On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Literary Homeless Journal - Sept. 16th, 2017

"I saw as clearly as in a picture what an illusion my former personality had been...I had painted a picture of myself as a person who was in fact nothing more than a most refined and educated specialist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the rest of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found an encumbrance and gave the title of Steppenwolf."

- Herman Hesse (Steppenwolf 1929)

The homeless aren't generally thought of as a cerebral group. Media images often portray them as a drug taking herd of cows migrating to the areas that offer the most free services.

The images can range from sympathetic (down and out) to disgusting (drug user, etc), and the standard way to express the negatives is to quote a business or property owner who almost always says he or she was sympathetic at first, but came to Jesus on the issue and wishes that all those lazy asses would just go get a job or just go away, and that they're bad for business.

As far as bad for business, that can depend on your point of view. A large population of homeless can indicate that landlords are doing a bang up business with euphoric rent levels, and in some areas, it can indicate that the drug industry, both legal and illegal, has achieved maximum market penetration with so many wrecked lives.

Sky high rents indicate that the area is doing well. So well that it becomes desirable to squeeze out the lower tier workers to make room for those who can afford the higher cost of living.

The stark reality is that in society, certain people will benefit from the system, and some won't. There's no frontier or Foreign Legion to send the losers of the game to, and the cost of social services gets higher and higher.

Many of the negative stereotypes do have some basis in fact, but the basic image of a homeless person is shaped by a specific set of images, mainly the druggie/squatter and mentally ill types. Personally, I don't object to that, particularly if that'll get those groups some help.

The stereotyping was useful to my own homelessness, as it was for many of the homeless living in vehicles, as it makes it easier to stay off the radar. The focus tends to be on the more "newsworthy" transients on the streets and in camps, so the ones who can steer clear of those enclaves.

I wasn't some unique type, there were plenty like me. We tended to find each other, and had very similar characteristics that included being comfortable with solitude, a strong desire to avoid trouble, being an observer type who looked before acting, and most of all, a strong sense of self.

That sense of self is always there. It can be shrouded in layers, but it's there.

One of the things people will think when they read my book is that much of the former self was deconstructed out there. That's sort of true, my inner self had been shaped by 20 years of life in Silicon Valley, but what looked like a massive crash was also shedding layer upon layer of externals like lifestyle things, the trappings of an imagined life.

Like being an artist and musician type. That was how I saw myself before the fall. But a true musician, for example, might lament the loss of a favorite guitar (happens a lot around rent time, etc) but it'd never make him or her think they had lost their art. I had accumulated a wonderful instrument collection, but somewhere along the line it had become acquisition for it's own sake. As each treasure had to be sold to survive, it felt like my ability to make music was dissolving.

It wasn't any different when losing a loved house, or car, or any valued possession, and the cascading feeling of loss with each item was disheartening. It's not like in the movies where the most treasured one goes last. When you need cash, the most valuable ones go first, and early on, the feeling is not loss but relief that food, gas, or whatever is on the way.

The ones that hurt come later. There came a point when there was only a couple of cheap guitars left (the ones for backup, traveling with, etc), and those were the ones that really hit home. Most serious musicians use some "cheapies" that are expendable, but in my case (and others I imagine) those were as carefully picked as the vintage collectibles. It's like seeing the last of your water drip out of the canteen in the middle of a desert..

It's that continuous string of losses, not just of instruments, that would become part of the new life.

It can seem like a life is being destroyed, but it's not. I ran into people who were chronically homeless, and had come to terms with owning less. Sure, they loved their things, but it was no longer tied to status. The outside world might think that a beat up old RV was a sign of a fallen, nomadic life, but to the owner, it was home, and all the good feelings that can bring.

At some point those people stopped feeling sorry for themselves, and just got on with life. Some make it out, others make do, and in my case, I learned from both groups. The day that I stopped regretting things meant that time was on my side.

...a wonderful life...

The basic plot of my book is about an artist type who had a life of music and writing deconstructed into rootless wanderering.

In the 1800s, my life would have taken a different course. I could have taken the money saved for a job search and bought a rifle and camping equipment and headed west. The journey might have ended in my death due to one of many factors, or could have led to a new life, but it would be a free life.

In modern society, you can't do that. There's an immediate need to find shelter, as there's really no place to go except camping grounds and that sort of thing, and finding a job requires staying in a wifi environment. Going off to live like a mountain man isn't an option in most places, and even if I could, that's not the kind of life I want.

I was an unemployed homeless person with no place to go. I took off in my car and treated it as a road trip until a job came along, as it had always had in the past. In the book I describe it as entering a downward spiral, but not knowing it.

That beginning stage isn't well documented. There's plenty of media stories about what the down and out do, what they look like in camps and skid rows and how they act. How they got there tends to be a quick sentence or paragraph before getting to the juicy stuff like drug use or peeing in public.

That day I became homeless, how I handled it, and why it was a sure path into a life in a car was something I didn't understand until the second draft of the book. It seemed just like a temporary stage at the time, a period that one could just pass the time on a road trip till a new job came along, but there were elements of my prior life that was like an airliner that seems to be flying OK, but with a lot of little problems that just needed a final catalyst to become catastrophic.

I had a life full of good work, a rich musical hobby that was seen as a possible path to a dream life but was fun no matter how it went, and while I had a lot of sympathy for the homeless back then, it was still a case of thinking that it was a choice, or the result of choices that regular people wouldn't make.

That's why it's easy to go into denial, or swing the other way into panic when it happens. Most of us have an idea of what it's like, having been in transition at one time or another. When it becomes a state where there's no visible end game, where the present is all there is, the first feelings of denial or fear are due to a simple reason; it's not that common an experience after all. It's the unknown.

It's not good enough to know how to rough it for a couple or a few days.

Knowing what to do at first isn't taught in schools, and the media is more focused on the sexy stuff like shooting up in alleys. There isn't much to read to prepare you, even though there's a lot of collective wisdom that goes back to the pioneer and hobo days that's still in practice by a huge number that stay off the radar.

...let's talk about food again...

For example, the information about food in the United States has moved away from simple facts into the realm of religion, and away from survival and into psychological areas like self esteem and class based thinking.

It's perfectly OK to enjoy fine foods and exotic dishes. I love eating various ethnic foods, when I can afford it.

Out there in the car, my cuisine was what I could afford after gas and dog food (with almost all the homeless I ran into, children and dogs ate first). Luckily I ate simple most of the time before the homeless life, so there was no horror about eating a can of beans or anything like that.

In fact, my only horror was seeing how foodie trends had made many of the traditional staples like canned sardines seem like chewing dollar bills, turning the traditionally stuffed tins into oil filled aquariums with maybe four fillets floating about. Getting a tin stuffed with fish costs more than Kale chips.

Dinner was what I could afford that day, and it had to be what I could afford that week or even that month. People diet all the time in this country, but when you have to cut calories because there's no money to buy expensive stuff, then it becomes part of the misery, and it shouldn't.

I've said before, abject food misery disappears after seeing someone eat out of a garbage can. Then even spam starts to look like chicken.

...a word about budgeting on the road...

One piece of advice is to immediately cut common expenses like Netflix, four dollar lattes, and so on, and to not do it gradually. One common experience that people had out there was to gradually reduce expenses as the money ran out. Many told me that it was an extension of living check to check.

It's better to not even look at your expense sheet, and just make a very short list of what's needed to survive. Forget everything else, the comfort stuff, purchases to take the mind off troubles, and examine anything that costs over a dollar. The short list should be gas, food, and water (not as critical, there's plenty of clean free water out there).

