Here I Limp

43, 44...45

I crank out the last of my pushups. This morning was a chore. My eyes opened at 5:30 and my mind told me that I had to do my exercise. I took a Christmas vacation from them for the past week, or week and a half and I didn't want to get back to them. I didn't want to do them. But I can see Dr. A's face. When we were discussing my weight loss plan. "The problem with being overweight, Hobobob is that your body will adjust to the lowered caloric intake by reducing it's metabolism. That means that you HAVE TO EXERCISE."

FUCK!!

I get to crunching like a mother- fucker. SHIT!! That hurt. Then my pushups. They were a bother. Then that was enough for my start. Walking will be next. Even with this bum knee that feels better, the COLCHICINE and ALPURINOL doing their job, just like the doctor said.

I go to the nearby Duane Reade to take twenty dollars out of my account and head for the Way. My plan: put $5.00 on my metrocard and use the rest for lunch this afternoon. Well, that was my plan, because when I get to the westside token booth I find it empty. Just vacant. During rush hour mind you. So now I have to re-climb the stairs and cross the street over to the East side subway token booth to find TWO of those MTA fuckheads inside of it. I go up and ask to have five dollars placed on my metrocard. The token booth clerk says something but she's muffled behind the bulletproof glass of the booth. What?? Finally, this dumb bitch has the presence of mind to press the button on her microphone speaker, and garbles out: "There are no transactions at this booth. You have to use the machines." But all I want is five dollars on my card. "Mister, there are no transactions at this booth." Well what the fuck DO you do?? Well, I said that in my head because I didn't want her to press the little red panic button in there and a squad of cops flood in and baton my ass like Rodney King to death for assaulting a subway clerk.

Begrudgingly I place twenty dollars on my Metrocard and catch the Way to work.

It's somewhat of a busy day. I get a lot done and even have the opportunity to go shopping for a laser printer. You know how much I love technology and shopping for it is even more fun. The day is long, and I'm grateful when it is over. I head to the Madison avenue Starbucks and start to blog and shit. I crank out my precious emails and think of similar writers like Henry Miller, who spent a lot of time writing to friends, building up an impressive amount of letters that were eventually published. I wonder if any of my letters, the history of my life on the street as a writer, will ever be published like him. Henry Miller was a fascinating writer. I'm reading a book about him now, and god is it interesting. It's called: Henry Miller: the Paris Years. Very engrossing reading.

But it gives insight on Miller's life in Paris, during his 'Bum' years, where he lived the vagabond. Homeless, penniless, aimless. He would crash on peoples couches, and if there was no one to take him to their homes he would sleep on park benches. He would go to cafes and order coffee and something small to eat like a danish and wait until a friend or a passerby would be nice enough to settle his tab. Some days he sat at the cafe all day and into the night before someone came along to 'release him.' What I'm getting at is that the great Henry Miller was a bum like me. It seems that the man and me have a lot in common. It seems that many of the great writers, such as Miller and Bukowski, lived on the fringes of life. Maybe even considered mad by many standards in their life choices. Maybe I'm following a trail already blazed by men more talented than I, more focused on their art than I. But then Miller had reservations about his art also. In the book it brings out that: " Miller had been looking for his true writing self for some twenty years. The desire to be a real writer haunted him like a ghost. 'It was time to decide what I was going to write. However, the very minute I tried to find a subject, my brain stopped working and all I could see was empty space.'"

Henry Miller had to search for his writing self for some twenty years. Do I have that long? I've been a streeter for only two years, a shelt for one more, and now I'm in an SRO. I'm definitely moving up, but am I growing as a writer? Am I actually developing into something or a wannabe. This is tough to face, especially when you have no venue to voice your fears or triumphs.

Probably writing for the online magazine is a vent. Getting my writing out to the masses. But a reporter is not a writer, although their jobs are quite similar. I need to find my voice in another forum. I have to start looking again. More and more, work harder this year, work more. Lift the heavier loads and flex my muscle. I'm interested in bettering myself in 2009. To actually accomplishing something.

2009 will be that year.

I walk across town to the Westside Way and catch a train uptown. Tomorrow my brother and I are off to the Perch Cafe to see a friend of ours read. The Perch Cafe is all the way in my native Brooklyn, and we'll be going at night. In a way, I'm looking forward to it. I'll be back in the land of my birth and my youth.

But that's tomorrow. I'm sitting in front of my laptop, looking at it tiredly. NAVARRE is down tonight so no Internet. I have two days before I get my own Internet connection. I just have to be patient. I just have to be patient. I just have to be patient.

I look at the network connection icon in the system tray and it is still missing the Internet symbol.

I keep looking.

Hobobob