptions will have no problem reading further.

I'm a face wash dropper. I forget face wash.

Just slips my mind. And really, you can't blame me. Here I am drying out, pushing my wet feet through my underwear, navigating through the maze of steaming bodies, all as quickly as I can manage without looking to the left or right. It's hard, but I know it's no excuse. I'm despicable.

And the worst part is, it's happened more than once. This past incident will make three total. Three bright-eyed little face washes, literally left out there to dry. Sometimes at night I can still hear their voices. I can still see their faces, full of innocence and promises of being oil-free.

I can only hope that a gentle, clean-faced stranger will have picked them up and given them a good home. I shudder to imagine them in the hands of some abusive, overly-compulsive face-washer, squeezing the last bits of cream cleanser from their twisted bottles.

Please, if you see a stray bottle of face wash, tell them I'm sorry. And don't tell them about the shiny new bottle of Deep Clean with Sea Salt Rub that I bought today.

On Sleeping at the Beach, Posthumously

Fortunately for me, I woke up far too early that morning. I felt warm with my head underneath my sleeping bag, where I had curled up in a ball the night before. That night I had concealed my shoes underneath my bag, and when I awoke I was relieved to feel the uncomfortable lump protruding through the fabric, near my thigh. No bum had stolen it. Then I remembered I was a bum. My mind wandered to the plastic water bottle I had left near a rock, and hoped it was still there.

There wasn't much time to think though. The rain that had woken me up was still coming down. plat plat plat. My bag would be dry for another ten minutes at most. Or is it at least? At least, that gives me 9 more minutes to sleep. I beat back the idea, wiggled carefully out onto the sand, and turned my face up to the rain. My water bottle was still there.

It was 6am, the clouds were a dark blue of early dawn, and seemed to stretch well into the ocean as two pieces of fluttering paper, upset by the crashing tide. My glasses started to fog, so I took them off. I retrieved my shoes, took my backpack out of my sleeping bag where I had huddled with it the night before, and rolled up the bag. The sand around my bag had been shuffled. I wondered how much of it had already been like that and how much of it was made by me tossing around in the dark. Maybe people were walking around me, over me in the dark, mistaking me for another dead rock. I might've looked like a tombstone.

Maybe I could have stayed longer that morning, and sat down on one of the rocks nearby that didn't give me any shelter. I might've had an epiphany there, sitting in the rain, gradually feeling the wetness seep through my three sweaters. Something would have clicked, and I would have seen through the beach, sand, the waves, I would have seen through it all into something beyond, reality beyond the unreal. The truth of nature. I wish I could say this, but I don't believe it. There's nothing glorious about waking up on a rainy beach, and you have plenty of time to think about how much it might rain the next night as you make your slow, laborious way through the sand.

There was no nightingale, serenading slumber, no doves to herald the dawn. Just rain, falling on a vast graveyard.

The Bag King has a Beak

There is a man who I have seen in the coffee house a great many times. I find him there at night, but I suspect if I were to come during the day, he might be still be there. Most of the time he reads; he is reading when I get there, and still reading when I leave.

Today I saw this man leave, and this would have been a hell of an ordeal for most people. You see, he had a lot of bags. They were plastic bags, the kind that the student store uses mixed in with nondescript ones, and he must have had at least a dozen of them. I don't know what he had in them, they looked lumpy enough to be clothes, but who knows? He could have had cabbages, for all I knew. Whatever they were, he planned to carry them all home on his bike.

The man is dressed the same every time I see him. He wears a dirty brown tweed blazer, not quite a business suit but close, mismatched with a pair of blue Adidas sweat pants, of the style you see volleyball players walk to practice in. Shiny black boots poke out underneath, and as he walks I think I can see studs. He is tall and undeniably thin, but with naturally broad shoulders. All this you can see from the way his blazer stretches out on top, then fits inward at the waist. He has the frame and arms of a high school basketball player. White earphones are always dangling from his ears, and he always wears a scarf over his mouth, and a dark woolen cap over his dreadlocks. As I look, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out what looks like a white plastic headwrap, and stretches it on his head over his cap. Before, I wondered if he had a beak. Now I have the sudden thought that he might transform into an eagle before my eyes, spread his long arms wide and fly away.

He stands very straight over his bags; so straight that when he bends to pick up a handful of his bags it seems to take him an eternity. When he finally stoops, it looks like it's causing him just enough pain that he can suppress it. While he reaches down with one hand he holds the other behind his back, revealing a silver chain dangling from his wrist.

And so he stooped, grabbed, rose, and put each bag on alternating handlebars of his bicycle with the speed of a 50-story crane. After a couple of bags I worried he might not have room on the handlebars to rest his hands. Still he piled them on, and when he had only one bag left, he paused for a little longer, stooped in his stiff, ponderous way, retrieved it as an ape would scoop up an infant, and put it with the rest. Then he wheeled his bike around and stepped into the night.

Guns Out, Weekend

The gun this weekend is the D90. I'll be shooting with it on 10.5mm, 50mm, and anywhere from 18-200mm. I got the lights to send some errant splashes, 10, 50, and 200 feet away.

This weekend I'm traveling to Venice Beach, to live there for 36 hours. I plan to sleep on the street when I need to, but I will be trying to stay up as long as possible. I plan to find someone to trail, a fellow Venice-liver, someone who's been roughing it longer and can show me what's beyond the sand and concrete.

I used to take offense when I read about photographers who would stoop into the scullys of second-class life, taking in a 'foreign world' through the distancing perspective of the camera man. They were the bourgeois, and theirs was the world that is foreign.

Million Dollar Question

Everyone wants to know: where do I go at night? Well it changes. Here, I'll list them in order of frequency.

