On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Literary Homeless Chronicle 3/26

"I'm gonna tell you so you'll know

That old Blue's gone where the good dogs go

Singing ya-ho Blue, you good dog you"

- Traditional

"When I get to Heaven first thing I'll do

is grab my horn and call for Blue

Bye bye, Blue

You good dog, you"

- Roger McGuinn (Old Blue)

"Me and old Bugler, we'd run wild 

Blue tick hound and redneck child

We thought we were birds of a feather

Bugler's voice like Gabriel's horn

Up in the cypress all down through the corn

Golden sounds, yes to treasure

Bugler, Bugler bless your hide

Jesus gonna take you for a chariot ride

Say goodbye, say goodbye..."

- Larry Murray (Bugler)

Ivy passed away suddenly on March 17, 2017. This is my obituary on my best friend who was with me for so long and through so many tough times.

I adopted Ivy in late October of 2008. The big recession was starting to hit the solar industry, where I worked as a drafter. Two weeks after Ivy's adoption I was laid off. It began a futile year where I was talked into trying to get into a nursing program when thousands of women were out of work trying to do the same thing.

Ivy was estimated at between two and three years of age, and had spent that time as a breeding dog in an illegal shih tzu puppy farm that specialized in mating runts to breed "teacup shih tzus."

She spent that time in a cage, not shown affection, and when I got her, was distrustful and skittish. For the first two months she ran away at almost every opportunity until I began to understand that it was an escape reflex.

It was a panic reaction and that once she'd run a certain distance, she'd stop and try to get back. Sort of like a dog panic attack. The SOP became to follow her, catch her if possible, but just keep her in sight till she stopped. That was the best way as she was amazingly fast and agile.

Ivy eventually learned to trust me, and perhaps because I was her first human owner, became very attached to the point of having separation anxiety. Because of this, cage training was impossible as she'd try to chew her way out of the steel bars.

I eventually discovered that being in the car was calming to her so got into the habit of taking her wherever I went. I decided not to deal too much with the separation anxiety as it was a relief from what felt like an endless series of high speed chases. It also subsided with time.

The 2008 recession was tough, and we found ourselves in varied situations like a warehouse space in the Central Valley, to crowding together on a cot in a garage in Sunnyvale. 

Though times got tough, Ivy was always so full of cheer and happy to be in our pack that no mood ever stayed dark. When I read about therapy dogs, I know it's all true, their friendship is better medicine than any tranquilizer.

There eventually came a few years of prosperity, and Ivy only made it feel better. We saw many places together; from beaches down south, forests in the Sierras, hot dusty places like Bakersfield, and colder climes in Monterey and Capitola. She was a perfect traveling companion, never complaining, and very rarely any trouble.

We became homeless in 2016, due to a variety of factors and our travels started north in Marin county, and ended up in Gilroy and Salinas.

If anything, she got better at traveling, and she spent a year in the back seat of the Cadillac without ever becoming neurotic or temperamental. More than a few times any impatience or frustration at my situation would dissolve after looking at her relaxing and enjoying her pillows both as beds or toys. 

Humans often tend to feel that our supposed complexity entitles us to regard a simple enjoyment of life as the domain of the animal world, but I think that Ivy was maybe more attuned to the simplicity of life, and more into the moment.

 We put so many futures or pasts out there, color the world with labels of success or failure, and regret this or that, and don't realize that just relaxing on a bed or chair, without a care at that moment, should be simply enjoyed without the need for an explanation, dispensation from the Puritan ethic, or consumerism in the form of paid entertainment or chemicals.

She passed away on March 17th, and I know I'll miss her terribly in the days ahead.

I'd like to talk about what she meant to me and her legacy.

There wasn't a single day, even during her first two months, that she didn't make me smile or laugh. Even on the day of her passing, amidst all the tears, some memory or thought would bring a smile. Thinking of her now, sad as it feels, is still a pleasure and my thoughts are warm and loving, and as I look at the many pictures of her, so many of those showed how much she loved me.

In many of my projects, she was a key element. She had a flair for modeling, and showed an impressive variety of emotions and expressions. She had real charm, and knew it, which made it even more charming. She was my model as I learned photography and image editing.

Ivy was very smart, and developed a vocabulary of sounds and expressions, and constantly imitated any sounds I made as if to learn new words. She could read my moods, and would do things to make me laugh if I seemed irritable and if I seemed depressed or sad, she'd always come up and look as if to ask, what's the matter.

She and I were a pack, and whether it was our daily hikes or occasional sharing of a baked chicken, it was always a sweet sight to see her smiles and wagging tail when she saw a favorite activity was coming. She had a countless number of cute mannerisms.

One thing I'll miss is her night sounds, from her loud, baby like snoring, to her low groans to ask to be taken out, and conversations of repeated short grunts that she kept going as long as I replied. 

She enjoyed being tucked into bed, and liked a belly rub at bedtime, purring almost like a cat as she stretched out and soon it would turn into snoring as she drifted off to sleep. During the night if she woke and saw me having my usual difficulty sleeping, she'd move over near to my head and make herself available for petting, which I found was doing me a favor, not just her.

The night is very quiet now, and that's when I'll miss her the most. I put her tags on my backpack. People used to remark that they could always tell Ivy was coming because of the tinkling sound of all her tags and St. Christopher medal, and hearing those bell like sounds on a hike will be like having her spirit watching over me, a sound better than any song on my MP3 player.

I'll always see her in my mind, feel her presence, enjoy the time I spent with her and the lessons learned about unconditional love and forgiveness, and hope to blessed with an occasional visit from her in my dreams. You'll continue to see her here and elsewhere, as there's no reason she should simply disappear. The soul still echoes in this world.

Ivy was a gift and my time with her a pleasure to be cherished. If there were so many tears at her passing, it was because the love she gave and left behind was so deep and great.

God bless you Ivy, my best friend and companion. I was determined to take you out of homelessness with me, and I still intend to do that.

 

...gimme shelter...

One of the well known institutions of the homeless scene is the "shelter," which has become a term like "jail" or "natural food," which to say a generic term that nobody thinks too deeply about. People tell this or that homeless person to "go to a shelter," without realizing that it can be like "going to a restroom" and finding that it's a overflowing outhouse.

Shelters are a classic "solution" type fix by society, related to disaster relief measures to temporarily house large numbers of displaced people, and can vary in quality, as with any charity, society will rarely tolerate any complaints about their generosity.

A solution fix is where a problem is resolved by the giver, based on their opinion of what's best for the greatest number of people for the money available. Shelters are popular, except when located near nice neighborhoods who object to seeing human flotsam lowering their property values or on sites that turn out to have profitable potential to developers.

This is the reason that so many solutions suggested by activists, who tend to have actually talked and listened to homeless have ideas like tent cities and modular units shot down. That's why asking the age old question "do you have a solution" is futile...there's a lot of good solutions out there already for that single problem, the real question isn't even about money. A ton of money is being spent now on the problem, and all it's done is create both a class of dependents and what amounts to a Balkanized bureaucracy.

It's not an issue of whether to help the homeless...even the most rabid homeless hater would gladly see tax money spent to put the flotsam put at least somewhere else...the problem is that in many urban areas the available land has become too valuable to seemingly waste on homeless when it can used to turn a profit.

That's the reasoning behind gentrification, right back to days of old where Americans felt it was OK to wipe out or screw over the seemingly lazy Native Americans who just lived on land that had gold, rich farming soil or where the government needed a place to put poor whites.

The problem will always be "where," and the default generally is some building that can be turned into a shelter like a National Guard Armory that developers have no chance of getting their hands on, or old buildings in the ever shrinking warehouse districts. It's the biggest bang for the buck, and often can be done at least for a while before anyone notices and objects.

