Points on a Broken Compass

The Sabbath.

Everybody needs a sabbath. A day of rest. And it doesn't have to be on Sunday or Saturday. It can be on any day of the week where you have nothing to do other than stay at home in your underwear and vegetate. Well, today was my sabbath. Well, not exactly, although I did sit around in my underwear, I did not not work. Instead, I made myself seriously busy with writing articles for the online magazine, my novel, and a business plan for the New York State Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Cabinet under Governor David Paterson. A notification about the first round, second draft of the projects forwarded the appropriate state agencies for further information has come through email already. It's a fucking document in 10 pitch font totaling over seven hundred pages, with literally thousands of proposal requests which have just passed through the process.

Thousands. I'm telling you...thousands of proposals. On top of that, this was just the first round, second draft. I searched for mine, but it was way too soon for it to appear there. I just submitted my proposal request yesterday. Silly me. I went through the document though, and I noticed that A LOT of the proposals were for the arts. There are a lot of desperate art projects out there. There were also a lot of school and hospital projects looking for funding. Needless to say that the funding request was of an eclectic group of proposals. I'm laughing now, because the one that I'm working on will no doubt get lost in this enormous stack of paper being focused on Albany right now, or if they allow it to become such. By keeping the submissions right now in electronic format, there are no pages of paper being mailed. Just imagine what it would look like if they did.

I'm wondering who in Albany reads all of this shit? Who sorts through all of this stuff? Well, I'm still working on the proposal anyway. I'm just getting hung on some of the financials. I'm on the Project Budget section and working on all of the numbers, and even on a complicated spreadsheet it's rough to get into a document and explain all of the notations and dollar amounts. Plus, I'm always thinking that I'm missing some glaring point, service or position that might immediately disqualify me. Like, missing rooftop construction in a detailed construction proposal, and having someone on the proposal committee notice it. "Look at this! This moron hasn't even realized that the building has no roof!!" Something egregious like that.

Soon, I ran out of steam. I just couldn't go any more with the numbers and people and things. I had to move onto something else. My novel was next, and I busted caps on that until I got hung on some writer's block. I'm trying to figure out where a rich drug dealer would live. Simple as that. It hung me. I could make up any place in the world, but I can't think of anywhere. Anywhere realistic that is. So I stopped there. Made lunch and then dinner, and watched the sun set on the bricks outside my window. That's funny. One day I'll have a street to look down upon and stare at it in amazement after having a lifeless wall for so long. Now I'm kind of getting use to the damn thing being there. It is so New York.

I used to wonder what happens to the windows of a building that are facing a new construction. A construction that is turning a blank wall in the front of the windows on one side of the building. Now I know.

I'm watching email run into my in box. I have Yahoo Messenger, and as an added bonus of having it, whenever you receive Yahoo mail a small notification pops up in the lower right hand corner of my screen with the subject line. It's been popping up pretty steady like popcorn in a popper. Not that I'm anything special or anyone popular, I'm just on a lot of mailing lists. Shit, I've just registered for the NYS Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Cabinet to give me notifications of their proposal process, and they even popped up today. There are a number of poet readings that my friends are in, a few anthology and book openings, and an art exhibit in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn.

I'm beginning to wonder about that shit. How come so many art studios are opening up in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn? What is that about? Beautiful spaces though, and this opening is by appointment only. I wonder how they would feel if a hobo walked in. There was a time when I would do such a thing and didn't give a fuck. But that's when I was snazzier and dressed better. Now I'm dressed like a construction worker. Not that anything is wrong with being dressed as a construction worker mind you, but the truth is that you would stand out in this crowd of people who tend to be snooty fuckers unless you know someone. Someone big. But it sure doesn't hurt to check out their contact information.

I like art. I always have.

Well, it feels like my writing in my blog is a break from work. In fact it is. I find it somewhat relaxing when I take the plug out of my head and let all of the encephalic syrup pour out of my skull and onto the keyboard. The swill that churns about in my SRO mind. Just one step above homelessness and one below complete independence. I wonder what was it that made me take this strange journey in my life: alcohol? My need to escape everything in New Jersey? My desire to become a writer? It's been an amazing ride, I have to say. I think this as I look at a brick wall, alone in my quiet room. It's been the wildest ride of my life. Like a fucking roller coaster with no breaks and coming off the rails. Heart stopping, blood pumping, shit staining, pants pissing, crying-for-your-motherfucking-mother excitement.

Would I have chosen another course in my life if given the chance. Yes I would have, but this is the hand that I was dealt, and so this is the hand that I'll play, there's no doubt about it. You can never send the cards back to the dealer and request a new hand. But I have to admit, I never knew true freedom before until I sat on a park bench, with everything that I owned in a bag at my feet, and only the clothes on my back to wear. Not that I would recommend that shit to anyone, not even myself again, but I was truly free. Free to do whatever I wanted. Just like one brain dead homeless guy that we called Buzzard. He sat on a park bench all day, staring out into space, his mind probably cooked up by all of the drugs pumped into his system by the state. That's all he would do, is stare out at nothing for hours on end, blinking only occasionally. I was free like him, although I had three times the motivation that he did.

But like I said, even being dragged around the nose by WIZZZon- YouCARE, I still would not want to return to the streets with my brother. The streets were killing me slowly. I'm just not healthy enough for such hard living everyday, and the VA hospital doesn't make sure that I get my meds or the medical attention that I need like they do my brother.

But this is the life that I chose by default.

It's time for me to start to move and shake shit up. To better my circum- stances in ways that I've never imagined. Time to get back to work. I return to the business proposal.

Hobobob