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.