In other words, don't just reduce expenses. Cut down to absolute basics, and examine each new expenditure as if it were your last dollar. Start from zero.

Imagine being broke. Picture any expense that seems necessary, like yoga class or Starbuck's lattes, and imagine how necessary it would feel if the only way to get money for it was to beg for it or steal. Meditate about having just twenty dollars, and what you'd buy with it if that's all you could count on for that week (or month).

Those aren't questions you'll learn in school or on a TV show. It goes against the American religion of winning, that a hard working individual can come out on top, and being optimistic. It can feel like it's giving in to the situation.

I believed all that stuff sitting in that car, and still do now, but until the good things happen, it's good to know what you'll do with that last twenty in your wallet or purse.

You might make a lot of mistakes at first. If you want to know how many are possible, read my book when it comes out, I made plenty.

...the fairer sex....

One interesting change in media coverage is that some of the more recent stories have put a picture of a younger attractive woman as the main picture. That isn't surprising as the homeless demographic is much wider in scope than most would think. In one of my earlier book chapters, there's descriptions of female Millennial homeless based in cars, and later on, in camps. Some were there because of drugs, for others it was the alternative to living with an abuser in an area where even software engineers can have trouble affording a place to live.

One could argue that using a picture of a young female is a better optic on an article, but it depends on the slant. In many cases, the image of a wild meth head fits the narrative better. If you go to any large gathering of transients, particularly in urban camps like in San Francisco, there'll be a diverse mix of races and sexes there in the tents.

Personally, I think it's good to have more normal looking faces in the stories, and it would generate more understanding if the media would simply make it a point to show the same sympathy they give to disaster and war victims.

In my book, I described a woman who was briefly Ivy's dog sitter's life, and saw her, like many others, treated with the same broad brush used on meth heads and criminals, and it had the effect of trapping her in the street life. She got used by some men who promised a Cinderella type road out, and she wasn't the only younger female that was. It's a brutal life out there, and more so for females, whose prince was more often a pimp, dealer, or predator.

I doubt she'll drop that far. She was lucky in that there was a sprawling but cohesive group in that area that watched out for each other, and they stayed within a defined area for mutual support. Wherever I went, there were communities. People who stay off the radar, yet keep track of one another and help if there seems to be a problem.

On hot days for example, many would check in on Ivy and me, and offer cold water or ice, and even small amounts of cash. It was common practice in those groups, and I did the same. The book's center is the summer of 2016, and that time was probably the closest I came to dropping down into the camps on the river bank, and there were two main reasons that didn't happen.

One was that so many on the internet donated for food and keep my car running, and the other was coming under the protection of some very good people who, even though homelessness was a permanent state for them, would tell me that I was too smart for that life, even when I was telling myself that living in a car it was all I deserved.

When I see a media story that shows a normal person in the pictures, those are the faces I see, the ones who are better than the parts of society that think they're good for nothing. Many are worth a million of the respectable trolls that despise them.

...a day at the doggie hair salon...

One of the challenges out there on the road was keeping Ivy's hair trimmed and styled. It was one of the conditions of adopting her.

I decided early on that her hair (shih tzus have hair, not fur) was my responsibility, partially due to the cost of dog grooming, and because I figured it was a bonding situation.

Ivy never treated it as a bonding process. In fact, she'd run and hide the second the tarp and trimmer came out. I had to make sure to do it in a closed room and to never let her out of my field of vision even for a moment, like when switching the trimmer head or getting the scissor, or else she'd run for the hills.

It eventually became obvious that it was noise from the electric trimmer that freaked her out. Which no longer became a problem once we started living in the Cadillac.

Out there, it was all scissors. The first attempts looked bad, and once she had to walk around for a month with uneven ears and half her face almost bare. She didn't complain, maybe after seeing me cut my own hair in front of a side view mirror. My huge bald spot took a lot longer to grow back than her's. Probably decided that she gotten off easy.

My haircut made me look like a nutcase, and one of the early chapters of my book describes how I decided to go ahead and use that look to make some of the more aggressive homeless give me a wide berth at one place where we stayed. Kind of like how Native Americans treated the mentally with a certain awe and forbearance.

I never quite got the hang of comb and scissor cutting, qnd the haircut would be in three stages over the course of so many days. First day, it would be her face and paws. Second, neck and sides, and finally the rest of the body. I couldn't block cut without an electric trimmer, so we'd sit out there in a windy area (so the hair would blow away and not pile up), and gradually snip away until the hair was about half an inch long.

The process was later sped up by the use of a battery operated face trimmer waved over her body like a magic wand, lower and lower until the desired hair thickness was achieved. This could take a while, as I limited the sessions to about a hour per day. Any longer and Ivy would just lay down for a nap.

The ironic thing was that it did become a bonding process. She stopped running away at the sight of a scissor, and her only disappointment was that there wasn't the customary bath after. To make sure that the hair was being cut evenly, I had to smooth it down a lot, and she treated it as petting, and it was an interactive activity, which she always enjoyed.

The last haircut was when she died. I know it made no difference, but I combed her out and groomed the ears and face. It wasn't about how she was going to look, but how I'd see her for the last time, and that her spirit would see that right up to the end, I was still trying to get it right.

We went out with a win.

- Al Handa 9/16/17

...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:

The earliest entries were on the Delta Snake Review section of this blog site.
http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Homeless Literary Chronicle - August 19th, 2017

“I would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman to be.” 

- Anatole France (Life Of Joan Of Arc)

That thought, if I am right, is the possibility of establishing a sympathetic relation with an animal, a spirit, or other mighty being, with whom a man deposits for safe-keeping his soul or some part of it, and from whom he receives in return a gift of magical powers.

- James George Frazier (The Golden Bough, A Study Of Magic And Religion)

"...one of these days, when you hear a voice say 'come,' where you going to run to?"

- Lyric from Johnny Too Bad (The Slickers, Harder They Come soundtrack)

Spirituality and atheism require the same amount of faith out there. I got all butt hurt at God and his great plan that put me in a car on some hot muggy side street, and yet the prayers kept coming, begging for a happy ending.

In a Godless landscape, you have to believe that the god of money, and it's doctrine, capitalism, will reward faith in the Puritan Ethic that says work will get you out of that car, but sometimes getting that lucky break requires a miracle that only Jesus can deliver, as the priests of capitalism have the Darwinian belief that your misfortune is part of the overall plan that the best and strongest come out on top.

Either way, the idea is that you get what you deserve whether it's called reward, karma or market forces.

My belief in God permeates the book, though perhaps not in the way a Holy Roller would manifest it. Many true believers are confident that the Lord will provide. Others think that Jesus is in the business of delivering wins in the lottery or touchdowns in a football game.

I entered street life with a fairly conventional view of Christianity, or at least in the mystic sense like with the old Saints or Quakers, and it evolved like the latter group would see it...a matter of personal conscience and revelation. I saw God, or the deeper spiritual meanings differently as time passed. At times it felt like I had a guide, or a safe presence I could talk to, which given our judgement happy era, is no small thing.

The day that Ivy died, I experienced a wide range of faith...from a willingness to surrender everything for just one favor to bring her back, to bitter disappointment as she faded away in front of me.

I wrote that she had died in her sleep. That wasn't true. There was no intent to deceive, it's simply all I was capable of writing at the time. Her death is most of a whole chapter, as it happened while we were on a hike and almost a mile away from the car out on a farm road. It was extremely hot, and my pack, which as a precaution against towing and theft contained all my important papers and belongings so I couldn't drop it. So I ran with her and the pack as fast as I could, and lost the race.

