On The Road With Al & Ivy: A Literary Homeless Journal 2/17

 

"And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep...tired...or it malingers"

"I am no prophet-and here's no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,

and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid."

-T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

...freeloaders and other terms...

One of the biggest arguments against the homeless is that they're a bunch of freeloaders. Secondary argument that's sometimes applied to them is that they "don't pay taxes," and live off society.

The argument that they don't pay taxes is generally based on whether they pay state or federal income tax. The fact is around 50% of the population doesn't pay federal income tax or live off of some sort of government assistance...not to mention that virtually all tax cheats are from the non-homeless population.

The homeless, regardless of how they get their income, if any, pay most of the same taxes as most respectable society. They pay sales tax, tolls, and various fees. Most buy goods and services like everyone else, and contribute to the economy. The homeless who panhandle aren't doing it to amass a fortune, they're doing it to buy services and goods. They don't hide it overseas to avoid taxes.

If it is for drugs, they're patronizing the same distributors who serve respectable society's needs, and are rarely the prime customers. 

Which I should add, it's a business that in many cases has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Mexicans and Americans in drug wars over market share and contributed to massive corruption in society. Most Americans buy drugs that has blood on it.

Most Americans don't realize they are also technically "freeloaders." That is to say, "subsidized" services. Though I'd rather term it as interdependence.

If you take a look at the average bill of somebody who sends their kid to a private school, that's closer to the actual cost. Most schools wouldn't survive without bond measures, property taxes on people who don't have kids, government subsidies, and people willing to buy candy and other consumer goods for school fund raisers.

Most people wouldn't have health insurance if the people who were healthy weren't paying into the system. People in their SUVs don't have to wait in a gas line, or endure gas rationing, thanks to the government spending billions in the Middle East and sacrificing the lives of soldiers, many of whom are from the poor, not the upper class, to preserve the oil supply from the Middle East and to avoid putting up with unsightly oil platforms off the Malibu coast. It won't be the elite whose water supply is destroyed by fracking.

If everybody had to pay for the public street in front of their homes and apartments, our neighborhoods would be a checkerboard of concrete, gravel, and dirt. Somebody, somewhere, is helping to pay for that pavement who isn't benefiting from it, due to the nature of the tax system.

Virtually all Americans are benefiting from cheaper goods manufactured by overseas factories that hire people for wages no American would ever tolerate. That also goes for our food.

The list could go on, and the list wouldn't be complete without the billions, and probably trillions wasted by government officials in their everyday duties and corrupt deals that the population shrugs off and generally tolerates as being out of their control. 

There's a lot Americans working in government funded projects that are unnecessary, or for devices and weapons that will never work as advertised, or see combat. These people are not perceived as crooks, or people ripping off society, but as hard-working people just trying to make a living...at taxpayer expense. It's a matter of perception, and often are class notions of what's respectable or not.

Without taxpayer help through disaster relief, there'd be hundreds of thousands of people added to the homeless population after each hurricane, flood or tornado. The distance separating the two groups is smaller than one might think.

...the homeless aren't all saints...

That doesn't mean that every homeless person is a worthwhile human being, and contributes to society, but that goes for members of respectable society.

To their credit, most Americans don't view homeless as worthless, vermin, or freeloaders. Such terms are generally applied by trolls, and a certain segment of the population that is self-centered, and lacking empathy for their fellow man.

America was built by homeless people having to leave their countries to start a new life, and who came willingly or unwillingly. Notwithstanding the fact that the process involved screwing over a lot of native Americans, the important point is that even the richest American are only a few generations removed from people who were often not much different than at least some of today's homeless, and in more than a few cases got their fortunes through criminal activity or labor practices that are now outlawed.

The sympathetic Grapes of Wrath image of the homeless workers came later. In their time, they were called "Okies" and more often than not, looked at with contempt. Acceptance came later as these Americans were finally seen as human beings.

...perception counts...

We're entering an era of change with AI and robots that will be as most momentous and cruelly Darwinian as the Industrial Age...the younger generation is moving into the mainstream workplace and replacing older workers, and rightly so, it's their turn...big business is working overtime to make humans obsolete...the old Robber Barons and Captains of Industry made very little attempt to mitigate the effects of change, as it wasn't their concern, and the high tech visionaries who dream of an automated society aren't giving much thought to what humans will do without a job or relevant job skills.

