Radiantly Dark

I awoke to my foot throbbing in pain.

It was as if a dog had came up in the night and bit away my big toe. I barely got it out of the bed and limped over to my refrigerator, pouring myself a big glass of soda, and then going over to my windowsill where I popped all of my pills, including the ALLOPURINOL and the COLCHICINE (pronounced like 'Magazine'). Then I gingerly crawled back into bed and wondered how was I going to make it out today.

But making it out was a given. Today was my birthday and I was going out if it killed me. I drink my coffee, and do emails and blog until it's time for me to put my shoes on. That was the highlight of my day, putting a shoe over this inflicted foot. But I did succeed. I sit on the edge of my bed for a long while, staring at the floor between my feet, and I wonder about my birthday. Today makes me 47 years old, and I'm still not amounting to much.

Well, I don't want to put myself down either. Still, I'm not reaching out hard enough. Not working my contacts, not writing harder, for more outlets. DJ Bensonhurst was just published in another periodical, and HE's a schoolteacher. I'm supposed to be the full time writer. What's up with me? OBSIDIAN is busy trying to put together something big, and hard at work on the novel that we are writing. I barely touch it as of late. I'm without steam, somewhat listless. I'm a ship in the doldrums.

I spend the day watching life rush past me at a rapid rate. I feel discon- nected, detached. I'm walking normally, everyone else whizzes by like a blur. I come home to a stack of mail. A literal stack of mail and a box from Florida. I carry all of the goods home with me and open everything as I start dinner.

First letter: I was approved for my Fair Hearing and my benefits will not be terminated until then. My Fair Hearing date is February 27th, 2009. Good to see. I made it by way of the grand old Internet. The rest of the paperwork involved clerical garbage that the NYC bureaucracy views as important to deluge homeless people with. The truth is, that damned Fair Hearing was a very good birthday present if you want to know the truth. I move on to the box, from a new friend of mine, Sara in Florida who has been keeping up an email correspondence with me for several months now.

She is very spiritual. At sixty five years of age, she takes everything with a level of grace and serenity that I seek to imitate. She has quickly become my 'Earth Mother' and we spend tons of time writing haiku back and forth. She is also helping me to sharpen my poetry and create sonnets. I've never wrote a sonnet before but I really feel the need at times to belt one out. They are very difficult but fun to write. I never knew that I could like them until Sara came along. She has me cranking them out now.

Well, today I open her package and find a box of items for my 'altar' that we have been talking about my erecting. Nothing religious, nothing to pray to or anything like that, just a space in the room dedicated to beauty. She had sent me a starter kit from her trip to St George Beach in Florida. Beautiful shells, polished stones, and then other things, like origami, beads, a small bell, rocks. Amazing stuff so that I can begin a modest altar on the corner of my windowsill, next to my row of medicine bottles.

I construct my altar and stand back to view my handiwork. It came out pretty good if I should say so myself. I will stand before it and gather my resolve to survive nightly. Use it to focus my energies to defeat the problems that I face daily. Use the power within, without.

Sounds good right? But the Hobo is going to be the hobo, regardless. I got this far didn't I?

I get online and hang around with friends until the late evening. I have to blog now. I'll be up until the wee hours of the morning. I see that now. But I have to blog. I have to get it out of my system.

Oh, and DJ Bensonhurst gave me a great book for my birthday: LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL, by Charles Bukowski.

Awesome work done by that man.

Hobobob