I'm back

I'm back! The long computer draught is over. I know it's been hard on all my followers as well as on me. But that's over now. I can continue to convey compelling descriptions of the life of destitution as it's experienced by someone unused to poverty and the companionship of very poor people.

A lot has happened over the past month or two. I'll try to catch up over the next few weeks. But there hasn't been anything really dramatic; only the day to day reality of life. With the exception, that is, of the events of last weekend:

As I looked out the window this afternoon I heard the sounds of what seemed to be gunfire. I didn't think that much about it since I'm always thinking that I'm hearing gunfire because that's the kind of neighborhood it is. But then I noticed that people were throwing themselves to the ground and peering
around the corner of the building across the street. I started to take it more seriously at that point. Then, within seconds it seemed, police cars were careering around the area, going up the down streets and down the up ones, full blast. They were Johnny on the spot, I must admit. They were everywhere. And by the time I went out to see what was going on the whole intersection out front was yellow-taped off, ambulances raced in, firetrucks of every description... Unbelievable. I saw two people being evacuated by ambulance but heard that five were hit. I don't know how seriously.

One might think from this that I might feel there is danger all around. This is true, I guess; I hear stories of people being attacked, robbed or stabbed, etc, even in the building. I heard that one of the people who works here was found to be robbing people by using his master key to go into people's rooms to steal from them. His thefts were discovered when he ran into the new cctv system that they installed in the building when it was renovated. How could he have known? He was used to the shabby old place that he had been working at for years. He couldn't have been expected to take note of the monitors that show every nook and corner of the public rooms and hallways--let's hope not the roooms, too, though some here are convinced that the red lenses that are obvious to us, the observed, are not the only surveillance in the building; they think that there are other cameras even in our little shoebox sized units that record our every secret action. I'm sure that that isn't true, though. Pretty sure. At any rate, it's hard not to know that one is being surveilled in every hallway and public room in the building. You see the red lenses around every corner, watching us, keeping us safe from each other. Big Brother does have our best interests at heart. But does he see everything? At any rate, there hasn't been a shooting in the building since I got here.

I will be unable to post for a while until I solve the problem of losing my computer, upon which I've composed these delicacies! Thanks to anyone who may have happened onto these and found them useful.

I’m nobody now. I don’t even get junk mail unless it’s addressed to Resident. I don’t think I could get onto a no-fly list with nitro in my shoes! Well, that’s not exactly true: I’m now on the no-library list in San Francisco. It’s a result of the psychological destruction I have been undergoing. Last Friday I had a contretemps involving a woman in the library who didn’t want to allow me to have the precious one hour of computer time that I had reserved. I was heard by a librarian to describe this woman with an emotive term, which though accurate was one of the six—or sixteen—words that one may not use in the library. I called her a “scumbag.” I would not have normally allowed myself to be dragged down to this level but the woman in question was so rude and coarse I couldn’t help myself. It’s clear to me now that I should have called her a harridan instead, or maybe a gorgon, even better, a term that she would not have understood—which even the librarian might not have understood, and certainly which would not have got me banned from the building. But the ignorant security people treated me like a terrorist, degrading me in the office that I was dumb enough to go into of my own free will. One of them told me that my guilt in this affair was “written all over me,” that anything that I might describe as provocative on her part—say if she had told me what sexual act I might perform upon myself, for instance—must have been merely a result of the repellent language which I had used gratuitously and for nothing but the fun of it. Let me repeat that: this individual who had known me by one word for a period of five minutes said that my guilt was written all over me. Even people who actually know me can’t tell if I’m guilty of something or if I’m not—and if they did know it they wouldn’t think that it was written all over me.

So I have to go to other libraries, further away but without a heavy security presence. They are really much more pleasant, more like actual libraries and not official buildings with guards everywhere. It’s really the homeless who are the reason for the guards. There is not place enough for them in the shelters—of course many don’t want to go into those shelters and for good reason—so they come into the library for shelter and a sponge bath. Sometimes they take things if they’re left lying around and their owners are looking the other way. (You can’t blame them; they’re like little Lloyd Blankfeins except for one thing: they go to jail if they’re caught. But they’re doing just what has been presented as the ideal of American enterprise.)

This morning I mended my pants pockets once again. Each of my pairs of pants has long knots of thread holding the pockets together. Some of the pockets are becoming too small to actually hold anything but I can’t afford to buy new pants so it’s still better than letting all the paltry items in my treasury fall onto the street. Luckily I don’t have much to put in them; maybe some day soon I’ll be able to do without pockets entirely. I think Lloyd Blankfein must have very large pockets to keep all my money in and you can be sure that he doesn’t have to worry about holes in them. And I don’t suppose he trims the fray off of the bottoms of his pants every time he washes them. Not that I would blame him if he did; it would be unseemly for the CEO of Goldman Sachs to go to his office on Broad Street with threads hanging from the bottoms of his legs. You can’t steal much money with frayed pants in Broad Street.

One of the disadvantages of poverty is the amount of time that you have to spend just being poor. It’s like being poor is a full-time job in itself. Despite all the freedom that it seems to offer it constantly takes up all your time. You have to shop all the time for food because there is no place to store it. You have to take a bus to the store every other day even for small items—of course you don’t have a car as a poor person. It’s not the most economical way of buying things. Poverty is the most expensive lifestyle as well as the most time consuming.

An Immigrant in a poor neighborhood