Best of all, it gives society a "go to" solution, like a jail, where one size fits all and the problem can be quickly put out of mind.

It's a great temporary solution when hundreds or thousands of people need shelter after a disaster, but will quickly come apart at the seams after a few weeks as a permanent living situation. You're sticking a multitude of unvetted personalities into close proximity with nowhere near the supervision of a jail or a department store. Even a jail will try to make sure the nuts and aggressive ones are kept away from the rest.

Even in a prison, where rigid supervision is possible due to a partial suspension of civil rights, it's simply impossible to control every type of behavior that can be hidden from view.

A good way to see how you feel about a shelter would be if you had to send your teenage son or daughter to one. It goes without saying the place would have to be checked out.

But what if the parent was told that the place would have a large number of males who would be living in very close proximity, some mentally ill, others who are active drug or alcohol users, some with felonies on their rap sheets, and that the shelter didn't have enough personnel to ensure the teenager's safety and that there was no guarantee that other users of the shelter would intervene to help if there was trouble? Keep in mind you'll always be told that there's proper supervision and so on.

Of course the answer would be no, but we herd people towards shelters all the time without a second thought and never worry that people are being sent into a refugee or concentration camp type situation.

I'm not saying all shelters are like this. Some have better funding and supervision, and will kick out the violent ones if they can catch them in the act.

The other problem with the shelters is that it's perceived as a uniform system like hospitals, but really isn't regulated as such. Each shelter is more likely than not an ad hoc implementation of the standard temporary disaster relief camp, and can vary in quality, and is essentially a random crowd situation that can evolve into an anarchy or jail yard politics in a short time,

I'd have to go a step further and say that imperfect as the system is, at least for now, it's probably better than more expensive programs that try to build housing units of various type in competition with developers in areas where real estate values are high or scarce, or even housing vouchers unless there's enough units available to make that program work.

I remember over a decade ago when Willie Brown suggested creating a tent city on public land as a possible way to ease the homeless problem, and the reaction became a microcosm of what drags most attempts at homeless solutions into inertia.

In short, the dialogue became a swirling mass of objections and arguments from trolls, homeless activists and organizations pro and con...with no polling of the homeless who would certainly have supported the idea, which I know because ad hoc tent cities are one of the most common forms of illegal homeless camps.

People argue that drugs and other illegal activities can be controlled better by legalizing and regulating it. Running a tent city on public land is essentially turning illegal overnight sleeping into organized camping and can regulated as such, and cheaper than trying to rent or buy real estate in a hot market.

One argument I often see in the troll section of most homeless articles is that such solutions are killed by homeless organization objections and activists, and there is a germ of truth to that...though it's often more a case of diverse groups fighting each other for influence and funding like a bunch of rats climbing over each other's backs to get at the feeder. The problem isn't sincerity, it's just human nature when any area, unregulated and Balkanized, is run by people who are unelected and often can't separate their egos from the cause.

That, and the usual "the benefits become a magnet for the homeless." The people who say that sort of thing are generally the same types who used to think property values went down if African Americans moved in or support profiling...it's just class based thinking and even if the phrase  has some truth to it, it's no more objectionable than people who knowingly buy homes in areas where federal funding will cover damage in hurricane zones or forest fires that cost millions to contain.

The fact is, the simplest solutions tend to work best, and in the case of shelters and tent cities, those form naturally, and if properly managed, would probably do more good than programs several times more expensive.

...one begins by saving pennies (phennings) one becomes rich from a lifetime of application - Frederick Forsyth (Dogs of War)

One of the skills that I've developed on my long hikes with Ivy is becoming an expert at terrain. I'm looking at the ground all the time, and after a year I've learned to read it like a book. I'm not sure I'm at the level of an old time apache scout, but I do notice things.

One thing I've noticed is people leave money on the ground.

I think the days of finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk is pretty much over, since everybody's looking for such things, including the homeless. I do notice that pennies and nickels, and occasionally quarters, are almost always lying on the ground. I see a couple or even a few on almost every walk.

The thing about a penny is that the copper that used to make it is probably more valuable than the face value of the coin. Of course it's illegal to melt pennies down, and turn them into ingots, but from what I've seen at recycle centers, and reading the constant stories of people stealing copper wiring, it would seem like that would be a natural progression for a coin that is almost worthless.

I made a habit of picking up the coins, because I figured at least it would make the walks profitable.

A year of hiking has netted me approximately six dollars. Two were one dollar bills, so I treat those as manna or thunderbolts from heaven, and not part of a serious search, and so estimate a four dollar profit from my labors.

I invested part of it in used books at the Salvation Army, on half off days, and have four books to show for it.

For the record, those are Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, the Penguin Portable Beat Compilation, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and John Keegan's The Price Of Admiralty.

Those are pretty good titles, and I probably beat a dozen EBay resellers to the punch there, but I've always had a fool's luck in books, guitars, and old records.

I'd put the total Ebay price at around 20.00, or more in a used book store. The Keegan book could be even more than the ten dollar value I assigned it. Military history books are always popular.

I suppose that if I had the same razor sharp instincts in the stock market, I wouldn't be writing this blog, but Nature makes us all different and I guess that back when the first amphibians crawled up on the beach, I was off collecting sea shells or something...I'm sure that my hiking will someday yield up a bonus worthy of the effort expended.

...instruments of the broke and homeless, the charango...

I started this journey with an instrument collection roughly valued at around 16,000 dollars...as good instruments are quite liquid, though often not at the so called collector value, those were among the first to go when things got tight. Musicians have been selling their instruments to pay rent or eat since time began, or at least when they first thought it could actually be a living, so it's hardly a homeless trip.

There are survivors even in the worst massacres, and my instrument collection is no exception. My gear still includes an electricronic drum pad and Fender amp in storage (safe from me), assorted used harmonicas that no one in their right mind is going to buy, and the crown jewel, a vintage charango estimated to have been made by a Andean native in the 1980s.

Like with most vintage instruments, it's fun to believe the mythology.

My charango survived for two good reasons; one, almost no one knows what a charango is in my neck of the woods, and two, no one would buy it until I dropped the price to 20.00, and broke or not, I couldn't stomach that.

The origins of this ancient Andean stringed instrument are clouded in mythology, but ranges from being a copy of guitars and lutes brought over by the Conquistadors to being a outlaw instrument banned by the Spanish government bent on eradicating native music, and made small to be easily concealed.

I choose to believe the latter explanation as it adds mojo to my charango and is perfect for the image of a homeless guy hiding in plain sight. 

I do hide it, but for the more mundane reason of preventing theft. Plus there's always going to be an idiot out there who'll insist on playing it, showing off, and damaging it. For many musicians, letting someone else play their instrument ranks only slightly below sharing a wife or girlfriend, but above lending money.

Charangos are basically a ukulele strung like a lute, with double strings called courses, like a 12 string guitar or mandolin. I'll spare you the technical details like how it's tuned, as I don't tune it the standard way, but suffice to say, it sounds like a mandolin but with nylon strings.

The originals were made with an armadillo shell as the body, or bowl, and in modern times feature all wood construction. Some say wood sounds better, and to modern ears used to guitars or ukes, it probably does. The main reason wood is the most popular material now is that Andean Armadillos are now endangered and are embargoed.

The armadillo shell type does sound different. It's less rich sounding, and has a tone that's closer to a harp than a guitar. It has less volume than a wooden model, so when strummed hard it can sound more trebly, and it's harder to record properly.

I've played modern charangos, including a 1600.00 concert model (bought used) and ended up keeping the native made vintage version. It's harder to play, doesn't stay in tune really well, but of all the ones I've owned and played, it's the one that has the sound I hear in my brain. 