The only help many of us will get as society changes will be from other ordinary people, both from direct help and in forcing governments to do their job of seeing to everyone's welfare and not an elite.

If treatment of homeless continues its current trend towards trying to force them into an already overloaded social services system and unregulated shelters, it'll be like refugee camps and badly run jails...if society doesn't begin to recognize that the homeless are a diverse group and need a variety of effective services and shouldn't be lumped into a media defined rabble, then the institutional knowledge won't be there to handle the large groups of people who will be displaced by the technological changes in the next decade.

I think it starts with casting aside the various media images, and humanizing the problem...the difference between thinking homeless people are losers or parasites, and viewing workers displaced by robotics and AI tech as regrettable casualties of progress will be very slight, as the contempt shown to those two groups will be the same in nature once poverty takes hold, and the unemployed begin to overtax social support systems and the remaining taxpayers begin to feel the pinch. Political liberalism can become social conservatism when the tax rate begin to climb.

If you wonder how the economic elite views the future; it's a vision that sees millions on welfare, and the rich living in bunkers and in offshore havens to escape the wrath of those affected by the obsolescence of human labor. These are the future visionaries.

The rising cost of sending a kid to college should have been a warning to society that entry into the future economy would only be available to an ever shrinking number of  people who could afford it. That, and many other things will be the legacy of generations that preferred spending money on big screen TVs and cheap overseas labor to social infrastructure.

...the gift to be simple...

One of the foot homeless around here is an old timer...you can tell because instead of a single cart he pulls along a train with a two wheeled baby bike ricksha as a caboose. Looks around 60 or so, well tanned from the elements and with a trimmed beard.

He hangs around outside of the various stores on the benches, and drinks white wine. Sometimes there's others there and they just hang out, or he sits alone quietly looking very tired. Doesn't openly panhandle, so there's store regulars he depends on to spot him looking desolate or he knows by experience who to hit up for cash. 

Everything about the guy shows experience at survival at this level, right down to his train being properly tarped before rain hits.

He's one type of homeless that scares me the most...his life is a possible outcome...without ambition or dreams, I could just become another adept survivor who lives in a small world with bottles of cheap wine as my milestones. There must have been a time when he wanted more, and there must have been a moment or series of events that crushed that hope. 

Everyone has moments of self doubt, or fear...mine is that I haven't recognized where I'm really at and that I'm really a mentally ill homeless person living in a dream world, though Ivy reminds me three times a day that I'm really a dog feeder...a brutal reality, but purpose does give meaning, no matter how small. I'm not the first person whose sanity was saved by a dog.

Those who think that God, dreams, ambition, or goals are meaningless in the face of "reality" or that life has to have winners and losers just haven't seen enough of life yet. This guy still can drop further till they have to pick him up off the grass in the downtown park. He's moving downwards and like many in the real world, thinks things are under control and continues the slide. He's the same as all of us, he's just further down the hill, and what direction you're going in still makes a difference.

...my one year anniversary...

Update 2/20: Today is the one year anniversary of the day I became homeless. My first thought was to treat it like my birthday, that is to say no big deal, but it's also a day of thanks...I'm sitting in the second of three storms due this week, in a car with my dear friend Ivy, and while it isn't exactly a wonderful day, it's far from a bad one.

The insurance company granted me an extension on my policy, adding their prayers for my situation, and a recent flow of donations ensured that Ivy and I have decent food and water...it may not feel lucky to others but I've been seeing what these storms have done to other homeless, moving about in raincoats and some not, and I know it could be a lot worse. Saw another guy eating out of a garbage can last night, but as I approached with the intent I'd giving him a few dollars he took off, probably in fear, there was three highway patrol cars nearby, and I know the feeling and thoughts that might have been running through his mind. That plus no one likes being seen rummaging through a garbage can.

I saw something yesterday...I was in the lot doing the promo work and it was extremely windy. A hawk appeared in front of my car, and then just hovered, facing south, and just climbing and hovering higher and higher, did that for a couple of minutes. The thought came to mind, "a hawk soars higher in a strong wind," and it is similar to Native American thought that hawks were messengers from the spirit world, and in the Bible, from Job 39:26 King James "Does the hawk fly by your wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south?"