It was a complex event, and it essentially put me out of action for a few days. One thing that happened was that as my race to get to the car began to look futile, I said and offered so many things to God in exchange for Ivy's life. I still can't look at the chapter without feeling intense grief, so it must have gotten a good part of what happened right.

The questions that still runs through my mind, and in the final run through of the manuscript will have to be answered is, who was I yelling at? What did I think God would or could do? Many older religions were about giving offerings for concrete favors, so was there something more basic and primal that came out in my desperation?

Or did I think it was also the death of dreams that clearly included her, and in my mind, as she left so went our dreams to get out?

In hindsight, that intensity of loss was partly because we had grown into a team. The 2008 recession put us in quite a bind, but we both handled the later homelessness period differently. Ivy became cooperative about being photographed, for example, and seemed to understand each one was for a different purpose.

I became more patient, and quit trying to train her...I treated her like a comrade in arms, and spent the year with us in sync on a lot of often Quixotic attempts to get back into the mainstream. Having her as a model in a promo agency that was run out of a car could only have been conceived by a guy who thought his dog was really a small person, yet it produced some money, and thus was a little magic created in those dreary parking lots and streets. It created hope, and with it, the ability to see a future, and without that, you go the other way towards apathy and death.

She had always been a joy to have as a pet, but was much more at the time of her death. I had made her a partner. At first it was just playful imagination, but as time passed we seemed like a sum greater than the parts. She stopped just being a pet out there. We spent 2008 as wanderers, but we spent 2016 as explorers that failed a lot, but kept going and constantly seeking.

Her light burned the brightest in our last year. She never gave in to the situation, and as a result, I never did.

I used to pray that I wouldn't die first, and leave her stranded and alone, as sad as the duty of survival would be. So perhaps my faith was rewarded. Not every miracle is going to be as big as winning the lottery. The smaller ones count too.

...a matter of life or death....

One difference between this blog and my book is that here I'll often go into a particular point at length as opposed to saying it with a single line or paragraph. That one line may have lots of meaning behind it, or it places all that came before it into context.

The concept of life being motion or movement defines both how those around me appeared and what guided most of my decisions in many of the chapters, that choices are constantly being made even when it seems there are no options. I make the point that this or that person is heading towards life or death, but it isn't a literal metaphor.

It can be, in the case of a suicide, or a drug habit involving risky behavior, but it's more nuanced in my book. There's one scene where I've emotionally hit bottom, and suicide enters the list of options, but is quickly brushed off.

The thought that runs through my mind is that my life at that moment may spiral down further, but I'll accept any setback because there's nothing going on worth my life and that my will still has plenty in reserve...my life may sink further down but as long as the decision is to choose life, and not death, there is hope and life is a fluid state.

Many religious and philosophical sensibilities define death as rebirth, and that's certainly one layer of the whole. In my story, death is also a trending towards stasis or apathy, which to me is a kind of pre-death condition that invites or predisposes extinction.

Some of the characters in the book look like they've got it all under control, and early on, I emulated them, but found that it was a disastrous lifestyle based on a common form of apathy that led to the key period in my homelessness, the summer of 2016, where Ivy and I came very close to becoming indigents living out of a backpack, but were able to correct course towards life.

My book is about all people who chose life or death, and not just the homeless. It's a choice we all make. Expressing that concept, as it appears to contradict the obvious, that continuing downwards is necessarily heading towards death, wasn't easy, but I think how it came out will be one of the most compelling passages in my book.

...the rain in Spain...

One of the things that surprised me was my reaction to bad weather. The idea of sitting in a car while it's cold and rainy might seem like sheer misery but it wasn't. In fact, the better the weather, the worse I felt.

Most people experience storms while looking at it from shelter, or in the process of getting to it, and of course, I was sitting there in the middle of it. Yet, that was when I was the most grateful.

Rain is a miserable time for the homeless who aren't lucky enough to have a car. It's not just the wet, but how cold it is while it's happening. Belongings get soaked and continue the process of becoming mildewed, and comfortable places become scarce. Forget trying to sleep.

I was lucky enough to have a car, and thanks to so many people who helped me, able to keep it.

I'd see all the water pouring down but we were dry, and could put on more clothes to stay warm. Outside, people would be scurrying about, trying to get themselves and their belongings to some shelter and soaked underneath any rain gear. None of that escaped my view, and the lesson was that homelessness wasn't some state that was black or white.

It was a life condition that had levels, or degrees. The homeless are a diverse group of people who are on the way up or down, and it can get better or worse. When I sat there watching the rain come down over the windows, it was a reminder that things could be a whole lot worse. Somewhere in that swelling tide of gratitude is hope if you look for it.

...tales for the millennium, or millennials...

I've noticed on social networks that it's popular (in some circles) to make fun of millennials, mainly by older types who used to rail at the establishment about not judging a man by the length of his hair, and who should know better.

One of the few pleasures I had out there was being able to hang out in a Starbucks in the evening. Most were manned by millennials who quickly figured out that I was homeless, and were quite kind. The young workers and managers there would often give me a free coffee, or even a snack or meal, and do it discreetly so no one noticed. More than a few were doing volunteer work with the homeless, and were sensitive enough to the problem that they'd never call attention to any kindness. It's a very good heart that doesn't need applause.

The trips to Starbucks were vital to me. It was when I recharged my backup batteries, and could work under a stable wi-fi signal. What freelance work I could get as a drafter was done in coffee houses, and the cheery youthful atmosphere was a real tonic.

When I think of music from that time, it's not blues, or jazz, but often millennial music. When I hear "Best Kept Secret," or "Just Do It," it pops me back to the open spaces of Gilroy or Salinas, though perhaps it's not always a pleasant memory, and of nights after Starbucks when I would take Ivy out for an extended walk, and of being able to find carefree moments.

Millennials are really a pretty happy bunch, and some of the jaded members of  the older generations should be careful to not try to wipe the smiles off their faces too soon in life.

...the first of many thank you's.....

One of the central themes to my book is the subject of help. The main thing was that getting out requires it. It's also, particularly in America, a gray area where the definition of help is interpreted in a lot of ways. It's too complicated to cover in a blog entry, but the generous acts of charity that helped me survive aren't ambiguous. I had mentioned that a piece of each blog would thank those who helped, and this is the first of many.

Back in December of 2016, I had just returned from a trip to the Fresno area that had very mixed results. I was looking at a pretty bleak Christmas season, and three authors, Lynn Lamb, Nicole Storey, and P.J. Webb organized a "Helping Handa" Facebook page, and solicited funds and food. The support helped, particularly in getting cold weather clothing which I was desperately short of, but also in food supplies for both Ivy and me.

It was also a huge psychological boost. Never underestimate what moral support brings to the table, the sense of acceptance counters the feeling of guilt/blame that surrounds being down and out. Once you've eaten a good meal, and life is sustained, it all has to go somewhere, so the mind is important too. The good people who created that site and contributed gave me help for both body and soul.

- Al Handa 

   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

Please consider a contribution to keep this blog going and support my activities:

http://www.gofundme.com/27w83daq

My intent isn't to become a donor funded homeless blogger, I'd like to do much more...until then, a donation would help Ivy and I to survive and continue efforts (like seeking work, etc) that can bring us out of homelessness as opposed to dropping further down into a transient lifestyle.

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive:

The earliest entries were on the Delta Snake Review section of this blog site.
http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Homeless Literary Chronicle - August 5th, 2017

"When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks."

- Marcel Proust (Swann's Way - Remembrance Of  Things Past, Vol 1 - C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation from the French 1922)

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 
I do not think that they will sing to me. 
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 
When the wind blows the water white and black. 
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S. Eliot

In my upcoming book, a key point is that sleep time is the main part of life where homelessness is an issue. In my waking hours, as long as I didn't set up house somewhere, there was nothing illegal or noticably disreputable about my lifestyle. I was really like anybody else (sort of).