That, plus no one around here will buy it, so it stays, and it's survival in my collection smacks of destiny or God's will, and that only adds to the mojo of this outlaw instrument.

Here's an instrumental I recorded with my charango some years back:

A Charango Is Born In The Andes (by Handa-McGraw & The Internationals)

https://youtu.be/d6iN-yWWexM

...my backpack needs to go on a diet...

I talked about scoot bags in my previous blog. The one I use currently is a single strap type, a nice little one made by the Swiss Army Knife guys that I was able to buy because of a donation specifically for a backpack.

The reason I prefer a single strap is because it's easy to swing one around while walking to get something out of it, as opposed to unstrapping a standard two strap type, and it limits the load that I can carry.

Load limit is important, because the thing about a scoot bag is that it's supposed to hold everything you need theoretically for a dire emergency. In my case, there would be various reasons why I could come back to the parking space or street, and find that my car gone. 

In that case the question is; what I would want out of that car if such a thing occurred.

The problem is that the bigger the pack, the more you think you need in a dire emergency. When I used to carry a regular backpack, I eventually loaded it up till it weighed almost 20 pounds. Which of course meant that I stopped carrying it on hikes.

The scoot bag is primarily a psychological tool to make you feel better. Since the contents will virtually never be used, it's really more like an anxiety medication.

I won't list out all the contents but suffice to say, if I came back and found my car gone, the pack would contain food and water to survive for three days, plus emergency shelter, power for my remaining devices, important paperwork, and sufficient weaponry to fight off wild animals.

Obviously in even in the most dire circumstances, I'm not going to go off camping for three days, but it's like having a computing device that has more capability than a normal will ever use, it just feels like more bang for the buck.

I remember in the ERT class the firemen who conducted the classes would say that no matter what your precautions, or what you think your emergency procedures are, the most important thing to realize is that in a major disaster, assume that you might be on your own for at least 24 to 48 hours. So that's the situation I load the pack for.

Still, a 12 pound pack gets heavy.

So I got rid of a useless plastic whistle, and had to use the camouflaged waterproof power pack so that got taken out. I also changed the three day food supply to one Cliff Bar, but kept the three day water supply since the cool puncture proof water envelopes are the reason I originally bought the survival kit in the first place. 

I struck grizzly bears, crocodiles, and rabid packs of wolves off the list of dangers, so I was able to reduce my arsenal to one small but very cool Old Timer sheath knife.

I kept the super duper compass with lame fold out 4x binoculars, and the admittedly heavy Klean Kanteen as both add the aura of survivablity to my kit. Believe it or not, I've had to use the compass a couple of times when lost out in the boonies or mountains when the cell phone signal went away. It's like waterproof matches, you never know when those will come in handy.

I'll let you know next month what the scoot bag configuration has been changed to in the ever evolving landscape of survival in the streets.

...some social commentary...

When tech people rhapsodize about AI, and robots, just tell them to get spell check working right first...

...cover reveal for Hide In Plain Sight...

 

This is the cover for the upcoming book, Hide In Plain Sight, designed by Jenna Brooks, supervised and edited by Mutiny Rising Media. I think it's an absolutely perfect image.

I'm working on Chapter 11 of the rough draft, which will run 13 chapters, and am getting more and more excited as the book is taking shape.

Mutiny Rising Media had me start an author page on Facebook, and I'll begin putting on shorter items that came up in research for the book and pictures on that page.

Hide In Plain Site page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Hide-In-Plain-Sight-272767396478930/?ref=notif&notif_t=fbpage_fan_invite&notif_id=1488511513532242

-Al Handa

ontheroadwithalandivy@gmail.com

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive:

http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

Here's the blurb for Boogie Underground Media:

Boogie Underground Media promotion.

Email techmek@yahoo.com for list of services and prices starting from only $5.00!

A SPECIAL THANKS TO THESE PEOPLE WHO'VE HELPED SUPPORT THE BLOG BY BECOMING EARLY CUSTOMERS OF THE BOOGIE UNDERGROUND MEDIA MEDIA VENTURE:

 

Angela B. Mortimer's sexy SciFi Series: a meditation on sacrifice, rites of passage & illumination!

https://www.amazon.com/Angela-B.-Mortimer/e/B00C8G2RGE

 

A broken woman confronting herself & finding redemption, traveling back in time to 19th Century Ireland during the Potato Famine.

https://www.amazon.com/Wall-People-AnneMarie-Dapp/dp/0996875514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488571191&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wall+people

 

Author Eric Wilder

"Ghost Of A Chance" 

now only $0.99!

Paranormal Cowboy #1

http://amzn.to/2aTPfy3

 

Pure: Book 1 of an exciting paranormal series!

#fantasy #romance and #urbanfantasy. 

https://www.amazon.com/Pure-Book-ebook/dp/B004XJ7NQI.

 

Stories with Humor, The Impossible, and Love

DISCOVERY AND LOVE...IN GETTIS Available NOW!

http://www.gerribowen.com/

 

Tia Shurina's Journey from half happy to all in happiness, Everything and a Happy Ending!

https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Happy-Ending-Tia-Shurina/dp/0578166038

On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Literary Homeless Chronicle

 

"...Presently Jason understood the Pythoness to say that the voyage he must undertake would be renowned in song for unnumbered ages, if he took the precaution of sacrificing to Apollo, God Of Embarkations, on the day he launched his ship and on the night of his return. Then she lapsed into nonsense. The only recurrent phrase he could catch was that he should 'take the true Jason' with him..."

- Robert Graves (Hercules My Shipmate, aka The Golden Fleece. Quote abridged from book)

The month of April was quite eventful. It's well documented in my gofundme updates, so I'll just summarize:

I was offered two places to live while getting a fresh start in the Midwest. One in Wisconsin and the other in Illinois. The idea was to shuttle between both for a couple of months, with one becoming permanent if all went well. It included a one way airline ticket, so one major cost was covered.

The offer was one of a few ideas I looked at on how to proceed into summer, and it was the only one that put me into a room right away. 

All the other paths would have involved staying in the car for a few months, and given the housing situation in the SF Bay Area, probably much longer than that.

My old Cadillac was leaking gas, the tires were shot, the transmission was slipping, there was both a loss of compression in the engine and plenty of smoke. Enough smoke that a mechanic said the car would never pass smog without repairs. 

It wasn't a car that could transition from being a shelter to a commuter car, so my first priority would have been to get another vehicle, further extending the time to get indoors.

I decided that getting into a room was the priority. After 14 months I had overcome some obstacles and felt as "normal" again as I could be, even after the loss of Ivy, and felt that trying to go another summer (and fall) would become a diminishing return situation...looking back at the summer of 2016, when I was in a car that was stuck on a street for almost two months, I realized that in many ways I'd been very lucky to get through it without some sort of trouble from the various populations that roamed and camped there. 

Part of that luck was some old timers spreading the word that I was OK, and the other part was my little friend Ivy. You'd be surprised how often her cute presence diffused an otherwise serious situation.

For the summer of 2017, I was looking at a situation where Ivy and all the old timers I knew were gone. I suppose I'd have survived it, having gotten reasonably good at being homeless, but the Midwest offered a safe room, and what looked like a good job market. 

So I went. 

I'm about four weeks in, a couple of weeks in both places and found that there are a lot of adjustments to make, and those are coming along. I'd lived in the Midwest before so it wasn't a culture shock. I kept wearing Tshirts, trunks and sandals for way too long though, in the colder weather. Old California habits die hard.

I'm still in transition, I'm working hard on my book, "Hide In Plain Sight," and as an immediate job, or at least a source of some income, expanded my Boogie Underground Media promo venture. I'm starting to take on some charity work with it. One is Muttville, a dog rescue organization based in San Francisco.