I doubt that it means I'll win the lottery :-) and a strong wind means that there's more to endure, but there is a strong possibility of relocation south to Castro Valley this week and a haven where I can work on my new business and book, I'll know more Wednesday. So I think it's all more of a sign that my path is going to move further South again.

I started out homeless with very few friends and only the family being my daughter...in Silicon Valley, you lose a lot of friends after a layoff, though I'd hesitate to call such people real friends.

I spent the first few months making all the usual mistakes a homeless person makes, and hiding due to the usual embarrassment and shame...I punished myself after the usual new tech job contract didn't appear within a couple of months and ran afoul of the CHP and ended up in Gilroy...one of the things that changed was that I outed myself as homeless and asked for help, and found a world full of caring friends who've literally kept Ivy and me alive and in an independent shelter of a running car...I think that I'll be out of homelessness this year, it feels like it's nearing an end of a phase, and when that happens, I'll tell everyone who'll listen that it wouldn't have happened without the help of hundreds of people who help...none were rich or famous and none had anything to gain by helping and no one would have noticed if they didn't...the goodness of people is something I've seen and am convinced exists and it motivates me every day to keep trying...I've been able to avoid drugs and booze, and the crippling apathy of hopelessness, and self pity. I'm glad that Ive seen the things I've seen this year, I'll never be the same person I was a year ago, and I thank all of you for that.

-Al Handa

djboogieunderground@gmail.com

On The Road mini blog on Twitter:

@spaceageoracle

Main Boogie Underground Twitter:

@alhanda

The Al & Ivy Homeless Literary Journal Archive (some of the earliest entries):

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.

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

 

Author Eric Wilder

"Ghost Of A Chance" 

now only $0.99!

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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 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:

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

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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 Homeless Literary Chronicle - Dec. 13th, 2018

"Homer died two hundred years ago, or more, and we still speak of him as though he were living...the others he wrote in his epic of the Trojan War. They are mere shadows, given substance by his songs; which alone retain the force of life; the power to soothe or stir or draw tears."

- Robert Graves (Homer's Daughter 1955)

I celebrated a half million views in the November blog entry, and this month should see another milestone; the completion of the final draft of the book.

It'll still need to be line edited (and possibly refined as a result) but I decided last month that it was time to finish. I remember good friend, author and editor, Melody Ramone, once telling me that there'd come a time when it felt "finished" and added half jokingly that I'd also might be sick to death of the manuscript.

That was certainly true, though being "sick of it" in my case is more a case of the musical equivalent, which is feeling that the work is as good as it's going to get and will risk becoming worse (or boring) if it keeps getting fussed over.

When McGraw and I worked on music for our Handa-McGraw International albums and YouTube channel (Electric Fog Factory), we differentiated between music for recording and live work.

We always stopped jamming and trying out new arrangements on a recorded piece when it felt right. After that, it was all about getting the right take, and technical perfection was always secondary to feel. For example, on the YouTube channel there are several numbers that were intended as demos, but never replaced. That's because a finished version hadn't been done that had the right feel.

My book is similar to an album, mainly because the artistic sensibility is musical. It had stopped being a chronological journal by the second draft and became a work driven by a musical sensibility.

...empathy, sympathy, and pity...

I also avoided passages, particularly about characters, that delineated some sort of main theme or "timeless" concept. There are several in the book whose lives are instead described dispassionately, or without judgement (as much as possible).

A neutral stance isn't always easy to achieve, because of the natural desire to steer the reader into feeling a particular emotion, particularly sympathy. There's temptation to slant or change the characterization to do that. Which isn't forbidden in a novel, of course, but not desirable in my case.

The neutral stance is the most empathetic. That can result in passages where the reader might ask, is Al condoning what the character is doing or lacking any pity for the person?

There are parts of the book, for example, where a person eating out of a garage can is described in detail. Not just the physical minutiae, but the mentality. It's a scene without declarations of shock or horror, and written from the point of view of an observer who was also hungry, felt hopeless, and could understand where the scavenger was coming from.

I found that the first drafts of the scenes (added in the fifth run through) were as good as those would ever be. Every attempt to revise it took it further away from the raw, effective description and "judgement" began to creep in.

