"So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality —"
- Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
The caged bird dreams of clouds.
- Japanese Proverb
To believe in one’s dreams is to spend all of one’s life asleep.
- Chinese Proverb
I began work on the final draft of the book last week. I had planned to do maybe three or four more revision passes, but realized over the past few weeks that it was ready to be finished.
There were several issues with the earlier versions, the most serious was figuring out what the basic "story" was. The original structure was chronological, and that was the best way to get it all down. What made the revision passes difficult was that it wasn't how I wanted to tell the story, but was stuck in a linear structure.
The original conception, which dated back to the 80s, as related in a past post, was to create it like a piece of music, which sounded fine on paper.
One famous model is Finnigan's Wake (by James Joyce), a brilliant "musically" worded novel that no normal human being can read without a translator. Which is too arcane even for a bookworm like me.
There is that age old form called poetry, and it's been around for centuries. It's basically very tight and expressive prose (in most cases) that has a "metre," or rhythm, and in some forms, a lot of rhyming but the problem was that the second anything is called poetry, most people tune it out.
We hear do hear poetry all time, in song lyrics, opening phrases in TV shows and movies, etc, but there's a problem with writing that sounds best when read aloud...which is, it won't always be read aloud and if it was, people would think you can't read without moving your lips. Actually, I would imagine a melodious, if obscure book like Finnigan's Wake would be an ideal audio book.
Most of us can feel a sense of music in our heads, though, triggered by metre and word choice, so I've spent a lot of time reading a lot of the old classics, (which I do anyway) and looked for phrases and passages that triggered an internal rhythm, that gave a sense of ebb and flow, but the final inspiration came from an unlikely place, ice skating.
...Hanyu and ice skating...
I had been reading about this skater named Hanyu, who's been described by the New York Times as the Michael Jackson of figure skating, and who won an unprecedented second gold medal in the Winter Olympics in Seoul.
Ice skating, particularly the men's competition, had become boring to me. It seemed like it was going from one jump to another. Spectacular moments to be sure, but you kind of find yourself just waiting for the next jump. That and the seemingly endless controversy and trolling, but that's true for most sports talk actually.
Watching Hanyu on video seemed different for a number of reasons. There were skaters who could do more quad jumps but few could match how complete he was. If you took away the big jumps, his routine was still mesmerizing.
His choreography wasn't the only thing that caught my eye, it was the joyful energy. I'm sure they all love what they're doing, but this guy really made it look like it was only thing he wanted to do in life. Perhaps it goes further than that, in that he's found the thing that transforms the boyish self into something transcendent, beyond just the craft, or technique.
I think most writers know that feeling. Trying to get beyond the "craft" and write something transcendent.
Understanding the concept of craft is important. I remember Marlon Brando in his famous Playboy magazine interview talk about that; how so many settle for craft, and why that's seductive. For one thing, you can often make a living with craft, and that isn't always the case with art.
Yet the road does go through craft, as a gate or departure point.
One thing that struck me about the way the commentators talked about Hanyu was they admired how he kept pressing himself, risking failure and easy victories to keep changing and become better. That's a quality many artists don't have. If you can get to a point where the money rolls in playing a particular sound, or acting in genre movies, it's tough to give that up to grow, to risk failure and struggle again.
The list of major artists who've taken such a true risk is pretty small. Miles Davis, for example, did several times. At one point giving up ballads, which were a fan (and his) favorite, and a form he loved doing. He gave it up and moved into rock fusion (or created it to be more accurate) to keep growing, and he said later in interviews that giving up ballads was one of the hardest things he ever had to do.
If Hanyu hadn't changed with the times, he'd have maybe won one gold medal, he was that good, and then retired or skated till younger skaters started beating him with newer and more athletic routines. He managed to translate his artistic style into the newer athletic jump oriented era, and won a second gold. Given his love for the sport, he's a good bet to be the type who'd work four more grueling years to get to the next Olympics, and compete against a young generation of skaters who are already winning on any day he was less than 100%.
To us, it seems like intense pressure, but to him, it's like a dream life, with rewards worth the effort. Even if he loses in the next Olympics, he wouldn't consider it a wasted life.
He's clearly worked very hard to become a great skater, and persevered through some big setbacks. The dream he reached for was a real goal that encompassed a life, and not just wishing for stardom or riches. If he'd never reached such heights, I get the feeling that he'd still be skating in some rink and that joy so obvious in the videos would still be there.
...more about dreams...
