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Another day.

On this one I start early and head over to Starbucks where I blog and write. I write like my life depends on it now, and probably it does. It's the linchpin to my sanity. It's a form of escapism by looking my situation right in the eye. Like immolation, sitting in the fire and being consumed by it. Entering and leaving at the same time.

I must write.

There is a line between sitting around and becoming a clear skek, somewhat like Buzzard....

Buzzard, now that's a skek that has changed all of a sudden, over time. A contra- diction in terms, yes I know, but it fits. When I had first met Buzzard about a year ago, he would sit in parks, dressed reasonably well, more homeless than a skek, but a skek just the same. He had completely lost the ability to talk, speaking in only three or four word sentences. Mostly he sat on park benches, staring out into nothing for hours on end. He would not move until it was time for breakfast, lunch or dinner. And when he did move, it was in slow, deliberate motions, almost like he was imitating walking on the Moon.

I saw him again, this time in Starbucks, surrounded by electronic gadgetry. He must have gotten on Social Security and used his money to buy all kinds of cell phones, PDAs and MP3 players. He was literally surrounded by hardware. I watched him for some time, like he watched life months ago. Maybe then, I was the skek.

Now my brother saw him, walking down the street, well dressed and clean as a whistledick. He looked like a businessman, or some casual worker in an office. No longer a skek, in complete control of his mind, a normal functioning fixture of society. All of a sudden, a change over time. There is a return from the edge. There is a chance to re-integrate. Like Frodo Baggins, carrying the ONE RING of power. As it sapped his sanity, he held out hope that there was a return from MORDOR, the blackest of lands. In this same manner, I think of people like Buzzard, and their somewhat miraculous return from insanity.

The pull of insanity has no effect on me. I write to stay sane. I am staring at the edge of sanity from a safe distance. I know, I know, many of you may think that my lifestyle is insane. I must be crazy to be homeless. But honestly, you would never know me to be so if you met me. You would wonder about my life because I don't live it in the gutters of the city. I don't fit that stereotype. I break much of the homeless stigmata that hangs over so many people. Even when I lived in the streets I was just like you.

I have avoided the shackles of skekdom. I am still free to exercise my right to live life conscious of self. Which, in fact, is indeed more difficult than it seems. Now think of Mike Murder, and several of the other shelts that I live with in the Box of Nuts. Many of them are so doped up that they don't know their own names. They can't face life on its own terms, so they spend them blasted out of their minds. This is being caused by professionals who claim that they have their well being in mind. I say, that's bullshit. They leave these poor humans as empty husks of living tissue with their pharmaceuticals.

I'm under their influence too...I take their psycho- tropics. But I don't let them control my thinking. I don't allow them to plow me under with this shit. They can't control my dosages, because my doctors are not a part of the Box, but my own. They are not quick to raise my drugs, or add to them to make me more pliable. They are not under the whim of those Frankensteins that rule the tiny world of the shelter. I am free to be me.

I get to the Box and spend the entire evening on IM with a friend. The nuts around me are fascinated with my fixation on the screen on my laptop. They buzz around like flies, wondering if I could be writing a porn review, with an undressed couple or couples, locked in sexual congress. This appeals to them greatly. They will create a human amphitheater behind me, dozens of them looking over my shoulder and each other's shoulders, just to catch of glimpse of a vagina or a pair of tits. But I know it's nothing so pedestrian. I believe in the power of sexual intercourse. It has a potency completely of its own. Something on the spiritual level that draws, attracts, repels, revolts. It is this power that draws them like flies to shit. It's not their fault, they are what they are.

So I no longer write reviews at my bedside. But tonight I'm simply on IM, a scrolling of text on a little screen, and they cannot help but stop to look briefly over my shoulder. I joyfully IM until midnight and then wrap everything up before the Techs of the overnight shift walk in and tell us to shut things down.

Tomorrow will be another day.

Not like today.

Hobobob