It was transitioning away from a mentality that could only exist in that moment to a mannered one stemming from the detachment that comes later when being able to eat well. My view of those incidents also differed between the early incidents and those seen much later. 

In the earlier passage, I was seeing it for the first time, the second was after being among the homeless for several months and had a clear idea of who scavenged food and why. 

It is a stark, visceral act to scavenge food, especially in front of people. My own feeling is that it should never happen, that society must make sure that no one is ever forced to do such a thing. That's obvious to anyone with even a shred of humanity.

To write about it from my point of view would risk making it about me and my feelings. To describe it from their point of view, humanizes the image, and requires a dispassionate lens, but in the end tells their story in a way that has a chance to be revelatory. The pathos is greater if the character isn't turned into an archetype. 

When the later incident didn't shock me, it wasn't because I had "become hardened," or self involved. There was an understanding among many of the homeless that anyone that desperate should be helped. How some did so could strike you as weird, but motivated by a humanity shaped by the moment. There was one collective effort for a mentally ill scavenger, described in the book that at the time, struck me both as very eccentric but filled with human warmth.

Food and water was offered freely, particularly if the person was new, and being stingy was a rare act in the circles I traveled in. In the summer months, for example, friends would come by and make sure we had cold water to drink and enough to eat.

...acceptance...

The main thing people gave each other was acceptance. 

Most homeless are acutely aware that they're being judged, often harshly. If they saw a person going through a garbage can, they almost never interrupted the act. I go into more detail about why in the book, but there were good reasons for that. 

The best time to approach the person, as a fellow homeless, was later on when the person was done. For one thing, there were various reasons a person could be doing it. Some had nothing to do with hunger. 

One reason was that we lived among a great many who were mentally ill. Some were harmless, some weren't. Interrupting a mentally ill person at a dumpster could trigger a unpredictable reaction, particularly at night. 

We learned to observe first before acting.

Several of the people who became friends had observed me for a few days before approaching. Some weren't sure I was "all there" because of my severely bad haircut at the time, constantly talking to myself, and the odd habit (to them) of carrying Ivy instead of using a leash (not to mention constantly talking to her also). There were reasonable explanations for the above, of course, but they couldn't know that. 

Being constantly short of sleep and good meals, often in fear, sometimes angry, and being dirty created a feral mindset that showed in the early drafts. My prose at some points could have been alternately mistaken for a motorhead rap, a paranoid who saw danger at every turn, and most valuable to my book, a realization that, at least in the present, he was one of them, had to live with them, and that they were just people like him. It's a mood that was worth preserving.

...the Ivy chapter...

For example, I'm glad I wrote the chapter about Ivy's death in the early drafts. Writing about it now as it really happened then would be difficult. The existing chapter captures the physical impact of devastation that fades with time.

One key point that the original account captured was that after Ivy died, an important link to sanity was gone. Admitting that I "lost it" is easy, but keeping in the actual thoughts and behavior of that moment that cycled rapidly through anger, ingratitude, pain, and even blasphemy would be a tempting candidate for self editing. Also, for several hours, I lost all awareness of my surroundings, and disregarded every precaution normally taken in a homeless area at night. 

There was shock, then a raw paralyzing fright that set in once the adrenalin was gone. Even as she died, I could still at least hang on to the notion that superhuman effort or desperate prayer might work, because even long odds sustain hope.

There's an old term, "staring into the abyss," that captures it perfectly. The dreams of the previous four months died that day, yet on that terrible night after it all happened, what actually ran through my mind surprised me even then. It wasn't suicide, getting numb from drugs, striking out in anger, or any of that. I'd have welcomed apathy at that point.

I think that any of us who has such a moment, where a stark truth hits so hard that it renders everything meaningless, and I think it's different for everyone, has to reaffirm something at their core, whether it's faith or a choice, and move into and through that "void."

The term "reaffirm" is a big theme in the second half of the book. There was a decision made four months earlier that turned out to be relevant that sad night, and pulled me out and forward. Like a ship that had been in a terrible storm, found itself well off it's path, but knew it's course and continued the journey. Though it's not always obvious, there's a path that starts in the first chapter all the way to the last.

The first draft ended in February just after the one year anniversary of becoming homeless. In fact, the ending had already been written. I considered leaving it that way, but decided that Ivy was too important to the story and kept writing, something another writer would understand.