I can't say writing the book has always given me joy, and I'm sure Hanyu has hated skating at times, but there's been moments when a passage came out perfectly or a chapter came together in a way that made me read it again with pleasure.
I try to remember that the real dream isn't the book being published, but that in writing it, I'm in it in the now and to enjoy it.
What I saw in Hanyu's skating routines was the look on his face, the aura of a guy who's totally in this world he created and lives in, and the rest is just, at best, icing on the cake. He doesn't just skate from one jump to the next, what happens in between is just as important, which means he's really in the moment, as connected as a person can be to life.
If I can get that feeling while writing this book, then it'll have succeeded beyond my expectations. I know it'll be a lot of work, but I can see when Hanyu skates, it's all worth it to him.
I want that feeling too.
...the edge of darkness...
I know that parts of my book will have to be dark. Ivy and I weren't in a pretty place. The later drafts of the book became darker in parts because over time the distance from past events developed where I could (but not always comfortably) visit times and places that were fearsome back then, seeing lives that were so crushed in spirit (or heading there) that it was a wonder that more people didn't die out there.
The book could have become a Grapes of Wrath trip, or a lurid description of the low life, but that would just be craft. I had to find what was trancendent about what happened, what was human and universal, so that the average reader could see and relate to what was going on.
By transcendent, I mean, what could make the reader feel like the book was as much about him or her as it was about the people out there. I had to go back there in my mind and really look around, and step out of the detached observer viewpoint of the earlier drafts and see what I was doing too.
For example, I had to admit to myself that at certain points I was a wreck, making all sorts of mistakes, and living in various dream worlds. I've talked about that in earlier posts, that it's a complex subject underneath that single word.
There were some dreams that saved my life, protected my self esteem and most importantly kept me ready to leave that life when the opportunity arose.
There were also dreams and images that we hear throughout our lives in movies and media that are lies, that will cripple you or make you susceptible to a con.
...life is survival of the fittest...
One of the worst ideas seen in movies and media is that "the streets" are a tough Darwinian environment that can be survived with toughness and "street smarts."
The idea that street life is Darwinian is true, but the idea that life is a food chain" where there's alpha predators on top who rule the scene is a human conception, and a male one at that. Movies generally show the streets as ruled by bad dudes who can kick butt and live like sharks among the sardines, but those types don't last long and are easy to avoid, and it's a good idea to do so. The main danger isn't from the alphas, it's getting caught up in any trouble they seem to attract from the police and competitors.
Even the biggest shark in the ocean doesn't have the power to make another species extinct. Tuna and Dolphins can eat all the sardines they can find, but there's too many to wipe out (unless mankind is involved).
If those animals could actually wipe out other species, they would only accomplish their own destruction, as they're as dependent on food as the lowliest ant or clam. An antelope in good condition has a better than equal chance to survive an environment with big cats in it, and a predator in a place where there's no food has no ability to create or grow it and will starve.
Plus those big teeth or claws are only a relative danger to most species. An earthworm has very little to fear from a lion or rattlesnake. Those who are what we call prey have developed all manner of survival strategies from speed to stealth, and most of it works.
Writers often describe this or that person's "street cred" and it has some basis in this or that circumstance or scene, but it's never a universal language or skill set. A "street wise person" from Detroit probably wouldn't last long in Chicago.
Don't get me wrong, I never underestimated the ability of a pusher or pimp to cause me serious pain or trouble, but I was more wary of their lower rent customers needing quick cash via crime for the services. Most of those alphas tended to treat people well, and didn't kick ass all over the place like in the movies. Because to most, you were either a potential customer or not worth the effort to even bully if you minded your own business.
Sure, some were flamboyant, but the police were generally right on top of their heads all the time, and if you could see them, they were small fry. The real money stays hidden and low key.
For a homeless person, the rules were a bit different.
As a homeless person, I couldn't just call the cops on a dealer unless I was willing to (or was able to) leave the area, and I didn't have that option. There weren't many areas I could live in, and that meant if the word got around that I was an informer, it was easy to find me.
If I spotted a dealer, I'd just quietly go elsewhere. I wasn't generally scared of them...like I said, most didn't care about some guy living in his car but when they hit an area, and the customers started flocking around, the police in that small town were almost certainly watching or had informants around. I was deathly afraid of being seen in the wrong company or being questioned (and being seen talking to police).
The scariest time was that six weeks stuck in a meth zone in an inoperative car. That's when a lot of the druggie scene went on all around me and I couldn't leave. It's the main center of the book, the summer chapters, and I kept a lot of the passages as true to what I was writing at the time on my gofundme updates and blog.