It was in the evening, when most of the world was going home that I truly felt homeless. It was at that point, when I chose a spot to sleep, that my activity broke the law and made me an outlier.

The reason is simple, there's no free land or territory in this country, it's all owned by somebody who doesn't want you to sleeping there. Society considers it trespassing and while prosecution is relatively rare, it's still illegal.

Illegal in the same sense as pot or sexual kinks...some people are OK with it and could care less about rousting the homeless, and others have to be restrained by other parts of the legal code from treating transients like wack a mole targets.

The book deals with, but doesn't delve too deeply into the legalities of the issue. The main reason is that the law isn't personally relevant to a homeless person unless they're looking for trouble, are plain stupid, or impaired by drugs or booze. The normal law enforcement response is to get you to go elsewhere.

Most of us move on if told to; it's sleep somewhere, wake up as early as possible, get into motion to join the real world and blend back into society where the law doesn't come looking for you.

There's always going to be the ones who bring out lawn chairs, pile junk and garbage around their vehicle (or on the roof in many cases), and test the patience of law enforcement, but lowbrow behavior is hardly unique to homeless people.

The legal aspect was the last thing I worried about. It was more about being safe while asleep, a time when out of touch with the surroundings in dreamland separated from the real world by a thin car window.

Like more than few homeless newbies, I tried alternatives like not sleeping, and found hallucinations from sleep deprivation too scary as a lifestyle. Using meth wasn't an option either. I could look around and see that meth was bad news.

I tried various methods to sleep, so many that some of the ways didn't make it into my book.

The outside environment determined how to sleep. If it didn't seem safe, I slept fully clothed and curled up in the front seat, covered by a down jacket and the car completely clear of clutter.

The idea was if a situation occurred, to be up and driving in just a moment or two. It was also important to not have wallet or keys visible to any person walking by. In an area where there's homeless, there will be onlookers while sleeping. You can never forget that the world still turns even on the quietest night, and the next moment can reveal a surprise. More than a few times I was greeted by both the morning sun and a face peering through the window.

Most media stories focus on a "typical" situation, and can create the impression that it's how all the homeless live out there, but in a area only a few hundred square yards, there'll be dozens of living situations and stories out there.

In the opening scenes in my book, I felt that diversity was the most striking element and worked the hardest on the opening chapters to capture that concentration of humanity, fear, tragedy, despair, desperation, dreams and hopes that played out every day like a play, never completely went to sleep, and started up again when the sun came up.

A peaceful nights sleep was elusive, because night time was when we all became homeless, and all the trouble started.

...the singing of angels...

There are certain sounds that will transport my consciousness back into the past to some place out there. Phone message and email notification tones still do that, as those portended a possible job lead, or a new donation coming in, often in the nick of time.

The sound of a phone starting up was part of the morning routine, as it had to be turned off at night to save power. That tone will sound and momentarily put me back into my car in Gilroy, or the Crystal Springs rest stop.

I'll feel the chill of a cold car, and look for Ivy to say "hi schmoo," which was the customary morning greeting. I'd quickly get the Cadillac moving, and go to a spot where we could be in the sun to warm up. Ivy was taken out for her walk at that point, that was never done where we'd slept. Never. I make a big deal of that in my book, the axiom to never hang out where you sleep.

It was advice from old timers, and later on, empirical wisdom as almost every time I violated that rule, it got me into some sort of trouble.

Another sound is generators or truck engines. That often makes me think about this street in Gilroy, where there were RVs and trucks about, and where I was stuck for six weeks in a dead car, and along with this particular parking lot in Salinas, was as close to home as a place could have been.

When I heard those sounds, it meant I was as safe as I was ever going to be at night. We all parked close to each other, minded our own business and made no trouble with the police, who checked in on us regularly. We went our separate ways during the day, and saw many of the same faces at night, and perhaps wondered about those who disappeared.

It wasn't like we missed them or something, but I know we all hoped that the "missing chair" meant that the person had caught a break. When a person made it out it felt like it lowered the odds for the rest of us, so our hopes for others was as a prayer for ourselves. It can feel so hopeless out there, and even imagining a success story is a powerful tonic when personal experience gives little evidence of a better future.

...beauty in the eyes of the beholder...

One of threads that runs through my book is the concept of aesthetics, or beauty. I mentioned in the last blog entry how Willie Nile's Vagabond Moon song found a sense of delight in the vision of a moon, and while such moments do occur, it isn't always a case of finding a pearl in an oyster.

For example, I enjoyed the beauty of the Crystal Springs rest stop with it's gorgeous view of the Santa Cruz mountains, but that ambiance quickly got old when the temperature dropped into the 40s or the druggies discovered the heated bathrooms and set up shop there.

There were hot, dreary nights in Gilroy, where I had to keep Ivy and myself cooped up because it wasn't safe to leave the windows open, and the air was filled with arguments, people talking to whatever, and that energy sapping fear permeating everything.

There were no hidden gems, flowers in the mud, or angels with flowing hair. Any long haired angel out late at night wasn't out to save you.

If there was beauty, or redemption out there, you had to put it there. I often imagine myself back in the car, looking around at the street we were parked and shake my head in wonder at how I got through so many nights in that hopeless soup of a world without retreating into booze or meth, buying comfort sex with drugs, or putting a bullet through my brain.

The interesting thing about adversity is that small details become important and a slim thread can become a lifeline. Life out there becomes all about things like the next meal, if there's enough gas, a few hours of good sleep, a nice nap, and yes, finding that pearl.

One such pearl was imagination. There were times Ivy needed to go out at night, and you can't go walking around at night in fear. Predators pick up on that, and the anxiety will slowly cripple you. So Ivy and I took our walks, and I'd look for a mood or sight to write about and become a detached observer.

The blog and the book became part of that mental construct, role playing that turned perception into a search for beauty, though in retrospect, it was probably more a search for truths and meaning...all the sights out there were taken in, and decorated with words, and my book in a sense will be that epic poem it was originally envisioned to be, if poetry is truth as they say.

That night when Willie Nile saw a beautiful moon that filled his "poor heart with delight," was probably a very ordinary sight that he painted into wonderful colors from a palette deep in his heart,. That's really where beauty comes from.

...speaking of beauty....

Here's a good example of created beauty. This is a favorite picture of Ivy. I see her cheerful spirit in it, and it's a treasured memory.

In retrospect, that is. The day the picture was taken, it was 90 degrees out, and the car had stopped running a week earlier and was stuck in the hot sun most of the day. That meant we had to stay out of the car until evening.

Ivy was sitting on the curb next to the car, and the photo was cropped to leave out all the trash that surrounded us. I had no choice but to clean up the rubbish left by customers to avoid attracting attention to our area. The photo didn't capture the strong odor of urine or half eaten food.

That was the world back then for us, but the picture captures what was good about the day. She was still alive back then during Independence Day weekend 2016, and like so many other days, her cheery smile and spirit made the moment a pleasant one.

We felt good, there was enough money to eat a decent dinner and at that moment, without fear or cares. A lot was going on then, but that beautiful photo is what remains, the best part of that day, and because she was still alive, one of the best times of my life.

- Al Handa 

   8/5/17

...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:

The earliest entries were on the Delta Snake Review section of this blog site.
http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Homeless Literary Chronicle - July 16th, 2017

"I wasn't scared, I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost..."

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

...of eternal vigilance...

