- Joined
- Sep 30, 2007
- Messages
- 1,057
- Reaction score
- 1,489
For some while I've been pretty down and out, not feeling like keeping going, not functioning at anything near optimal speed at all (yet working my ass off), and living in a city area filled with desperately desperate people who often speak only with themselves or the persons in their heads, or sit in the sunshine on the curb smoking their last cigarette and hassling me in a most scary way for mine, or eye the wallet in my front pocket intently. There have been fistfights on the bus and fires in the crackhouses as we ride by, and the kids' every other word in my street is some variation of fuck and anger and discontent, a constant stream. On the bus I have listened to those young able-bodied who are riding into the other city "to kick some serious ass and get my SS (Social Security), and they're gonna know I'm here when I'm done and fuck, man, I'll break her ass she don't give it to me," and, "I been in court a million times, goddam women, but I got a good judge today." I always read a book, and I am left alone.
When I was eighteen in 1976 I worked in this exact same sort of area. But I'm not eighteen anymore. And I have been going down, down, down. I know it's all good book material. I know it's the parade of life. But I can't get happy about it, because this is also my country.
I came to AW because I wanted to take a last shot at getting published, at a time when I'd stepped out of real life for the first time ever because I'd had so many personal losses. And what I found were friends. And this place has been the bridge between withdrawing from the risk of loss in the real world to being okay about giving a shit again.
It's hard to start giving a shit all over again when you've done it forever and yet you're still in the same old place, or worse. And so I was considering all this this morning, and feeling very black, very black. A bright July morning and I was black as paint. I had to go to work, to a job I (mostly) love, past and with the homeless and the schizophrenics on the street and I didn't want to go. My best brother is schizophrenic and the old pains, fears and knowledge are right there beside me as I pass. I'm not without compassion but I am with knowledge.
Later, at work, I'm working with a customer but there is someone at my periphery waiting. I look and it's one of my best friends, someone I've not seen nor been able to locate for thirteen years, from back in my June Cleaver life long ago. I recognize her first and say her name, and we're hugging and in tears in the middle of my job, I get bad looks from the boss and I just don't care. This is the right kind of not giving a shit, and I had forgotten what that felt like. We won't lose touch again, and there's so much to tell each other.
I don't have a lot of living people left in my life, other than you guys here. You have all been the bridge back. The thing I'd forgotten is that there was maybe something still left on the other side.
When I was eighteen in 1976 I worked in this exact same sort of area. But I'm not eighteen anymore. And I have been going down, down, down. I know it's all good book material. I know it's the parade of life. But I can't get happy about it, because this is also my country.
I came to AW because I wanted to take a last shot at getting published, at a time when I'd stepped out of real life for the first time ever because I'd had so many personal losses. And what I found were friends. And this place has been the bridge between withdrawing from the risk of loss in the real world to being okay about giving a shit again.
It's hard to start giving a shit all over again when you've done it forever and yet you're still in the same old place, or worse. And so I was considering all this this morning, and feeling very black, very black. A bright July morning and I was black as paint. I had to go to work, to a job I (mostly) love, past and with the homeless and the schizophrenics on the street and I didn't want to go. My best brother is schizophrenic and the old pains, fears and knowledge are right there beside me as I pass. I'm not without compassion but I am with knowledge.
Later, at work, I'm working with a customer but there is someone at my periphery waiting. I look and it's one of my best friends, someone I've not seen nor been able to locate for thirteen years, from back in my June Cleaver life long ago. I recognize her first and say her name, and we're hugging and in tears in the middle of my job, I get bad looks from the boss and I just don't care. This is the right kind of not giving a shit, and I had forgotten what that felt like. We won't lose touch again, and there's so much to tell each other.
I don't have a lot of living people left in my life, other than you guys here. You have all been the bridge back. The thing I'd forgotten is that there was maybe something still left on the other side.
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