She projected so much personality and helped galvanize so much help. If my writing ability is up to the level of ambition in this book, then perhaps you'll be rooting for me to succeed for at least pity's sake, but will most certainly admire Ivy's great big spirit. She started off homeless as a pup, but only got more indomitable no matter what life offered. Make no mistake, she knew we were homeless.

In the larger sense, everything I want to say in the book is there, and it's time to finish it. If all goes well, I'll be able to tell everyone that the final draft is completed on December 31st.

"Nothing, including alcohol, ranked as high as coffee for the Civil War soldier. Men drank it before, during, after, and in lieu of meals. Many wrote of it in letters home, praising the soothing qualities of a pistol-hot cup of grind."

- Thomas R. Flagel (The History Buff's Guide To The Civil War)

Coffee is one of mankind's great loves. It's regarded both as a necessity and a luxury worth paying extra for drinks that have less coffee in it. Most of the world actually prefers tea but like soccer as opposed to NFL football, it'll never replace coffee in the Western Hemisphere.

It only took me a few weeks of living in a car to regard coffee as just an occasional indulgence.

One problem with coffee is that makes you go to the bathroom too much. Going to the bathroom out there was often a real hassle. The other problem is that it's pricey by the cup. Even at a place like MacDonald's where it costs a buck, that was a day's worth of decent meals for my dog.

I eventually started buying a six pack of eight ounce generic cola for a dollar fifty for any needed caffeine boost, and most mornings that did just fine. Part of the reason that worked was because I was primarily a tea drinker for most of my life, so while I liked coffee, it wasn't irreplaceable.

Also, caffeine wasn't a useful drug out there. It could be tense enough, particularly at night, and if I could relax enough to sleep for a few hours, then that was more important. If sleep didn't come that night, I needed to be able to nap during the day.

I missed a lot of things but coffee wasn't high on the list, and have to admit, that was a surprise.

"And honey is the holiest thing ever was, hive, comb and earwax, the food for glory..."

- James Joyce (Finnegan's Wake)

Now honey, that was a different thing altogether. I wasn't a big fan of the stuff in regular life, but out there it was invaluable.

Bread is a cornerstone in any cheap diet, and a good loaf in a variety of flavors can be had for a dollar. Honey is perfect because it's affordable, makes bread taste great, and can be kept in a car as it doesn't spoil.

Honey has a different aura than other cheap foods. For example, beans and bread are quite filling and nutritious, but let's face it, it's still beans and bread. Now, bread with honey on it, well, that's like a snack at home with all it's comforts.

A nice cheap sweet snack was no small thing. Other amazingly cheap goodies, like oatmeal cream sandwiches, could turn white sugar into a punishing experience. I finished a box by scraping out the filling and just eating the cookies, but the joy was less than transcendent.

I don't consume much honey now, but like my dearly departed Birkenstocks, it was a friend when I needed it.

"How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! How short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be."

- Charles Darwin (On The Origin Of Species)

Alpha types tend to interpret "survival of the fittest" as a validation of aggression or masculinity, which is really more Nitchzie (or Ayn Rand) superman stuff. It is a part of natural selection, but the concept is more nuanced.

Being the biggest baddest dude may help get the women interested, but that only meant that he could win a head butting contest with other males. Assuming they fight fair.

Mankind didn't survive because of physical prowess. If we had depended purely on alphas, we'd have been on the desert menu for saber tooth tigers after their main course of he-men. The list of animals that can kick a human butt in a fair fight is long and beyond the scope of this blog entry. Though making such a list might be fun...maybe in a future blog.

What enabled us to evolve into beings that can create thousand dollar hamburgers and shoes was the ability to form groups that could forget political differences long enough to use their intelligence to manufacture weapons and gang up on the savage beasts (most of whom are heading quickly towards extinction, particularly if their body parts are thought to increase male verility).

Looking at the world now, it's obvious that man's main enemy and competitor on the food chain is man. Darwin noted that the competition within a species is more intense.

An invasion by martians might give mankind a reason to unite, but with our superior intelligence and egos that verge on God complexes, any resistance would be crippled by large numbers of people who'd prefer to collaborate and profit by treachery.