One of the themes that runs through my upcoming book is that being homeless wasn't just some change in lifestyle. It was a profound psychological journey that evolved through several stages starting with denial, but there wasn't an even symmetry or pattern of emotions.

I briefly described in the last blog entry that the early 80s poetry manuscript evolved into a story about a fall from grace and redemption and that is my book in a nutshell. It's probably how I'd explain it in an interview to make sure it fit into a neat soundbite or quote, but it's certainly not how it all felt at the time.

There were a series of emotional stages or phases, but it came on in a chaotic sequence, and there was no linear narrative. The opening stage was certainly denial, or at least sugar coating a temporary situation centering on an artistic trip, a very thin rope to hang a life on. The opening stages of homelessness was complex. It was a mix of shock, embarrassment, and deep down, a classic intense hope of rescue.

It's like being escorted out of a building after being laid off, but there's no place to go hide and process it all. It's a time when even if you're not religious, you hope for a miracle. Not because there's a spirituality to connect to, but because in America, becoming homeless is intimately tied in with failure, which in the old days, was resolved by taking off and making a new start out on the frontier.

In the modern day, there is no frontier...even the forests are property and when cut loose from your home, become a trespasser with no place to legally sleep, and a social outcast and losing many friends and even a lot of family in some cases.

I was luckier than many out there...I found out who my friends were, kept a few, and was found by many others from around the world. I treat it as a miracle in the book, and still do even after four drafts of the book.

When I say that it all came on in a chaotic sequence, that's how it felt, and that mood permeates a lot of the narrative. It was something that can be understood later on with some distance. Looking back, I was in a weird sort of way as alive and in the moment as I ever was in my entire life. At least part of the time anyway.

New Age disciplines treat being in the moment as a bliss trip or deep calm, but that's just endorphin addiction in most cases. Being alive is really about seeing what the situation really is. A truly sane person will feel fear if there's danger, or will be able to focus on a critical detail.

Some of the people I talked to out there felt that I was obsessed with my car. I was, no doubt about it. I constantly wrote about it in my blogs and gofundme updates, equating a running car with survival.

The thing is, the car became home for Ivy and me, and if it couldn't move, it would have been taken at some point. Without a running car, my chances of getting out of homelessness became dangerously close to zero, and I saw what happened to those who lost their vehicles out there. The downward spiral got tighter.

So on one hand, I kept my head, and never lost sight of what was needed to survive. On the other hand, thanks to irregular sleep, stress, and bad diet, the awareness of what was needed to survive out there often lapsed into wired out vigilance, paranoia, and fear.

One thing I did see out there, and emulated, were survivors who found a center, persona, or outlook that channeled the best of their personality to their circumstances. RV owners who became expert chewing gum mechanics and gypsies, others as pro level buskers or panhandlers, and others tragically retreating into a dream world or simplified life view via drugs (that ended up not being so simple).

I'm not an extrovert, or an alpha. I'm a guy who was a bookworm in my youth, a geek who managed to pick everything to be geeky about that wouldn't make you rich, and never really found who I was in the modern world. The one thing I could do well was to become at least functional in any subject I put my mind to learning.

After making a ton of mistakes early on, it finally hit me that I'd better get at least competent at being homeless and so my center, my persona became the detatched observer, or loner. That turned out to be trap. In my book, I described a couple of early personalities that seemed to have mastered the art of living under the radar in the transient lifestyle. They taught me some important things about the life, but emulating them led to a disasterous summer in Gilroy.

I learned that it was just as important to know what your goal was, why a person did this or that out there to survive. My early mentors had no desire to get out of homelessness. That influenced many of the choices they made, choices that shouldn't be made if the goal is to get out.

Although my book covers many events over a 14 month period, that summer in Gilroy was probably the decisive period. It was as low I ever felt emotionally, and out of that crucible evolved the person who survived the many ups and downs that followed. It's not a person I want to be now, and though I'd like to think it was just a phase, it's obvious that the circumstances brought out a side of me that had always been there since childhood.

I remember being called a Jap as a small child, being bullied, or in a desire to be accepted, for example, would often agree to be the enemy when playing army with the other kids. I was taught to walk away from insults, to ignore the taunts, and was able to do that, not because it was just the smart thing to do, it was also the easiest. I wasn't a good fighter. At times it meant taking different routes home to avoid bullies after school, or being willing to keep talking with kids who hated my guts until they realized I was a good guy after all.

Somewhere along the line, taking the high road and walking away takes it's toll. But as I got older, I was glad that the pain of being hated for my ethnicity didn't turn into confrontation and anger. It hurt, but staying away from anger and instead communicating let me see that most of the kids around were accepting and even protective.

There was a cost, it turned me an introvert but not a blind one, which is what anger will turn you into.

Becoming homeless was very much the same experience. I had become a thing, a term, something that a lot of people think of in terms of negative stereotypes. It turned me back into a detached introvert, often secretive and anxious to blend in with the scenery to hide. More than a few of the homeless druggies out there are not hedonistic, but hiding from public perception and themselves.

My early experiences taught me to be patient and to trust that others would see past the stereotypes, which was important, as it enabled me to overcome the shame reflex and ask for help. It's not just about communicating with people, it's also about trying to stay connected with life and not choosing the path towards oblivion or even death.

Although it's not considered a good idea to discuss a book in detail, and most of what I've written here is at best, background, I will say the what I became during the summer of 2016 was important enough that the book opens during that period (and then cuts back to the beginning later).

We all go through crisis, and do what needs to be done to survive it. It's often described as growth, but it's just as much a process of self discovery. In my case, it's the old phrase, "the child is father to the man," or how a little kid got through a rough patch turned out to be instinct growing into wisdom.

I'll get over all the pain from my life in a car, it's just a matter of time. I just hope that I stay as smart as I was at the age of six.

...listen to the music...

One of my key identities out there was as a music lover and musician. Press releases throughout the ages rhapsodize about how music can save the soul, and so on, but it was always a mixed bag. It kept a feeling of beauty in life, but when watching a guy eating out of a garbage can, the things that run through your mind isn't the blues, or kickass electric guitar, but the fervent hope that it wouldn't be me doing that in a month. For every artist who wins the lottery and gets rich clinging to a dream there's thousands mired in the daily struggle of life and labeled with the kinds of terms society gives it's failures.

Kind of like the Mott The Hoople song, All The Way From Memphis, where the line goes "you look like a star but you're still on the dole." In modern society, all paths are considered going up or down, and not necessarily a journey. Who knows what the truth is there?

That doesn't mean music isn't important, or that it can't make life feel a little better now and then. But my treasured instrument collection went through a series of stages, from being the tools to create a new life to liquid assets to keep Ivy and me in food and gas. That's not a homeless thing, though, many musicians will recognize that it's just life in the lower tier of artistic life. Even classic literature like Tropic Of Cancer is more about surviving than the act of creation, and thus is probably closer to the truth.

The writer Tom Wolfe (the one who wrote Electric Kool Aid Acid Test) once said in an interview that we had entered into an age of aesthetics, or where artists were the stars. Like other concepts like the food chain or capitalism, it gets downright religious as time passes, with an assumption of evolved superiority. Musicians are depicted in the past as being mere servants of the rich and now command the same power.

That's sort of true, but only because of the power of money. In this day and age, money gives you the sheen of power, desirability, and success, even if that often translates into being able to get away with a lot of crap and getting lots of no strings sex.

Music didn't evolve from a servant class. It started in villages and gatherings, where those who had the talent would express their art in a communal setting. In other words, when the harvest was in, the people celebrated, and those who could play music did so while the rest danced. Many dances evolved, and that was about as connected to life as it ever got.