For example, one incident described in detail was when a guy in a van that I figured was a dealer parked in front of me to meet his couriers. He knew I was a regular there, and I'd put up the window period shades up when he came, a signal indicating that I had no interest in seeing anything, but still, he didn't know for sure and his couriers played the intimidation game with me with racist shouts and other bullying gestures to keep me in line.
I had to learn to see past that stuff, and realize that they were the scared ones and if I kept that in mind, I'd come out ok. It was a crime zone and contrary to popular belief, crime zones are crawling with cops all over and the fear I felt was shared by everyone, though we had different bogeymen in our nightmares.
It was the most fearful and paranoid period I've ever experienced and it couldn't be fully written about at the time as it was known to some that I was a blog writer, and I couldn't take the chance that some bust or trouble could be traced back to, or blamed on my writing.
Not that I had that kind of power, but people out there can have this inflated idea about any kind of media out there. When you read those chapters about that time, you'll see many interesting things written that go against the normal ideas about street life.
Much of what became the first draft of the chapters about that summer were typed out on an iPhone. I had a laptop, but frankly didn't dare show it in a car. In fact, I rarely showed the iPhone for that matter. I discreetly treated it like a notepad, jotting down passages intended later for the blog if I ever got out of there (hadn't really decided to write the book yet), but was best kept off the internet at that time.
As the drafts have evolved, a lot of perspective came in, plus the safety of being thousands of miles away freed me up to describe things and events that would have been a bad idea to publish if there was even a slim chance it would be seen by any who knew me out there.
...the only thing you have to fear is...
One of the things I marveled at was how paranoid and fearful I had become, perhaps with cause, but still, it was a mindset that in some ways was similar to the druggies and hard core homeless out there. My prose at the time reflected a tough, detached and dispassionate sensibility. It was disjointed at times, often running off on long spurts of jacked up descriptions of situations that blended reality into inner perceptions and dreams. I may not have taken any meth, but the atmosphere did affect me.
I would patch dreamy images into the scenery to make sense of things; one finds that a lot of what is going on out there is really partly playing out in your mind and influences what you see. Even the meth or bath salt users weren't just numbing out, but were really trying to adjust their inner TV sets, so to speak, to get a better picture. Reality isn't a purely objective state.
I made it a point to refine but not change the passages written at the time. Paranoia and fear intensify certain details, as does dispair or pity, and I had thoughts and attitudes that differed from my previously settled life. I saw the people's fates trend upwards or downwards, and frankly, for many reasons, couldn't have changed any of those trajectories if I tried. It was a helpless feeling.
Part of my detachment was because I was distracted by the effort to save myself. But seeing such things now, it became clear there were life arcs and progressions, with many of the lives redeemable.
Being homeless profoundly changed me, and while I won't spell out how, the perceptive reader will see in the events described in the summer chapters. Whether it was change, catharsis or revelation is something I guess will take more time to unfold. But the person I was that summer was the only one who could have written some of the passages preserved in the book.
The alphas out there weren't on top of any sort of food chain. It was only apparent power, and as fragile as any business run out of a car trunk. The ones who really taught me how to survive out there were the supposed prey, the gazelles and supposed small fry who had better skills like stealth and common sense.
The book doesn't talk about the alphas much, it's the ordinary souls out there that had grandeur.
...the Puritan Ethic, and shame, shame, shame...
One of the main concepts of life is the Puritan Ethic, both in the homeless and the people who lived around that world. It wasn't just the external stuff seen in movies, the prudishness which is really more Victorian Age stuff. It's about the concepts of work and commerce being Godly, and that sin is always punished.
There is a lot of contempt out there for the homeless. Not because they're homeless, most with common sense know that such things can happen to anyone, but because these people appear to be lazy and just do drugs all day. Most get that idea from the media who tend to prefer the dissolute images of the ones who've fallen pretty far down the chain. The media stories seem definitive, but are a narrow view (which has been discussed in detail in earlier blog entries).
The Puritan Ethic isn't really about being prudish. The Puritans weren't any different from the rest of England and Europe about it at the time.
The key concept is that sin deserves punishment. That's a concept that continues to this day, even with enlightened or liberal minds (if given political cover).
A young woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock generally has to carry a big burden of guilt, and being poor or on welfare is often seen as the product of sloth or laziness.
