Chill Your Fucking Bones

Today 65 degrees in the morning. High at only 75 degrees.

Interestingly, once the temperature drops below 40 degrees there is a chemical change in the trees. The leaves register it first, and they begin to stop the precious flow of water to their veins. They turn brown and dry, shriveling and falling off. It is the onset of Fall.

New York is getting closer and closer to the season. The Summer is coming to a close, rapidly, bringing on the Fall. The most loneliest time for the homeless. The trees, once copious with leaves and life, turn stark and foreboding. Now is the time that you have to search for heavier clothing from the soup kitchens, missions and churches. Everything and anything is game. If it's too small but you can still get into it, you'd better take it.

You begin to scope out other places to sleep. Places protected from the wind. It is the wind that's the greatest enemy to a street dweller. The wind is always cold, especially at night, where it roams about like an angry banshee, slipping under clothing and covers and wrappings. It seeks you out to personally chill your bones. It does not love, neither care for you. It is the crowbar of the chill, searching for any little chink in your armor. It will find you...it will. That's it's job.

But it is unemployed for me this year. This year the chill will have to wait and wonder, because I'm not out on the streets. I'm in the Box. All summer long I envied my brother in that he could go wherever he pleased and cared little about a curfew. I longed to sleep under the stars again, staring up at the beautiful New York City Night skies.

Yet now comes the cold, and the chill. The mean clutches of the winter's hand is closing in. The snow, once so beautiful to me when I had a home, now becomes the enemy. But not for me now. I am in the Box. Still, I know that I am not safe, because the Box is not home. When the snow falls, the Techs and Administrators exercise their leverage. This is the season that they become supreme assholes, simply because they know that you have no where to go. And I for the most part have absolutely no where to go.

No...That's a lie. I do. My Doctor, Dr. A, has a shelter that he always wanted me to go to that he works out of. I have that as a buffer, and if correct it might possibly be a better shelter. One day I might go and take a look at it. Simply because this shelter, the Box, is for the birds. It really is. Not but a few days ago did my Independent Living Specialist...otherwise known by more intelligent people as my Social Worker, approach me in the hallway to ask me to come to his office. I enter the extremely cramped space to listen to him tell me that my psychosocial evaluation had expired. It was too old, and that they needed a current one to give to the Health and Human Services office to search for an SRO for me. MEANING in layman's terms, that I'm going to be here in the Box for longer than I first thought.

The problem really is that I don't draw Social Security. Because of that I'm held in this kind of limbo, this dormitory living, that is getting the best of me. As harsh as it was, I long for the streets. The rough times. I was thinner then, in better shape. I ate well, although sparingly, it was healthier food. I was happier then, taking bird baths in public restrooms. It was the night, the evenings sleeping in waiting rooms, that was the pits. It was the low point in my life. Here, you slept with Skeksis, who waited patiently for you to fall off to sleep so that they can run off with your shit. You slept in the open, before the eyes of God and man. You were vulnerable.

Here in the shelter has changed that. It has made me soft, weak and tired. I am either going to move up the ladder of society or back down. It's as simple as that. I wonder what the future holds at times. I wonder what is in the cards for the Hobo. Am I to just drift along on capricious waves or do I have a sail and have a destination.

I hit the cold of the morning, staying long enough at the Box to get my Meds and speed out into the day. Today, since the weather was much more milder, I walked uptown from Lafayette and Bleecker in the Lower East Side, to Mid Town, Thirty fifth street. No easy feat. And I did it without breaking a sweat. I'm used to years of distance walking from my time on the streets. I'm inured to the endless blocks, the stress and strain of carrying fifty or so pounds on my back. This is doable. And it's the beginning of my path to a healthier me. Slow and surely I will somehow make it back to a leaner, meaner me.

I'm just so tired.

I feel it in my bones. It must be the season.

Hb