The wealthy class got into the swing of things of course, but had the money to let some of the more talented artists become specialized. That was the start of the patron system, and frankly, was neither better or worse than what came before. The early dances became bourees, minuets, and so on, and that became "classical" music. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but that's essentially the history of music in a nutshell, other than changes brought about by technology, and even more money.

There was a time when musicians were special, but not in the red carpet sense. Their talent was seen as special, but no more so than farmers, carpenters, and so on. It was entertainment, and only more so due to the power of money.

Being able to play instruments was important to me out there in the street, but living in a car, I didn't want everybody to know. My ever shrinking collection was too valuable and liquid as a salable asset to risk out there on a street corner. It wasn't smart to even flash an iphone out there, much less a 1933 Gibson acoustic guitar. Most of the transcendent moments were in private, late at night, and away from the crowd.

I did it that way partly because it was important to keep a purity about it. There were no illusions that .50 a week in streaming royalties was going to lift me out of that life in a car, but a steady flow of money did mean people were listening, and that means something to anyone who loves to play. The few times the word got out that I had instruments meant being stalked or cased by people looking for quick cash, and that fear was something to be kept out of moments of fun and beauty.

My love of music ended up being expressed in other ways. I spent a lot of time in coffee houses in the evening (I spent the days with Ivy for both safety and companionship reasons) and songs began to enter the consciousness and into my iphone. The only expense by this point was a monthly subscription to Spotify, which I couldn't afford every month, but some months I could have it because they would give me a free month now and then once it was known that I was homeless. A rare act of kindness by a big business for sure.

Certain songs did resonate at times, when the mood and lyrics matched the circumstances. In some of the darkest periods, a song would come along and not so much express what I was feeling, but more importantly, how I wanted to feel.

I remember one song, Willie Nile's Vagabond Moon, a love song but he saw simple beauty in seeing the moon. The moon over Gilroy during the summer was pretty much like any other, and the scenery below was often desolate, and even tragic, but it made me look up instead of around me. It was escape, not inspiration, but on a night when I was eating a can of beans and rationing slices of french bread to last the week, a song that could take my mind off things for even a couple of minutes was magic.

That's the nice thing about music. It's not always the same thing, and in our world it can mean anything from a success story to a gift, but it's always around, and that makes it a true friend.

- Al Handa 

   6/16/17

Note: I've mentioned an upcoming thank you section, and that's in rough draft form. I want to put that out in the context of my current job search and settling in a permanent situation. I entered the job market in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago, my goal being to get some part CAD drafting work for a couple months until my book is finished. It's going better than expected, and I'll try to make that part of the next blog entry.

Archive for older blog entries on the Delta Snake Review:

http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

...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 Journal - June 25th, 2017

 

"...and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company."

- Kenneth Grahame (Wind In The Willows)

...ruminations on food...

One of the biggest adjustments in my return to the real world (or maybe I was in the real world and have returned to the Land of Illusions) was culinary. I could disregard every precaution and eat without fear over one of the greatest calamities that could befall a homeless person; to have an intestinal emergency with no bathroom in sight.

That's one reason 24 hour Walmarts and rest stops are so popular. Sure, it's a safe place to park or hang out, but both have bathrooms open at all hours. Contrary to the popular notion that homeless love to pee and poop out in the open, the main reason is the lack of available bathrooms.

I learned early on that old habits like eating pizza every friday had dire consequences. Even if the place has a 24 hour bathroom, no one really wants to need the facility at 3AM or in the middle of a rain storm.

One prophylactic measure was taking Pepto Bismol in the evening or before a meal. It was something I used to do before going to a rock concert or some place where bathrooms would be scarce (or worse) and the food of questionable quality. It was effective against the runs and had the additional benefit of some protection against food poisoning. 

It wasn't a recommended practice as it could cause acid reflux or constipation, but if you've ever raced down a one lane road in pitch darkness for 30 minutes to try and reach a bathroom in time, a little irregularity was the lesser evil.

...fast food? Not so fast....

One of the more common sights out there is a panhandler in front of a store holding a bag of fast food and not eating it. That was almost always a case of a good samaritan following media advice to gift food instead of cash to prevent the purchase of drugs or alcohol. I occasionally overhear or read comments that same homelss guy was ungrateful or preferred drug money, but that isn't always the case.

If I was standing out there, and someone handed me a bag of fast food, it'd be accepted with gratitude, but would be thrown away later or given to someone else who wanted it. The reason was fast food would give me the trots, and it certainly would for anyone who was living on a poor diet or had a stomach that wouldn't tolerate grease or heavy salt.

I've described living on beans and bread, and that wasn't just about not being able to afford better. I'd have loved to have peanut butter with my bread, for example, but that stuff tended to work my guts over. Same with most cheeses and other tasty treats that were often cheap and could stretch a budget, but would later send me running to the men's room.

Any non homeless person who visited San Francisco in the 90s when public bathrooms seemed to have disappeared would understand about having to take access to lavatories into consideration. It's a basic convenience taken for granted by most that becomes a outsized problem when living in a car.

Sleeping under a roof didn't change my consumption of food at first. For one thing, everything was too rich. I certainly ate pizza at any opportunity, and tended to act like it was caviar, but it took a few weeks to be able to bite into a slice without mentally mapping out a route to the bathroom at the same time.

Another civilized vice is snack food. Before going on the road, I loved it all...doritos, chips, dips, cheese, crackers, pretzels (Ivy adored pretzels), you name it, I'd eat it. Out in the car, I virtually never ate that stuff. A bag of chips costs an average of 1.49, and that's equivalent to three cans of beans; a full days ration. Snack food doesn't make you feel nourished, and that sensation of feeling sustained is important when the diet is simple.

The psychological feeling of eating well (and clean) was the real reason pork and beans were a mainstay. I could envision earlier eras when soldiers and travelers ate beans and feel a sense of tradition. It kept them alive, and it kept me alive.

There was another reason I ate beans, spam, bread and similar stuff...to save money. I often saw other homeless binge on food when they came into some cash. One couple I knew once had a good day panhandling and grossed forty dollars, and immediately spent 25.00 of it at a restaurant. I understood why they did it, it was a huge psychological boost, but it was buying food on an empty stomach. After spending the rest on gas, they were back out begging the next day. My goal would have been to make that 40.00 last so Ivy and I could eat clean food for at least a week. Food consumption was measure in both quantity and time.

We did binge in a scaled down version. Our bi-weekly thanksgiving was a 5.00 rotisserie chicken that I split up into two parts. Ivy got the breast meat (I never liked that part) and I got the rest. We'd happily feast on chicken, eating every edible part. That would be the meal for the day. It was breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Some of the low cost food, like spam, might strike many as unpalatable. I understand that, as even steak isn't everyone's idea of fine dining. Appetite is psychological and influenced by circumstances. When I found my diet boring, I just skipped a meal or two. Whatever was on the menu then started to look pretty good. We do that to cats and dogs all the time when they get stubborn about eating dry food, and it works on humans.

The other day I saw that Frito Lay had come out with a new Biscuits and Gravy flavored potato chip. It looked awfully good, and that outlook tells me that my culinary recovery from street life is coming along nicely...

...the origins of my upcoming book...

I'm finding that writing a book about my experience is about preserving two snapshots in time. The first, the poetic part that runs through the main narrative was composed in the late 80s, while working a grave job. The second, my homeless life instead of a "Pilgrim's Progress" type story.

I took an vintage 1920s portable to work and found that it was a fun instrument to write on, but not for anything that required speed, like large bodies of text. It was perfect for poetry, at least the way I composed it, which was to type out a phrase and then to slowly add lines. It became a pretech era notepad.