That combined with the strong streak of individualism in American culture implies responsibility, that one's fate is due to choices made, which is certainly true, but failure has come to be seen as the sum of bad choices, or decisions mainstream society doesn't approve of.
Homelessness is more nuanced than that. Most of us will agree that drug abuse can cause a severe fall, and accept that it's a condition as well as a choice. In a real estate market like parts of California, where you often have to earn 250,000 a year to live under a roof, a young woman who wants to leave a bad relationship often will end up homeless. It may be anecdotal, but I saw it out there. The supposed increase in homeless in Southern California isn't because a bunch of people exerted the druggie life but many were probably burned out of their homes by the huge wildfires last year and simply have nowhere to go.
Many of the women I saw out there began that life as runaways, or were escaping abusive relationships and didn't have the economic means to stay independent as most men. That often put their fates into the hands of predators or men similar to the ones they escaped, and thus the downward cycle continued. Judged from outside, their lives seemed dissolute and, well, sinful.
I focus on some of those women in the book. There's a tendency to look at the homeless like some sort of herd, as I've said in earlier posts, and that's simply not true. If you see how some of these women had to live, for example, more than a few women would recognize that much of the experience was familiar, and simply on a lower economic rung.
...the village...
The homeless are a lot more connected to society than it appears.
Virtually all of the drugs they use comes from the non-homeless (as long as we're generalizing) and those women who end up as prostitutes serve a market mainly made up of the so called respectable men of society. There's a lot of overlap in the various scenes, so I also talk about the truckers at the truck stop, who in more than a few cases patronize the same meth dealers, and the weekend warrior partiers who mingled with the young homeless were a key source of that scene's drugs.
I lost a lot of friends and even family after becoming homeless, most of whom felt that I had chosen that life. Once out there it turned out to be a commonality, that many that I ran into were black sheep or were considered losers by their families. So in a sense, it was "a choice" because to get help they were asked to go back and beg, or accept getting familial buttons pushed or shoved in their faces.
I'm sure it's more complex than that, but again, there's elements of that issue that more than a few people could relate to, to be shunned, misunderstood, or punished. It wasn't important if it was true or a reality, but that it was a perception held by many and it created a reluctance to ask for substantive help. Begging on the street isn't as hard as it involves asking strangers, but it was still painful particularly for the older homeless, and there was a myriad of defense mechanisms that were developed to avoid the shame reflex.
Drug use was a key cause for many of the homeless, but as the book will show, that's mainly the visible part, the scene that I and many others stayed away from as much possible.
...choices...gypsies, tramps and thieves...
Getting back to the concept of choice, there certainly were people out there who were gypsies, going back to their 60s hippie days, and due to unaffordable rents in areas like the San Francisco Bay Area, made up a sizable population of nomads of all ages, some of which, like the elderly, have already been documented in other media. They chose (willingly or not) homelessness as an economic choice. You'll rarely see them around as they avoid the hard core aggregations that get media coverage.
These groups stay under the radar and avoid making trouble, pretty much like regular people do, and also do so to avoid the automatic lazy ass label that comes with being identified as homeless. Many people are quite kind and understanding about the homeless, but many aren't, and that conflict tends to run along economic lines with solutions to the problem geared towards protecting property and sources of wealth.
As a rule, the poor don't get worked up about the homeless. Many know or are related to one or more, and realize it's a level they could drop into very easily. I avoided the class war stereotype in the book, as most of the attacks on the homeless came from individuals who happened to be well off, and not from a "class."
Virtually all of the homeless I talked to out there didn't relate the situation to anything resembling class consciousness or politics.
...back to shame...
The concept of punishment for sin was present. It's close cousin, shame, well, that's another thing.
There were varying degrees of shame out there, and it colored behavior in a veritable rainbow of shades. It affected how people approached getting out of that life and forced others into hasty decisions that trapped them. It was accentuated by the need for survival, and some did steal, beg, or lapse into apathy.
There were some very cool individuals who managed to find a center, and while they chose to be nomadic, did their best to help others. Their greatest gift was acceptance, and it helped more than a few out there.
I remember one asking me why I was homeless, that I seemed too smart.
My reply was that I wasn't as smart as I looked. We had a good laugh over that, and one thing I remember about him and others was that they never judged me, and constantly told me that I was someone who was going to get out.
Such people helped make things bearable, and their sense of acceptance gave the book an important center; that the concept of self esteem coming from within was very true, and that things like shame and punishment for sin is a self-inflicted wound.