The book is in the second pass, and I hope to have it ready for line editing within weeks. When I have the book far enough along, I'll begin a serious job search, though next week I figure it'll do no harm to start trying to get some freelance CAD work.

The subject matter of this blog will still deal with homelessness. There's still sections that were written or I planned to write about homelessness that didn't fit completely into the book, and I also wanted to be more topical about the issue in future entries.

There's still plenty of thanks to give to all the people that helped me. I know plenty have been given in the updates, but I'll cover the more in detail in the next entry. 

Future updates will be shorter, and come out more often. Maybe every 7-10 days. The blogs were long in the early days because it was a rehearsal for a book, and the aim was to get used to writing chapter length pieces. Which isn't necessary now, and I'd like to do blog entries more often.

I've seen many things out there, including the death of my dear friend Ivy, that won't be easily forgotten, and I pray that reading about what I've seen out there in this blog and my book will be as close as any of you will ever get to that kind of life.

...airports, and notions of time...

I was in the airport about 12 hours before the flight because it seemed like a good way to minimize Murphy's Law (which it didn't do, I covered that in detail in my last gofundme update) but also because it was a better place to be than a parking lot in Salinas. 

The opportunity to crash out legally and safely in a public place was too good to pass up.

I knew the hours would pass quickly, or more specifically, without any sense of it being a long wait. The flight, which was about four hours, no pun intended, literally flew by and as we touched down in Milwaukee; the wait in the terminal and flight, all that seemed like one big moment.

One of the things about adjusting to a more normal life is regaining my time sense...the world that runs by the clock disappears after 14 months in a car. 

There was a sense of forward motion but it tended to run from event to event, or location to location. There was day and night of course, but as I write this, I still don't have a sense that this or that day is Sunday or Monday or if it's a holiday. 

As a homeless person, having time just float by feels different. Life is a series of cycles that have a beginning, middle and end, and in between is the daily task of survival.

The flight didn't feel like four hours of time. It was a period of intense relief and tears, disbelief and then realization that I was heading thousands of miles away, wonder at how the country looked from so high up and how I could easily find my location using Google maps, sleep, fear and uncertainty about my decision to head east instead of staying, happiness at a safe landing and intense curiousity about my future. The clock said four hours had passed, and that's the other way to look at it.

...landing in Milwaukee...

Once the airliner landed in Milwaukee, time started to come back. It was like entering into another world. Many of the feelings that came back were familiar, some a shock to the system. More than a few times I've sat there on a chair or bed and tried to comprehend where I was.

The parking lots and streets I'd escaped seemed very far away, like waking up in the middle of a dream except that I'd become the person in that dreamscape and only my surroundings had changed. 

...my changed sense of perception...

I was mowing a lawn in Wisconsin, in wonderment at the normalcy of it all, then a man walked by wearing a backpack. It only took an instant to recognize that he was homeless. 

Earlier, in Illinois, I walked by one that was sleeping on the sidewalk near an area with rail and overpasses and wondered for a moment why he didn't sleep back there...there's similar places in Gilroy that's got a few camps, then I realized that it must be safer to sleep out in the open where he was. Maybe hobos, maybe gangs, something made it a better bet to sleep near the downtown area, but then, that's how a homeless person thinks...you look at a place and instantly size it up and have a picture of where's it safe to sleep and where it isn't. 

You take in details like the graffiti and can tell if it's by gangs or just taggers, even if the markings are local and I don't have a clue as to the meaning. 

I see some markings that are just wannabe stuff or trolling, and other signs where I make a mental note to avoid the place...it's not expert knowledge, or street heraldry. Just instinct, and empirical wisdom passed on to me by others who'd been out longer than me.

What is different now is that these perceptions can hit me while simply walking through a downtown area to visit a used book store. 

I pass a Café, admire some antiques in a vintage store window, walk further and see people sitting outside talking and laughing, then look down an alley and see signs of a homeless crash pad, then continue along and see who's coming to perform on an auditorium marquee. 

I sit for a while looking at the neighborhood, the place where I'm staying is off about a quarter mile. I see the streets, lots, overpasses, and in a few moments I've marked out in my mind all the areas to avoid at night, where I'd check to see if a car could park, a good place or two to hide if I were a backpacker, and any areas that looks "inhabited." Most of all, any area that flashes a danger sign in my subconscious.

I'm not sure it's a reflex that will ever completely disappear, not in a mind that's as busy as mine. The trick won't be to blank it out, but to let it flow in and out of my consciousness without effect...for now...after all, nothing's certain in life, and I might need those instincts again. 

However, I didn't not want those festering or just below the surface. It keeps the other baggage that needs to be worked through too close, and in too many dreams at night. All wisdom is empirical, and thus paid for, so there's no point to throwing it away like a three year old computer, but not all of it needs to be kept around.

...a word about ear plugs...

Wearing ear plugs was a habit I originally started to block out noises while trying to sleep during the day. It was a practice that I continued in the car.

I'd experimented with just using cotton balls or loose cloth but I preferred the superior noise blocking of ear plugs. 

Even if there was no sound outside, the plugs were like a blanket that blocked out unwelcome noises, like arguments but not sudden sounds I needed to hear like sirens and impact noises.

The world outside is only as private as people let it be, but blocking out sound is a temporary blind. Open ears can pick up sound and force me to react, blocked ears can't hear, so it's a form of escape and respite and let's me let go of the constant vigilance...it's not really safe to do that at night. It's a calculated risk, a break from the world.

- Al Handa 

   5/8/17

...cover reveal for Hide In Plain Sight...

 

This is the cover for the upcoming book, Hide In Plain Sight, designed by Jenna Brooks, supervised and edited by Mutiny Rising Media.

-Al Handa

ontheroadwithalandivy@gmail.com

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive:

http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

Here's the blurb for Boogie Underground Media:

Boogie Underground Media promotion.

Email techmek@yahoo.com for list of services and prices starting from only $5.00!

On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Literary Homeless Chronicle - 6/1/17

 

"Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner)

Note: I'm trying to tighten up the rate of entries. I'll do another post in about a week with the parts I didn't get done in time for this one.

One of the concepts that came up in conversations with other homeless was that we were always the same person, and when circumstances get better, it's just a matter of getting back into the swing of things.

That's not entirely true, it depends on how long you're out there and what life is like during that time. You'll generally have to find yourself again.

If I had spent 14 months out there carrying everything I owned in the world in a backpack and sleeping in a makeshift shelter, I'd have have come out a different person than someone who spent that same amount of time in an old Cadillac.

Our basic nature would probably be intact, and but our lives are more than this simple essence or kernel...we manage our lives, making decisions that resolve immediate situations and others that have long term consequences. Many of the responses will run on automatic until consciously changed.

The guy (me) who took off with his dog in February of 2016 was different than the guy who later that summer gave a shirt to a young man who'd been robbed of his clothes...the earlier me would have done it out of pity and compassion, the summer me did it knowing that while I was getting the shirt out of the trunk, the kid had gotten a good look at what was inside and probably would pass that info on to his druggie pals. Sure enough, I later watched from a distance as a young woman from his crowd tried to break into my trunk. 

An earlier me might have confronted her or called the cops, the smarter me who had to live there decided that she was clearly too incompetent a burglar to get into the trunk and let it go, also knowing anyone calling the cops would labeled a squealer with maybe a dozen or more of her friends who'd be pissed about it and having nothing better to do in life than retaliate...the tough take no crap attitude is replaced by a philosophical time-space outlook that sees that anything that could happen would take place well inside the police response time or in a remote place while hiking that unlike the movies would really be like an animal brought down by a pack.

The outside world would call it living in fear, and that'd be true, but it's also seeing reality and making intelligent choices stripped of the often unrealistic truisms of law and order. Having seen such situations and acted accordingly in the short and long term, what happens when you are out of that life and safer? 