I didn't worry about correction with whiteout or tape, mistakes were simply crossed out and after a draft was completed, a new page started and the next iteration typed out. I didn't try to "complete" pieces so much as to record every phrase or poem that crossed my mind.

The project at the time was to create a long epic poem about a young blues musician migrating up to prewar Chicago and envisioned as a sort of beat poem set to music. It was to be a simple story with most of the action conveyed in songs, and eventually became a private project done for personal satisfaction.

It evolved from a pastoral narrative complete with train trips and interesting characters to a darker story about a fall from grace, catharsis and redemption. I really didn't know what to make of it, and after a year of intense writing put the project away. 

I kept all of the original typed notes, and images and ideas would surface from time to time and added to the manuscript. One time I pulled it out and added just one line on a sheet of paper. I had no idea where that phrase was supposed to go, only that it belonged with the work.

I took that pack of typed out sheets, filled tablets and scribbles on scraps of paper on the road. The original intent of the journey wasn't to be homeless of course, merely to travel about until a job came along. This epic poem became a project to work on in the various motels we stayed in.

There were old passages that seemed haunting and obscure at the time, that began as jazzy nonsense phrases intended to be musical in the James Joyce sense.

The story line of the work, which I called "Jook," a common 20s spelling of the term Juke, or Juke Joint, started off like our road trip. It was full of optimism, dreams, and music. As the sojourn continued, it became darker, as if the freedom that makes the road seem so open also unleashed a host of buried demons.

They talk a lot about freedom in the homeless community, but like the bluesmen who played their music with the conviction that they were damned to hell by the church community, there are a lot of choices made that bring out our worst instincts. Bad decisions shaped by the perception that the life only offers certain choices, with the rest being cut off or denied by a real or imagined society that judges us as worthless or lost.

We get lumped into a single mass or image by media or society, and thus find ourselves perceived in the company of the worst, the false prophets who subvert the illumination of sacrament into numbing hedonism or escape and the innocent judged by the actions of criminals whose only commonality is the lack of a roof.

Many people apply labels to the homeless that they'd never dare to use to describe minorities or women. The character I created in Jook was luckier in one respect, being homeless in 30s America wasn't so bad if you were at least headed somewhere like a hobo or pioneer. Now, there's nowhere a homeless person can go to escape judgement.

The original idea of the epic was to have two points of view; discrete poems, and a flowing narrative in 50s beat style prose. As the poetry was organized into story order, I saw that my current life fit the flow. The idea of doing some sort of Kerouac trip became less appealing when sitting in a car eating beans. It was more interesting to write about my life, which is probably what a real author should do anyway.

So the poems became chapter prologues. I eventually eliminated the traditional verse structure, and ran the words as a solid stream while still keeping the metre (rhythm). After each prologue, the following opening narrative paragraphs were put into the same basic metre to create pairs that seem different on the surface, but when carefully read are really the same opening.

One of the important things about my book is that the first two drafts were completed while still out there living in the car. I'd never be able to recreate that mood that was present when typing out the manuscript on an iphone in a dark street or parking lot, distracted by sleep deprivation, and never totally certain that Ivy and I were in a safe place.

There's been the temptation to rewrite certain passages in a more literary or poetic way. In some cases it was appropriate where some insight had come after being a safe distance from that life. In others, the passages were written as I felt and thought at that moment, and any revision would alter the mood.

There's a lot of individual stories floating out there and not heard because much of the the media and others have succeeded in making the homeless seem like a pitiful herd of cows. When people read my book, they'll see that it's only one of thousands of stories out there to be discovered. The book has plenty of details but the important point is that there's a real person telling the story living a real life that wasn't some inescapable destiny lived by someone who wanted it.

- Al Handa 

   6/2/17

-Al Handa

ontheroadwithalandivy@gmail.com

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive:

http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

"On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Anthology Vol. 1 2016-2017" is a collection of blog entries written during the homeless period and the aftermath 

Note: The eBook is on Kindle Unlimited: 

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Al-Ivy-Anthology-Vol-ebook/dp/B0B4ZPJC3X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9&dplnkId=96b4ec73-2dc7-4618-99bf-e64b20a6b082

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Al-Ivy-Anthology-Vol-ebook/dp/B0B4ZPJC3X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9&dplnkId=96b4ec73-2dc7-4618-99bf-e64b20a6b082 https://www.amazon.com/Road-Al-Ivy-Anthology-Vol-ebook/dp/B0B4ZPJC3X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9&dplnkId=96b4ec73-2dc7-4618-99bf-e64b20a6b082https://www.amazon.com/Road-Al-Ivy-Anthology-Vol-ebook/dp/B0B4ZPJC3X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9&dplnkId=96b4ec73-2dc7-4618-99bf-e64b20a6b082

On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Literary Homeless Chronicle - Feb 3rd

 

..."in exploring the physical universe man has made no attempt to explore himself. Much of what goes by the name of pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness."

- George Orwell (Pleasure Spots 1946)

Getting near the start of my new social network promotion business, centered on Twitter, sometime this week. I've got five clients already so I'm looking forward to a nice start this month. 

It's felt good to be productive in this new venture, and producing some income, though the recent donations have helped me a lot...I'm hoping the balance will be tipped towards self sufficiency by the end of February, which is also around the one year anniversary of becoming homeless. 

Like any small business, I'm sure it'll be long hours and some hard times, but I'd rather have my problems be of a greater magnitude than bare survival.

The atmosphere around here is moving back towards a tougher time for the homeless...not coincidentally, the "caravan" that I've described in an earlier blog entry is back and taken over a section of a nearby parking lot, so there's several homeless vehicles loosely associated around, drawing in backpackers, and of course the police, who seem to be pulling over lots of homeless.

My mistake though; I got absorbed in this new business and became careless and was driving around on city streets near Hwy 152 and 101 (a known drug corridor) during a time that caution and staying off the radar is the sensible thing to do.

One other thing...if you've been homeless long enough, you realize that some are territorial. I've seen that at a rest stop where a large group lived, where they'll even slam a door into your car if they don't want you in that space. 

I woke up one morning last summer to find myself next to a vehicle that always drew a line of young campers from the levee area, and afterwards had a regular stream of bike riders (couriers) ride by at all hours, many making loud sudden noises, looking into the car,  and even making racist remarks...it settled down once it was obvious that I wasn't a possible snitch (I guess) but that's why many homeless aren't open and friendly, or are suspicious until they really know you...when there's a lot of fear around, the less you know the better.

There's other signs; the area around the levee and fence is repopulating with partiers and transients. There's a new hole in the fence, as wide as a door. That probably means bike deliveries, as smaller more discrete holes are the norm, and the stop I was involved in wasn't a standard warrant/DL stop...it was an obvious scan for drugs, and interest in me fell off sharply after seeing my car clear except for the usual homeless type items on the floor. 

However, if drugs are coming back into the area, that's too much trouble comes by for my taste. The ATV and dirt bike crowd are back using the slough and buzzing the parking lots...summer is coming early this year.

To me, the key is this new business...it's the one thing I can do now that can affect my future the most...if the car gets impounded before I can get a replacement or fix it, well, I have my scoot bag and will just have to deal with it, but being forced to go on foot isn't the apocalypse it seemed like a few months ago...not that it's desirable, but with the business and book, I'm finally heading somewhere...if it has to be without a car, then the path is just going to be a little longer...I don't make it very public, but I've been a Christian for decades. I've always believed it's better to manifest one's beliefs than vocalize, so I consider it a private thing. 