That terrible summer of 2016 ended when I quit punishing myself. The 90 degree heat, I'm afraid, lasted a little while longer for my good friend Ivy and me.
...a note about my good friend Ivy...
The anniversary of Ivy's passing was in February, but I decided not to commemorate it in my social network accounts. The reason was that I've kept her presence in such places, where I use her picture as an icon or profile picture. In a sense, she's still around.
I figured to say a remark or two in the next blog entry, where it'd be a little more permanent.
The anniversary passed a bit painfully, as I honestly still miss her. Until this book is finished, I imagine many parts of our life out there will be revisited over and over.
Her role in the book gradually expanded, or should I say, come to reflect what she really was out there. Most pet owners come to see their little friends as family, and I viewed Ivy like that. One of the things that came out of the drafts was that she did her best to be a good member of the pack. Not just being extra cute for survival, but evolving a role.
The trick was how to write about her, to avoid having her becoming simply a cute waggy tail character, or a atavistic spirit like in Jack London's Call Of The Wild. I deleted earlier passages that simply described cute behavior and looked at the various incidents we were involved in, and after a lot of rough draft passages, evolved her role and responses that did in fact vary with each event.
There was one incident where we got charged by a large dog, and it was coming at us fast. I instinctively picked Ivy up, as she normally would bolt, yet this time, she stayed very calm, and I followed her lead and didn't go into a defensive mode.
It didn't stop charging, and it began to lunge at me, yet it didn't finish the attack...at that point I knew it wasn't trained to fight, it was just unruly. After a few seconds, it calmed down and just stared at Ivy, and I realized that it was a case of a male dog encountering a female, where they tend to lose aggression. Seconds later, the owner arrived and tackled the dog, thinking it was still attacking. He asked if I or my dog was hurt. He looked at Ivy and said that it was a good thing she was a female, and led his dog off without waiting for my answer.
We ran into other strays and loose dogs out there, and I developed a habit of checking Ivy's response in the enounters and found that her instincts were quite good. There was one dog she wouldn't warm up to, so we avoided it even though it seemed friendly. I later heard from other homeless that it had in the past suddenly attacked people and animals if the owner, a woman, didn't constantly repeat the word "friend" to it.
I didn't judge that too harshly, as that dog was the owner's only protection. Nonetheless, that was one pair we stayed clear of. Ivy's verdict on that dog was good enough for me.
She was highly sensitive to angry voices due to her past before adoption. Which was why I had to avoid getting mad at the car or things like that, because it made her nervous.
There were arguments, or people getting angry at whatever, particularly at night. Once Ivy realized that when such things happened that I would leave the area immediately, she began to pull away and try to leave without waiting for me to see why. More than a few times when she did that a loud disturbance would start up shortly after. She could hear the rising voices that often preceded a full dust up.
That extra warning was valuable. People may ignore arguments coming from another house, but out in the open, an argument will bring the police so it's a good idea to get clear of the scee. They come even faster if a homeless fight is reported. The officers generally know who all the regular transients are, but it was a good idea to not be a regular part of such scenery. A minute of warning time meant we could be out of the area well before any trouble got serious.
Ivy and I walked around at night, and with a dog you have to. If I let her define the strolling area, then the route was virtually always safe. When I read about how soldiers get attached to their bomb sniffing dogs, I know why. If the little buddy understands what you're looking for, they will work at getting good at the job.
Ivy made the connection that certain sounds (and smells, like with needles) needed to be called out or avoided, and so she became a veritable sonar for trouble. In one scene in the book, I describe how she helped me map out a safe zone where we stayed for a week. She developed signals for sirens, arguments, people approaching fast or slow at night from blind spots, and if the requested walk was urgent (otherwise, she merely indicated that it would be nice if it happened soon, which was helpful if I preferred we walk outside at night in a different place).
A car parked on a street at night is a glass house that isn't as safe as it might seem. When you sit in one at night and know that once asleep you're defenseless, it can create a constant state of fear and dread.
However, a good dog makes you feel that there's another sentient being there. When you can trust that friend to look out for you, it moves up from merely having a cute pet that can make you laugh to having a partner who can take on a part of the load. That's a fancy way of saying you no longer feel alone, but as a pack, we navigated life out there as well as possible and it felt safer.
Once she was gone, I not only lost a good friend, but will say that without her help the night became darker, more mysterious, and scary.
- Al Handa
Feb. 20, 2018
Note: The eBook is on Kindle Unlimited:
-Al Handa
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