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.