...a new life...

On my flight to the Midwest, I began to tear up and break down as the airliner taxied down the runway. As we climbed, I quietly cried and it wasn't from happiness or excitement. It was from a profound sense of relief, like I'd escaped all the constant fears that wore on me. Happiness has a different meaning in the life I was leaving.

It wasn't apparent for maybe a few days that there was something not quite right with me. The assumption was that entering into the normal world would be like riding a bike again...maybe a little rust, but you're off and running.

I'd say that in most things it was like riding a bike. What wasn't so obvious was that 14 months in the homeless world had affected my emotions, or more specifically emotional responses. People don't always understand that normalcy isn't a switch that turns on and off.

Certain situations would trigger fear, like when someone was being sarcastic or irritated. Out there on the street, I avoided trouble and confrontation at all costs. Even the most minor conflicts had the potential to escalate into a police and often did. 

There's a small segment of the population that will call the police for the smallest real and imagined transgressions by homeless. I cover this in detail in a couple of chapters in my upcoming book.

I've had the police called on me twice, for example, on complaints that were cleared up after an interview after 1AM. In one of those cases i was approached unawares with my window shades up. 

That created a tense situation where the officer had to approach slowly as it wasn't clear who was in the car, and I was startled when the flashlight beam blinded me, though I instinctively avoided any sudden movements and kept my hands visible.

The officer was polite, and once it was clear that I was harmless (and I acted both harmless and slightly stupid) then we both relaxed and it became a pleasant conversation. I did have to be aware that while we talked, my car was being visually searched. Which isn't a minor thing. I've seen more than a few casual conversations escalate into a search. Having a little white friendly dog does help in such cases.

...the sounds of silence...

You learn to clam up, look harmless, and answer all question clearly but simply...talking too much or too fast makes you look nervous, and in that weird state of nervousness and fear, it's easy to say something wrong. That's why I tended to act slightly dumb in front of authority...being dumb makes you look more harmless, and keeps you from babbling.

The problem is that in real life, it's not always wise or socially acceptable to clam up, or act dumb. Such responses are interpreted differently by people who are used to speaking fearlessly and not worried that it can escalate into a fight. This contrast is apparent in a lot of encounters between the homeless and regular people. 

There's an incident described in my book where a CHP officer is chewing me out in public, and while standing there like a dumbass with a blank expression, my mind is racing and fighting every impulse to react. I still have involuntary responses that kick in when someone gets irritated with me, for example, that wasn't apparent till the situation came up.

It's easy to just act smarter and talk more, but when someone gets short, impatient or irritated with me, it still can trigger an involuntary fear response like going dumb or withdrawing. You have to be careful out there, not just avoiding conflict but inadvertently giving out personal information, or showing cash to a stranger. Out there it's smart, in the real world, it can come off as paranoid or anti-social.

I found my conversational skills had deteriorated. I could write well, but having deep conversations still requires a conscious effort and still feels awkward. I didn't talk to many people out there.

...hurry up and buy...

I still often just sit there in a room, and it took weeks to realize that it was my car behavior. Sitting like a rock can look like laziness or depression (and sometimes it is), but in my car, there was a reason I sat still. Doing nothing doesn't cost money.

Sitting in the car doing nothing wasn't just a case of suppressing impulses to buy, it was also avoiding the stimuli that surrounds people utilizing every scientific trick in the book to make them spend money.

I don't underrate modern advertising and display. It's not much different than military psych ops and propaganda. It's an active attempt to create demand even if you really don't need the product and will use every manipulative trick from false self esteem to shame...and much if it works.

Out there, I'm saving money. In the real world, I'm sitting there like a lump in a room and subject to any number of labels people attach to apparent slugs, though in most cases, I'm just thinking.

If I wasn't talking to Ivy then there was no conversation and luckily, after over a year of solitude, i didn't start talking with inanimate objects.

There's this relief but with all the things you did to survive, has it all been switched off yet?

That's a question that's still being answered, and I'll know more next week, and the week after, and the week after...

- Al Handa 

   6/2/17

...cover reveal for Hide In Plain Sight...

This is the cover for the upcoming book, Hide In Plain Sight, designed by Jenna Brooks, supervised and edited by Mutiny Rising Media.

-Al Handa

ontheroadwithalandivy@gmail.com

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive:

http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

Here's the blurb for Boogie Underground Media:

Boogie Underground Media promotion.

Email techmek@yahoo.com for list of services and prices starting from only $5.00!

On The Road With Al and Ivy: A Literary Homeless Journal - March 2019

"…I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future..."

- Jack Kerouac (On The Road, The Original Scroll)

"It was my last observation that it was the custom of every man to call every other man a madman. The truth, in my judgement, they were all mad."

- Jack London (The Jacket, aka The Star Rover 1915)

Jack London is known (these days) as an adventure writer whose most famous books, Call Of The Wild and White Fang, are considered children or young adult classics (at least in abridged editions). He was quite popular in his time, and wrote several books that are considered classic.

His real life became legendary and many works like On The Road, a book about hobos, came from experiencing, and not just visiting, that life.

London treated writing as a discipline, and part of that involved churning out 1500 words a day. That resulted in a body of work that included short stories, essays, fiction and nonfiction books. Much of that went out of print until the digital age. There were hard copies around, but the rarer ones tended to command collector level prices.

One part of his catalogue that's become better known in the digital age are the books described in some circles as early science fiction. Which is sort of true, though it might be more accurate to describe the works as metaphysical, though his recreation of pre-Stone Age life, Before Adam, could be seen as speculative fiction.

My favorite London work in that genre, The Jacket, also known as The Star Rover, is a fascinating psychological novel that involves a prisoner who escapes torture by disassociating into past lives. London went all in with the concept and didn't label it as a descent into madness or fantasy. The prisoner actually connected with past lives, and unlike some modern treatments which portray glorious and successful adventures, recalled a variety with vastly different outcomes. Which is in line with London's life experience in environments where many a life was cut short by fate or failure.

London was a superb short story writer. In fact, that was probably his forte, and because of that, the various past lives are told in masterful detail. Even more impressive for his time, each episode accurately reflects the mentality of each era. Each is a superb short story within the bigger work.

What can be overlooked was how good the psychological detail was. The various prison characters are seen as personality types, each played or manipulated a certain way by the prisoner. In other words, each one didn't just do this or that, but also had psychological traits, motives and goals.

The process of disassociating from physical pain is described in minute detail. London's true life adventures certainly involved experiencing various forms of deprivation, thus giving insight into the thoughts and sensations that came from both the slow starvation of a prison diet, and being strapped into a jacket designed to inflict pain.

It's a prescient series of passages about mind over matter that was echoed in later works of art. One notable example is in an episode of the crime drama, Criminal Minds, where one of the agents is captured with the intent of torturing him into revealing information. The torturers are puzzled by the apparent indifference to pain until the head villain realizes that the agent has successfully disassociated into the past, and a psychological chess game begins to try and bring him back into the present. 

London was astute enough to make sure the fellow prisoners in the book had a variety of perceptions about that ability to regress into past lives. The prisoner who taught the main character how to self hypnotize was a believer in the method, but regarded the recollections simply as a mysterious trick of the mind to detach from reality. Others felt it was all crazy nonsense and self deception.

The Warden and his assistants were depicted as cruel, but of the "normal" world, who had no idea of what was going on and had no ability to see past what they thought was reality. Disassociation is now a familiar idea or belief, but back when London wrote the book, the characters calling the prisoner crazy may well have been drawn from real life skeptics.

One of the other themes is sanity, and what a core personality is. In other words, inside that mix of physical and psychological actions, was a person who came to see himself as a consciousness that would survive all that was happening.