Idealists who believe in our innate niceness might scoff at that, but given the large number of people who wish they could become vampires or believe E.T.s built the pyramids, it's clear that the seeds of treason will always be present.

Well, maybe that is Darwinism after all. Like I said, the subject is full of nuance.

Anyway...the reason I discuss capitalism so much is that it is, in the Western World, more than God, the true state religion. Out there in the streets, it was a word that had a lot of relevance.

Like any philosophy or doctrine, capitalism often becomes what people say it is. Much of my early anxiety and fear of the streets was due to Hollywood and literary depictions of it being a tough place ruled by apex predators. Which, as I've said in the past, was found to be only partly true.

Capitalism is really about money. Nothing else.

Sure, there's things like power and status but none of that happens without money. Where that money goes and who gets it is only part of the doctrine. The comparisons to Darwin and survival of the fittest just tends to be one of many platitudes to keep the other 99% quiet and respectful.

The various species on this planet actually survive because of a multitude of successful strategies, but the main one is intelligence. "Street smarts" isn't just about being amoral or a supreme BS'er to survive. Most of the survivor types in my book were smart enough not to play the usual games.

"But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience."

- George Orwell (Essay: Why I Write)

I generally write out of sequence, as for whatever reason, the parts and passages tend to spill out of the consciousness in seemingly random order. That might be due to playing music, which may seem linear but isn't always so in the composition stage.

I wrote out the first draft knowing that the book wasn't opening in a satisfactory way, but kept writing, figuring to address it on the next run through. It was on the fourth pass where the first chapter really came together.

The second draft mainly added all of my thoughts and opinions, which would have resulted in an annoyingly subjective stream of consciousness book...but it was important in that the passages did delineate what I wanted the book to "say" and by the fourth draft was taking those mini essays out and putting in actual story, dialogue, and character actions to not only show what formed those opinions, but doing it a way that lets the reader decide what it means.

There were incidents that turned out to be connected to other passages and it was surprising to realize that there were things going on that weren't comprehended at the time.

For example, I saw things at the county social assistance office that seemed like simple friendly interaction between the homeless and gangs and totally missed the well oiled operation where dealers not only obtained ebt cards for sale but literally harvested homeless druggies for their monthly checks like sheep for their wool.

Also, as I constructed the story of one young woman, the various passages when combined showed her being groomed to become a truck stop hooker and that she was in fact being guarded and not just partying with the same group of guys. The final night she was in the area ended up in a scene that took on a much darker aspect than planned.

Part of the process was becoming more aware of what really happened so as a result, the decision was made to leave in descriptions as seen then, but tied together with better hindsight, with no later judgements or attempts at pathos. The reader can make their own judgement and conclusions, and even better, get a glimpse into their own feelings and attitudes by their reaction to the stories.

I'm still working that part out, how to describe the story as I saw it, and not as I see it now.

"Civilization has increased man's producing power a hundred-fold, and through mismanagement the men of civilization live worse than the beasts." 

- Jack London (The People Of The Abyss)

George Orwell saw Jack London as a person who truly understood fascism because of his atavistic Darwinian sensibilities. He also understood London because like him, he was also an "unreliable" socialist who saw the real world as opposed to trying to fit it into a doctrinal lens.

Both actually went in and lived in poor slum areas, and at times were among the homeless (though both had a different experience with it) and wrote about it. Homeless literature, particularly the first hand experience type, isn't a new phenomenon.

London did it when he was a successful, well off writer, and took the precaution to create a safe house during the early homeless phase of the book writing. There were points where he used it rather than tough it out on the streets, though one couldn't fault that as the intent was to create a first hand account rather than a memoir.

He wanted to understand slum life in London, who was living it, and portray the actual people and what they were like. What he saw deeply affected him. This was clear later in the book, when his feelings about the economic system and attitudes that made such a poor class even possible in a rich society came out. 

The focus was on people and their stories for the most part, and the understanding that poverty created a lifestyle that literally trapped people in it. Even more importantly, he was perceptive enough to realize that the poor wasn't one big group but several subcultures.

Orwell, who was inspired by London, engaged in similar forays into poverty zones and developed a similar take. Like his predecessor, the descriptions were detailed and remarkably free of judgement or preaching and more powerful because of that.