1) In the car, parked on Veteran on the cemetery side. Pros: quiet, no one walks on this side of the street, trees nearby. Cons: first to fall to the imminent zombie attack.

2) On the couch at Jack's place. Pros: couch. Also food in the fridge and internet. But mostly couch, and oh indoor plumbing is nice. Cons: This is also quite close to the cemetery, so zombies again. Overstaying a welcome, and this is an understatement. And the more I stay here, well, the less I'm homeless.

3) Place where I got too drunk to go anywhere else. Pros: sweet, sweet oblivion. Cons: "I can't feel my face!"

4) In the car, parked at an undisclosed location. Nice try, but I'm onto you. Pros: can only be found by those who are pure of heart. Cons: too hard to find a bathroom in the morning.

5) (a tie between) Jose's place, the Daily Bruin office, and the library. I've spent one night at each of these places, and all with very favorable results.



Now, a small list of places where I plan to sleep, in no particular order:
-on the street (a la real homeless)
-in a stranger's couch, via couch-surf
-in a forest
-in a cave
-somewhere with the top of my car folded down

The Sum of All My Fears

It happened. I didn't even realize until it was too late. I never thought it would happen to me, but I found myself standing in an empty parking lot, bewildered..

When I change outfits in my car, I often leave my shoes underneath the car instead of in the trunk after wearing them, the reason being that when you don't have much space to begin with, you don't want smelly sneakers stinking it up. So far it's worked pretty well.

Not today. Today I drove away and left my poor shoes sitting there by the curb of lot 4. Gone. Didn't even look back. Not just any shoes either, my favorite pair of Royal Elastics.

SO, I give to you, the countermeasure.




All I is is a boy trying to find his kicks

I Made it Halfway

Poet laureates are halfway done, and I am five weeks removed from home with five weeks more to go.

The experiment in the past few weeks has become--dare I say it--easy. Those ever-increasing distractions like schoolwork and traveling have taken the edge out of the inconveniences by demanding more of my time and energy. In large part, though, I just got used to my daily routine, being better able to cut through the practical problems while finding myself dulled to the psychological ones. Those first weeks, the span of time from evening until midnight would sometimes put me in danger of feeling a terrible loneliness. It wasn't that I missed anyone in particular; I just missed having a place to undress, cook, to sit and stand without being anything but nothing. In another context, they call this being homesick.

So now I'm comfortable, yet the comfort is starting to throw me off. I get the feeling of slipping back into another box, maybe sized and shaped a little differently than the first, but still a box. Part of it, again, are the distractions. I have a book report due tomorrow, a midterm the next day, and another midterm the day after that. Once that passes, I will have to start doing other things. This weekend or the next I want to stay entirely on Venice beach, maybe sleeping outside on the street for a night. I have to start talking to that source for a story on the economy's effect on students. And I'll be in the process of preparing to leave this school.

The halfway point. When this is all over, my biggest fear will be to look back and realize that this "social experiment" with all its troubles was never truly incorporated into my goals, that it just served as a companion, someone to wake you up in the morning and tell you to keep going but who had an annoying voice.

Count Your Countenance

For someone who can fit all their worldly belongings into a trunk (of a small convertible, no less!) I have quite a few outfits. There are three cotton tank tops that I wear consistently enough to bank on the short-term memory that my friends seem to exhibit towards my clothes. I have the standard light blue jeans, ripped for good measure, black jeans for my dress shirts, and neon blue jeans for Halloween. Then there's jackets. A long, soft cotton drapery that hangs down past my thighs, in the dark gray you always see on homeless people, is my favorite. Close second is a light blue with short sleeves and a stretchy bottom portion, which my friend's grandpa once mistook for his. And I have the black hooded sweater that I keep because it fits so well with the standard light torn blue jeans. All this goes in my trunk, except when I take them out to wear them or wash them.

My fashion hasn't changed since I became homeless. Everything is a bit more wrinkled, a little less fresh, but you could never tell I was living out of a car if you saw me. Unless you saw the car, or me changing in the car, or perhaps sleeping in it at night and emerging from the passenger side door in the morning to get clothes from that small trunk, and while I wormed back into the passenger to wiggle into those clothes you might think something was up. Well I'm just doing this social experiment man, minimalist living and mumbo jumbo sorta thing you know? You feel that, man?

I can't imagine what people REALLy think when they find out I'm doing this, especially those who already know me well. In part, I think they tolerate it because no matter what I just don't look homeless, and maybe the appearance has some role in keeping the signals from getting all the way to the brain. Like a car accident on the side of the freeway that people stare at, stare all the way until their necks hurt from snapping back after they crush the bumper on the car in front of them. Then you might not get home for hours.

A Practical Nomad

Every day begins in one of three ways: sunlight streaming through a sliver of window that had been left uncovered; solar heat working its way through the obsidian that makes up the cloth convertible top; or an uncomfortably full bladder. The third of these represents the greatest immediate threat. Yes, I suppose in a tightly-shut car slumber can turn to suffocation soon enough if it's hot, more likely you'll just come out sweaty and smelling a bit off. But beginning the day invariably sets off a 10-minute biological countdown that must, absolutely without a doubt result in finding a restroom, and failing that a private bush or tree or large SUV. It's the one biggest way that living in a car can add stress your daily routine.

So you find ways to cope, and you cope fast. You know the closest restrooms in relation to anywhere. You do the daily trunk-inventory calculus: which books to bring, which clothes to bring, whether you'll work out, which shoes, how to fit toothbrush, toothpaste, and face wash into the small compartment of the backpack next to everything else. Park, throw things around, go. You think with the precision of a military commander. You look ahead like planned parenthood.

This takes you about twenty minutes into the day.