For the purposes of this blog entry, the most interesting aspect of the story is how the various characters viewed (or were unable to see) what was going on in the Star Rovers mind, and the subject of disassociation. Also, the story had a cast of characters and there was no clear delineation of who was normal and not. As the story develops, it's clear that the main character is probably saner than his captors.

London didn't create a story with sane people dealing with the insane. He took a more metaphysical view in creating a mix of personalities and behaviors, and left judgement to the reader. That a character would visit past lives wouldn't have been an abstract to him. In his life, he'd encountered a wide variety of cultures and as a writer type, observed that many had deep spiritual beliefs that weren't common in the Western culture.

That the Star Rover's escape into the past was viewed with a variety of attitudes like skepticism, misunderstanding, or as a mystery that triggered reactions like fear or anger, it could be seen as a microcosm of how mankind has often treated the strange and unorthodox.  

...mental illness, and the strange...

The concept of sanity, norms, and mental illness is a subject that hasn't been covered in detail in this blog, though a sizable part of the homeless population is considered "mentally ill."

I had devoted over half of this blog entry to the technical aspect of the subject but found that it just led to an unwieldy morass of disputable data. Having people disagree with my opinion is OK, but it's always a good idea to avoid setting off chapter and verse disputes over data. I discarded the section and kept to the relative simplicity of generalities for this entry.

Another reason I discarded the previously planned section was that it became obvious that the issue isn't mental illness, but mental health.

For example, you hear people claiming that the homeless seem to want to stay that way and other overly broad statements that are actually a wrong diagnosis.

Apathy is often a symptom, and it's not really a general personality trait. Many drug and alcohol abusers are self-medicating, not partying away in a cardboard box in an alley. That's why general assistance fails so often. It's not treatment.

I'm going to revise the original essay and run it in the next blog.

...mental illness in the past...

Most people know that historically the definition of mental illness has differed in the past and that the "treatment" could be brutal. The supposedly normal people who burned women as witches were certainly not, though society tries to explain it as "ignorance." Calling it ignorance obscures the real issue, which is that the concept of sanity is often determined by majority rule, or those in power.

Blaming it on religion isn't entirely accurate either, as women who didn't fit the norm were persecuted or punished well before Christianity. For example, punishing a woman for adultery goes back to ancient times, or basically as soon as men decided they were property.

It's more complex than that of course, and the reasons for punishing someone judged as mentally ill can involve a wide range of motives that include social, political, religious, and emotional reasons that could be classified as insane. The mentality of attacking or punishing the unorthodox are human traits that have always been around and probably always will be.

We live in an era where people on opposing ends of the political spectrum, for example, take things past simple disagreement on issues and assert that the other side has a mental condition, or label people as sociopaths or whatever on the basis of what they've read in the news.

Society, or even smaller segments like peer groups decide for religious or political reasons which behaviors are normal and one can't automatically assume the standard will be fair. There is one constant, which is that sanity tends to be determined by majority rule. Not by doctors or leaders, but what the majority agrees with or is at least duped into believing. If were only up to leaders or experts, there'd be no disagreement about Global Warming, vaccines or whatever.

Mental illness still has a stigma, and a lot of it is based in fear. It's still a mysterious subject in many ways, as there's generally no obvious cause and effect like the flu, and odd behavior can be unsettling to those who are taught how to behave according to societal norms.

I hadn't decided how to treat the subject until the fifth draft. It's a complex subject, yet subject to the same dynamics that was described in the book by London. The mentally ill homeless population is actually complex and diverse, but tends to be viewed simplistically as under that one label, which is then interpreted in a wide range of often conflicting views, many of which are subjective.

The homeless problem has been around long enough for archetypes and cliches to develop, and thanks to short sound bytes and Internet forums, one can list the categories. That is to say, just one, the "mentally ill," all viewed in the same lens as the occasional person that goes off and commits a violent act or uses the sidewalk as a bathroom.

...odd ducks...

I lived for 14 months among more than a few "odd ducks" and people who needed help. I was uneasy at first around them, and often scared by their behavior. After a while though, I came to realize that most were harmless.

Many lived in fear, as they were easy targets for predators, and stuck rigidly to routines that helped them survive. I learned to not interrupt those routines and let them live in their own world. In fact, I learned a great deal about survival from predators by watching them. People can think the mentally ill homeless were all alike, just a bunch of crazies or whatever, but again, that's just simplistic.

Like all people, they had a variety of perceptions of the world around them, and in their own way, had good instincts and came up with various strategies for survival. They may have had problems, some had a lot, but most certainly weren't dangerous. 

...family....

Seeing the elderly ones affected me the most. There were men and women out there who in a perfect world should have had kids or grandchildren taking care of them. Having worked in a nursing home as a young man, I know that having family that care isn't a given. 

It requires a cold heart to be unmoved by the sight of a woman old enough to be a grandmother wander around out there with everything she owns in a shopping cart. If it pained me to see it, I couldn't imagine her pain from knowing there was family that knew and didn't come for her in that dangerous world. I came to feel that being detached from reality was perhaps a mercy in that place and time, and I don't expect society to understand why I and others felt that way.

There are various theories and reasons for there being so many mentally ill out there on the street. All may have some truth, but the most common cookie cutter solution seems to be, round them up and put them into forced treatment for their own good, with the underlying attitude that they're pests to be put out of sight and mind. Some might argue with that statement, but most decent people know that there's that element in any solution that involves involuntary detention.

More than a few groups or subcultures have found that it's not always safe to have sanity determined by majority rule. That why the subject is so contentious, and the solution won't be easy to find, though there's people out there doing their best to help, and frustrating as it can be, try to follow the rules and resist the temptation to join the more vocal in the crowd that want to treat the homeless like pests.

I gave the subject of mental illness a great deal of thought, and it wasn't until the final draft that a way to treat the subject evolved in a satisfactory way. The early explanations and essays based on research were discarded, including statements by people on both sides of the issue.

The reason is that, like a lot of subjects, it's rife with often conflicting theories and dependence on experts who aren't always vetted, particularly on the Internet. A good case in point is in a criminal trial where both sides can produce an expert to testify in their favor.

I decided to stick with what I saw, and what the homeless that I talked to, told me. Any descriptions of the mentally ill that described them as such were taken out. They were treated as characters in the story, and the passages written in as much in their point of view as possible, as with those respectable members of society who seemed to make it their businesses to get us arrested or chased out by any means possible.

I did come to one conclusion; that I had little to fear from the mentally ill out there, but there were members of respectable society that I'm glad didn't have any power over me. It's not the powerless ones that I feared, but the ones with it. Believe me, some of them were very, very scary

...the universe....

The homeless world wasn't some isolated tent city or skid row, but part of a larger universe that had all sorts of people that surrounded and interacted with it.

People picture a homeless camp or enclave as a discreet gathering of tents, like a separate world, and that's basically accurate, but in my book, you'll see that it also had subcultures that surrounded or orbited around it. Gilroy didn't have an extensive social service structure like San Francisco, so we didn't see aid workers or counsellors. 

But in 14 months in four locations, the periphery of any homeless gathering was active with vigilantes, hazers, dealers and couriers, pimps, religious cult members, sexual predators, animal activists, truckers, bike boosters, gypsies, possible police informants, tourists, and weekend slummers. 

Three of the locations were considered "gang territories," but I rarely saw gangs operating among the homeless. I've read (and heard at the time) that it was different in places like San Francisco, where tent cities were used to hide bike boosting rings and such. Also, as explained in earlier blog entries, certain places like county aid offices had gangs and businesses that targeted those who went there, but the homeless were incidental to the larger goal of harvesting the aid money paid out every month.

...life on a reservation...