Orwell wrote two books, "Down and Out In London and Paris," and "The Road To Wigan Pier," both still worthwhile reading. The first part of the Wigan Pier book, which describes his experiences working among the Welsh Coal miners is a masterful, a true classic.

The second half of the Wigan Pier book, is a bit off topic, but worth describing. It assumes a devil's advocate role and discusses the faults of English socialism, and succeeded so well that the publisher of the book, a Socialist, felt it necessary to add a disclaimer that Orwell's essay in the second half didn't reflect the mainstream socialist view.

One of the offending passages said that socialists were perceived as sandal wearing "bearded fruit juice drinkers trying to eek out a few more years" of life, which also shows that the health food craze isn't a new phenomena.

As I said earlier, both he and London were considered "unreliable" socialists.  

The thing that affected me the most wasn't their descriptions of privation. A typical lunch before homelessness was often just beans, or cheese and bread. I didn't necessarily see having to eat a can of pork and beans in a car as a hardship.

What hit me was how important the mental aspect was, and the crippling effect of hopelessness and apathy. My own scariest moment wasn't due to any of the crime that was around or any physical threat.

It was when it hit me that the situation could be my life and future. It stemmed from a single incident that, in a manner of speaking, triggered an avalanche. A loss that any normal person might shrug off but felt cataclysmic at the time. That didn't happen to London, who could leave anytime. However, he did see that hopelessness was crippling, and that it was accentuated by the lifestyle. 

...the night life...

In one instance, he tried to stay out that night and sleep, then try to find a job in the morning. Instead, he had to join the multitude who were constantly chased out of doorways and parks, and finding that the police finally let them sleep when the parks opened during the day. Exhausted, and hungry, and with rain coming, he gave up and went back to the safe house. 

Seeing the homeless asleep on park benches during the day in America is generally dismissed as booze or drug fueled stupors, and certainly, that can be the case. Just as often, though, it's because they had to stay moving during the night, but for different reasons than London described. 

I devote a couple of chapters to that. I've stressed the importance of having a car in past blogs, that keeping it in running condition was the priority. The reason was that without it, I could end up on foot, carrying as much of my belongings as possible along with Ivy and in constant danger of being mugged at night.

In those chapters I reconstructed the night routines of various people that I saw. I know about it because during that six week period when my car was dead in the water, I had to think about what would happen if it was towed. There was at least one store manager who was trying his best to get the police to do that even though it was parked out on the street.

So, I watched the night people, where they went, their routines, where the safe areas were, etc. I didn't really think that if it came to being a back packer that it would stay that way for long. There were a couple of RV and car homeless that would have taken me in if that happened.

The problem was, that was an option only if they were still around.

For example, a couple and a woman who was part of an enclave, would dog sit Ivy so I could try to get a job, but the couple was chased out of town by the sheriffs department, the other by some store management and police. 

So suddenly within a two day period, no dog sitters. That's how unpredictable life was out there. I had to assume that if the car went away, we could be on our own for some period of time, and that it was dangerous to simply wander about without any plan or knowledge of the night scene.

The basic rule of survival on foot at night was either have a safe place (not to sleep, that would be stupid to do out in the open), or keep moving (at least until the "safe time"). 

The transient sleeping in a park archetype was described in London's book, and is still seen today. His comment is still relevant. He asked those who might assume it was just a lazy or dissolute person to realize that it might actually be the exhausted sleep of someone who'd been harried and moved along all night by the police. Once he experienced the night they had, they became real people and faces.

I can add, you would sleep out in public because bedding down in a private place is potentially very dangerous. Sleeping in an isolated hiding place is the equivalent of walking through dark alleys at night.

What I want to do is present the reader with faces and lives. Instead of an image of an unfortunate herd suitable for framing in a 90 second news spot or web article that mainly quotes business and property owners, it'll have stories like that of a young homeless woman escaping abuse and probably headed for a life of prostitution, drugs, or criminality. Put there by people who aren't homeless, and as a prostitute, serving members of respectable society not interested in helping her. 

Her story and others like it should say all what needs to be said. I think good decent people, like the ones who helped me so much won't need to be told what they're seeing.

I hope the book does a good job of letting you all see what I saw.

- Al Handa

  Dec. 13, 2018

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

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

-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 On The Road page:
http://deltasnake.blogspot.com