Some of the other old timers have already cleared the area, and I'll probably head south this week since I'm now under police scrutiny, though they cut me slack today; I did get the tacit warning that a crackdown is probably coming. The Gilroy police are very kind, and compassionate that way.

There's been a path laid out for me now, so I'm no longer overly fearful of the present; that's also a change in me from a few months ago...and I have Ivy and a lot of friends, so that path won't be lonely or harsh. I'll pray for an easier road though...

"My little rough dog and I

Live a life that is rather rare,

We have so many good walks to take

And so few hard things to bear...

And we travel all one way;

'Tis a thing we should never do,

To reckon the two without the four,

Or the four without the two."

- Excerpt from a friend of Lincoln Newton Kinnicutt (To Your Dog and To My Dog)

"Stay here, I'm going in to start the laundry and I'll be back"

Ivy gives me her "ok boss, glad you let me know because I was going to open the car door with my paw and leap out of the car" look, and resumes her nap.

Living with an animal is partly an unspoken bond between two living beings who develop an empathy that doesn't need words, and partly talking to one's self a lot in the pet's direction...it's the age old collision of science versus metaphysics.

Science used to be the notion that what one could observe was real, and life was about discovery, till there was good money to be had; then it became a saint that could perform miracles for cash, or in other words, the successor to the medieval Catholic Church.

Metaphysics used to be the belief that connection to God was an individual experience and senior to the Church, till Saint Peter knocked some sense into the believers and restored the capitalistic verities of the Greek religion.

The fanatics in these two forces of life have been going at it ever since; one side providing reasons to kill each other, the other dedicated to making it an ever more efficient process with better and better weapons.

None of this helps Ivy and me, of course, we're still stuck together like tar babies in an old Cadillac and luckily God made it easier for a man and dog to coexist than with a human female.

To my credit, I realized a long time ago that telling Ivy not to leave the car was really silly but since she'd been hearing that phrase for so long, the real point is that it's the same collection of sounds she hears when I leave and because of that, knows I'll come back...I have no idea how to reduce that to dog sounds, so the phrase became our language for "I'll be back, I'm not abandoning you and the car to continue a solitary journey in shorts and a Ramone's t-shirt." Luckily she can't read my thoughts.

My guess is that Ivy's real thought is "if you leave who's going to feed me"?

Well, she should have finished school and got a degree so she wouldn't be dependent on a guy...

Hours of sitting around in each other's face has resulted in the evolution of a language...we've developed what I call "Lurch talk," named after the famous Adam's Family butler who used to groan a lot...it started off as a game, when Ivy would groan, I'd groan back, and then she began to tie sounds together into sentences, and now when she wants to eat or go outside, she groans the appropriate phrase...I don't encourage her to do it with strangers, as it often gets mistaken for growling, though no one's ever become frightened by it either. 

I imagine that if she did want to growl, it'd be frustrating to have people laugh at how cute it is...kinda like how women feel when they get pissed and the guy tells them they look cute when they're angry...and they don't have the option to go nuclear and bite or sleep with their furry white butt on my pillow.

Having your dog thinking she can talk is a mixed blessing, but having her as a road buddy isn't...

...emergency and disaster preparedness for the homeless...

In some ways homeless emergency preparedness is a simple subject...we're already in a disaster and live our lives by the emergency measures in place beforehand...but let's move off the materialistic view and assume that within this new universe, greater disasters can occur.

I'm sure most of you've read some material on emergency preparedness and have measures in place for the worst case scenarios in your region...I spent over 12 years in the security field and as a supervisor had to take a multitude of courses that made me a Red Cross medic, a low level but full suited chemical handler, anger manager, and of course, a sort of expert in emergency response.

Very little of it applies to homelessness, but some basic principles apply. You should be prepared for the worst case scenario and your supplies should reflect what you'd do first (more steps can be implemented if you have the cash).

 A cynic might say that our first basic emergency would be how to get drugs when flat broke...and truth be told, I imagine for some homeless that would be the worse case scenario...a meth head that's crashing won't think of much else, and the proper ERT response would be panhandling or some sort of street crime, though given the cost of meth, it's not as common a reason to commit a crime for as heroin or crack, but that can change once the person moves into the more refined vintages of speed and crank.

Meth is relatively cheap and simplifies life, though a meth head might want to spend a couple of hours explaining why...but emergency preparedness is simple; what's the big disaster and what measures do you take to cope with it.

One problem is that some prepper entrepreneurs have turned survival into a uniquely American trip, that is to say, into a boutique industry where even the most basic gear can be rediculously expensive and in many cases, too complicated or unrealistic...expensive dehydrated meals when clean water might be scarce is a good example, and a real life example was third world babies getting sick on US made formula that required mixing with water.

The ultimate fetish is the "scoot bag," a pack or bag with basic stuff that can be grabbed in an instant when suddenly having to leave a place or finding yourself in a survival situation.

Being a gadget geek, of course I have one...I've spent many happy hours contemplating various scenarios and configuring my cool little bag of tricks to ensure mastery of the situation.

Luckily, as time has passed, I've become more sensible about it and sold off the Bear Grier Super Duper survival knife and other stuff like that...I realized that my chances of being stranded in the middle of the Amazon jungle was slim, and it's easier to just carry matches in the handle of a ten dollar Bowie Knife than bang a 50.00 knife against a flint to make fire...though I admit that the Bowie knife isn't in my scoot bag anymore as it's too heavy and keeping a cheap butane lighter is even cheaper...I still haven't figured out why I'd want to create a fire within city limits though...

The operative word is cheap...the scoot bag has stuff you'll probably never use, so keeping items like a 50.00 knife or really nice lightweight jacket in it is really more of an upscale hobby.

In my case, my scoot bag doubles as a light hiking bag/whatwouldiwantonmeifmycarisgonewhenigetback type thing, so it's a gaudy collection of cheap stuff, my devices and battery packs, useless paracord knife (kept losing it so putting it in the bag keeps it in a safe place) that'll I'll probably replace with some loose paracord, a Cliff bar, dog dish, water bottle, flashlight, and so on...it varies according to my current state state of paranoia and weight considerations if it gets annoyingly heavy on a walk where I'm already carrying Ivy, whose weight fluctuates.

It's the fun bag...there's a more serious backpack in the trunk that I can grab if need be if there's time and I'm caught out in walking clothes in the winter...but the scoot bag has the key stuff; my papers and phone. If I'm caught with just my beloved scoot bag, the last thing I'm going to be thinking of is survival in the cold...I'm going to make sure I can call for help and communicate till it comes. 

If I'm living out in the boonies, then it might be a different situation and I'm sure there'll be many happy hours spent creating the perfect scoot bag for that situation.

There's really only a couple of basics...if you're in a car, then make sure it always has a full gas tank and always have a working phone with plenty of backup power...everything else is a distant second.

-Al Handa

ontheroadwithalandivy@gmail.com

Please consider a contribution to keep this blog going and support my activities:

http://www.gofundme.com/27w83daq

My intent isn't to become a donor funded homeless blogger, I'd like to do much more...until then, a donation would help Ivy and I to survive and continue efforts (like seeking work, etc) that can bring us out of homelessness as opposed to dropping further down into a transient lifestyle.

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive:

http://deltasnake.blogspot.com

THE IVY CORNER: Ivy seen below in various ads in her new job as shih tzu supermodel for Boogie Underground Media...very fun to be working her as a partner in this new venture.

Here's the blurb for Boogie Underground Media:

Boogie Underground Media promotion.

Email techmek@yahoo.com for list of services and prices!

Yes I did say video was coming but I haven't worked out all of the bugs yet :-)

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

 

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