There's a solution one hears now and then, which is to put them all in camps on public land (away from prime real estate), which would be a disaster for the mentally ill, especially the females. Homeless camps and shelters develop different dynamics depending on the demographics of the people there, but as you'll see in the book, it can quickly become Darwinian. In one chapter, I relate the experience of one homeless man who lived in a shelter for a while, and the dynamics resembled a loosely supervised school or reform school yard.

Any forced gathering of homeless would quickly turn into a refugee camp, and at best, be like a Native American Reservation.

The location of Native American reservations is no accident. The United States wanted the various tribes off of any land that could turn a real profit. The few times that such land turned out to be productive, like when gold was found in the Black Hills, commercial interests funneled wildcat miners into the area and the predictable conflicts forced the government's hand, bringing the Army in after the Sioux refused to leave.

The suggestion to ship the homeless off to camps is rooted in the same mentality, to get people seen as pests away from high value property (or areas in the process of becoming more valuable). The problem is that the only land suitable for a new "reservation" is public land, most of which is valuable enough that if it's not being exploited, business interests want it to be.

It's probably a good thing that such camps aren't created. One can look at areas like L.A. and San Francisco where ad hoc camps have become a humanitarian disaster area rife with drug use, crime, untreated mentally ill, and disease (like typhoid). Any such camp would have to be run like a city with services, so while it would cause many business types to shake their heads when I say this, the best organization to handle the homeless problem are city governments and that's where the money should go, and cities are where the homeless should stay until the problem is solved. 

In the long run, it'll still be cheaper than funding camps that create a permanent state of dependency. Some may argue that it's already happening in the big cities, but that's really more a situation where money is being poorly spent, and that can be fixed if society has the will.

"The experience of a long life has taught me, however, that sin is always punished in this world, whatever may come in the next. There is always some penalty in health, in comfort, or in peace of mind to be paid for every wrong. It is with nations as it is with individuals."

- Arthur Conan Doyle (Micah Clarke)

My favorite fiction books and movies tend to be historical adventures, and almost all involve some sort of journey. One favorite is Arthur Conan Doyle's Micah Clarke, which is about the exploits of three men who left their homes to join the Monmouth Rebellion in England. Doyle once said that his best writing wasn't the Sherlock Holmes stories, but the historical novels like Micah Clarke, White Company, Sir Nigel, and others. 

One thought that came to me after becoming homeless was that the characters left their homes to embark on the journey, yet were never labeled as homeless or transient even as they had to sleep out in the open or whatever shelter that could be found. Even Buddha today would probably be described as an enlightened homeless guy.

Arthur Conan Doyle was different in that he wasn't a stylist, like say, a Dickens or Joyce. He isn't quoted a lot, or has lots of people rhapsodizing about great passages, but anyone who's read Doyle knows that he was a no nonsense writer who was a great storyteller.

Being a writer who can efficiently narrate a story isn't a small feat. I've read lots of books where superfluous verbiage or detail seems to interrupt or stop the flow, or create scenes that fall flat. In addition, Doyle showed a satirical side (that reminds me of Stanley Kubrick) that wasn't always apparent in the Sherlock Holmes tales.

There's a couple of funny scenes that stand out in Micah Clarke. One is where the tough Mercenary becomes pious and devout in the presence of Puritan businessmen, to the disgust of Micah, and later, where two noblemen threaten each other with death, and a infantry officer respectfully suggests that there's a suitable place just outside where the gentlemen can have "proper elbow room for a breather." As the two lords get get more hysterical in their attempt to get the sergeant to intervene, he continues to politely direct them to a suitable dueling place. As the scene unfolds, you can imagine the smirk on Doyle's face as he wrote out that passage.

Doyle's historical novels rarely had a lot of long "detail" passages. He didn't fuss over fashion or equipment specs, yet the reader has a good sense of the atmosphere and look of the period by the end of the book. That's because much of the information was only fed in as needed, and a lot of the feel for the period came from the dialogue, which adds color and keeps the action moving forward. There aren't long descriptive passages about swords or armor, for example, instead the characters talk about the subject during conversations at various points in the story.

In the end, the historical novels were very much like the Sherlock Holmes series. Great story telling and characters that come alive and stay in your consciousness, like good friends you regularly visit and enjoy the company of. It was a book I reread in the car and was glad to enjoy the company of Micah and friends once again.

...the journey...

Micah Clarke wasn't the only adventure/journey book I read. I also read or reread "Travels With Charlie" by John Steinbeck, the reissue of Jack Kerouac's "On The The Road" in the original scroll form, and Jack London's "The Road."

All three are classic, of course, but each invoked a much different reaction than what might have occurred had my circumstances had been less dire.

Travels With Charlie, a travelogue by Steinbeck who decided to see the real America with his poodle, was the biggest disappointment. I thought that a book about a guy and his dog roughing it in a cross country trip would be full of insight into my situation but it read like a slight tale about a very well financed vacation. I refrain from calling it slumming as Steinbeck appeared to to be sincere in his desire to see the real America and talk to the salt of the earth.

Steinbeck by this time was a wealthy man, and the descriptions of the custom truck trailer complete with liquor cabinet and various hotels were so out of sync with my reality that it made me feel like Karl Marx to read it. Motel rooms were a real luxury out there, and run by corporations that charged such high rates that one often had to choose between a bed or eating a full meal. Some put all their money into a room and then panhandled to get cash to eat, though most just went without. All that could have been overlooked had it been an entertaining book, but my impression is that it was mainly a book for Steinbeck fans.

The Kerouac book was quite interesting, though a few decades down the line it's become a period piece, albeit a classic one. Kerouac originally typed the entire book out on a single roll of butcher paper, not even stopping to correct mistakes or do any editing or revisions. A cynic might say like a word processor with auto correct. It was, in effect, a stream of consciousness put to paper, though it did have a plot.

I liked this scroll version, as it's earthier and spontaneous. It was an adventurous book for it's era and place, which was 50s America, though Europe had already seen writing like this before. Kerouac had a freer sense of poetry or metre, influenced by American jazz, and is clearly less mannered than James Joyce or Henry Miller, who were more disciplined.

The lack of editing does show, and it's an uneven book, with brilliant passages and some real clunky sections that won't inspire rereading. Yet it's hard to imagine how Kerouac could have produced this book any other way, as any self editing process would have filtered many of the best passages into more "correct" structure, as it's now clear that it happened here and there in the original published version.

Although the book was a chronicle of a trip across the United States, the real journey was in the author's mind, as he attempted, and succeeded, in creating a new culture with it's own language. As I started my own book, I couldn't say that "The Road" was going to be a direct influence. For one thing, On The Road is a young book, almost innocent in it's enthusiasm, and very much about discovery. But Kerouac's writing was also was very brave and honest, and such qualities will serve me well in my own work.

...another Road book...

Jack London's book, "The Road," describes his experiences as a hobo, and it provided a lot of the background of later movies like "Emperor Of The North." It's a brilliant book, full of details that might shock or surprise those who think of hobos in terms of Roger Miller's 'King Of The Road" or Red Skelton's lovable tramp character.

The Hobo world was, and is a lot tougher, and very insular with it's own language and culture. I remember seeing hobos as a kid, they had set up a small camp near some tracks that ran though the then small town of Palo Alto. That area was a popular place for kids, as it had trees that were suitable for building ad hoc platforms, so we'd come into contact with them as they passed though.

The hobos were old school, and carefully avoided trouble, particularly with kids as that would quickly get the attention of the police. I heard and read stories later on that the hobo scene was changing, with younger men and a tougher environment, but that wasn't really true. Some of the hobos warned us even back then to be careful around hobos, and that's echoed in London's book, although not explicitly.

London's stories are an unglamorous view of such hobo staples as train hopping, which in reality could get one maimed or killed. There were murders, and a criminal element, yet among the mainstream, a sense of code and honor. They did go around and beg for food if short on cash, but their life wasn't entirely about avoiding work.

In an earlier age, many probably would have become mountain men or trappers, content to live an independent life away from civilization. Most didn't become town drunks or the happy neighborhood tramp. Their life was about travel, being in constant motion and London clearly found it an adventure with plenty of challenges for the type of man he was at the time. 

I was aware of hobos and similar wanderers out there, and most of the old timer homeless avoided them and advised me to do the same. I resisted the temptation to visit hobo camps and rail byways that had their codes written describing the area, and never stayed near railroad tracks at night. 

It wasn't a matter of whether the danger was truth or myth, but that there wasn't much margin for error out there. That's why the risks London took in his book looked even more impressive once I'd been out there for a while. A robbery or beating could be catastrophic to a homeless person, and danger was really danger, not like in a TV show or movie where people luck out or are too tough to take on.

I once saw a young man emerge one morning from the levee camp area after an obvious beating, and it was clear that if he couldn't have walked out under his own power, he'd have had to lay out there until discovered by someone (who didn't mug him). He was a big strong guy, not someone you'd pick a fight with, but like I said, it wasn't like the movies. The guys who attacked him had simply waited till he went to sleep that night. 

His strength meant nothing, and in fact was a disadvantage. The two assailants couldn't take the chance he'd get up and start fighting back, so the attack was sudden and very violent. Luckily he was smart enough to recognize that they weren't going to kill him so stayed down and took the beating, which could have been a lot worse.

That's a tough choice he had to make, and the best way to avoid such situations was to stay away from places like camps and railroad tracks where hobos hung out. That was possible because I had a car and could keep moving, which London didn't have, but he still adhered to the same principle, that movement was survival. Of the three books discussed, his was the most real to me out there.

I did research the subject of hobos, and learned some of the codes and such, but it's dicey to put things in a story purely from research. Much of what I read about the homeless gets a lot of things wrong, so figure it must be the same for tramps. As a result, they are a shadowy presence in the book, as it was in reality for me.

...Ivy...

It's been almost two years since Ivy passed away on March 17th, 2017, and she's been on my mind more than last year. Part of that is because as my book nears completion, most of the work is on the second half which includes her death.

The first draft of the book ended in February 2017, on the one year anniversary of us becoming homeless, and even up to the third draft, I still seriously considered keeping that original ending. However, Ivy had emerged in the second half as a major part of the plot, becoming the "face" of both the promo business and blog, and even in death, a catalyst that helped mobilize efforts that literally rescued me from the street. It was appropriate to make it about her whole life.

I've described her story in earlier blog entries, but one aspect stood out this month, her emergence as the face of virtually all of my projects. It started when I started my Twitter account a few years ago. It was intended to promote my music, but none had been recorded yet, so was treated as an internet radio station playing an eclectic mix.

It gained a thousand followers, and that seemed good enough as a place holder set up until some original music was created. The thing that was on my mind at the time was, how to go about growing the audience from there.

I had been taking pictures with my iPhone and was enjoying editing those on various photo apps. The long range plan was to be able to produce my own promo and album covers. Most of the people around me didn't like having their pictures taken, and neither did Ivy, but she had no choice in the matter. Thus, her career as a model began.

Ivy's reluctance to be photographed changed once it became a professional situation, with payment in extra treats and food after sessions. Her white hair and big eyes were ideal for creating photos with graphic effects, and I literally took thousands of pictures of her.

 I used one of her in a blue hooded jacket as my Twitter avatar, and the result was a surprise. People, particularly women, started to follow the account and it began to grow at a thousand a month.

One Fourth of July weekend, I was at a dinner, and put one of the festive American Flag napkins on her back (which slipped forward like a scarf) and took the picture you see today as the avatar on both the Twitter and Facebook accounts. Once that became the symbol of the Boogie Underground, the Twitter account grew to over two hundred thousand in a little under two years.

I've never changed that photo, except to put a copyright notice on it, and have always kept it as the company logo, so to speak. I've often wondered at the success of her image, and the main thing that comes to me is that Ivy projected a friendly and sweet personality along with the patriotic colors. A cute little dog is hard to resist.

Ivy probably never knew that she had become the Boogie Underground's super model, but did understand that something important was going on when the iPhone was pointed at her. She was a little diva, and limited photo sessions to a couple of minutes, but when engaged, would pose and make a wide variety of faces. 

The sessions were structured, and I always used the same words and tonal inflections so that over time, she knew when a big smile was required or when to show a more reflective air. It was always more effective if the camera set to rapidly shoot for a couple of minutes, as she had gotten into the habit of making the same face if it was a posed "smile for the camera" situation.

Her modeling skills became vital in 2017. Freelance drafting jobs were hard to come by, and job applications didn't go very far for a homeless person. However, some regular income did start to come in from promotion work on social media using ads featuring Ivy. It was an important development that helped me begin to feel productive again, and to have hopes that our ordeal could someday end.

Having a dog who could pose like a model was more than simply useful or a good selling point for ads, it was also a lot of fun during a time when things felt dreary and hopeless. We spent many wonderful hours getting good pictures, which were then processed into ads, and as payment was in advance from kind and enthusiastic customers, the rewards were immediate and concrete. In Ivy's case, it was slices of baked chicken, a real favorite. It helped our spirits to an extent that's hard to describe without it sounding like fantasy, but in the context of life as it was then, it felt like a miracle.

Ivy didn't make it out, and looking back, it was obvious that her heart condition was getting worse, and deep down, I knew that there was a chance she'd die out there. Still, it felt so sudden, and to this day, I still feel the loss of a good friend who was there at the lowest point of my life, and never broke faith with our friendship.

I've changed nothing since. Every picture is still up, and she's still the face of The Boogie Underground. It's not that I can't let go, but a matter of respect. People who do great things get statues or memorials, and in Ivy's case, she helped build this blog and it's social media presence, and so she'll live on here.

The book will have her statue in it. It'll have to be constructed with words, which I believe will last longer than stone anyway.

...update on the final draft...

I had hoped to have the final draft complete by December 31st, but couldn't manage it. Most of that month was spent trying to move the manuscript into the Windows 10 and Android environment and dealing with the technical problems that came up.

I eventually solved the problem by just staying in the iOS environment for now, and will deal with getting it into Word manuscript and ebook format when the book is done. Trying to do it all at once wasn't a good idea.

The book chapters are assembled, with a working total of 36 chapters, most of which are done. I'll need to rewrite three chapters, and do the final revisions on six.

The actual planned total will be 24 chapters. Some of the working sections will be combined into larger chapter, etc, but are being kept separate until it's time to do the layout for ebook formatting.

One of the things I saw was that the chapter order had to be changed and better transitions written. I've said in earlier blog entries that the book would be combining first and third person narrative, which makes the story more vivid, but wasn't happy with the flow because there was a chance that the reader could find the shift of perspective confusing or abrupt. You can get away with that in a movie, but not in a book written by anyone not named James Joyce.

I came up with a perfect narrative approach in January and am writing out the new transition passages. The various changes in mood, pace, and style now hang together and won't seem fragmented or abrupt. I hope it'll be a rich reading experience for any of you who read the book when it comes out.

I'm still thinking in terms of publication by late Spring or Summer at the absolute latest. As said earlier, there's reasons it shouldn't come out later so that's the deadline for all this.

- Al Handa

djboogieunderground@gmail.com

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive:

There are earlier blog entries on the Delta Snake Review section of this site that aren't on the Road page:
http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

Cover Reveal For Hide In Plain Sight

This is the cover for the upcoming book, Hide In Plain Sight, hopefully out sometime in the summer of 2018.

-Al Handa

djboogieunderground@gmail.com