Notes on a Quest....

When enough time passes....

One thing I've always found that's good to remember is that with any altercation or difference of opinion or burst of anger; it's best to be contrite, remain calm and wait.  Patience is key in human relationships.  

So when I was a bit panicked on my last post, I had to remind myself of all the above and I gave them space and waited.  I took Jacques, the dog who peed on their carpet, out of the house for two days in a row and we spent it exploring Boston some more.  I'm getting used to Boston.  Well...I don't know about used to Boston, but I'm getting to know it.  Ive found a few places in Southie that are to my liking and have even made some acquaintances there with a few Irish folk (Northren Irish).  

It's weird here.  With the Irish in San Francisco I grew used to the fact that they had wholeheartedly embraced San Francisco's nihilistic nature and really had no desire to revisit Irish politics in conversation.  In fact, those whom I met from Belfast often told me they were tired of talking about it, tired of identifying their religious background and so forth.  Rather, they wanted to party.  To be young and not think about war anymore.  The Boston Irish are remarkably different.  Conversely, all they want to talk about is war.  And what they've been through.  That's fine too.  

I mean, in a way both responses are very human and not having ever lived in a war zone, not for me to judge one way or another.  Instead, I'm learning about a whole other side to the Irish culture by listening.  The other thing about the Irish; they are well fucking educated.  Aa construction worker can talk until he's blue in the face about the French Revolution and its impact on Ireland, colonialism and slavery.  I mean, I'm impressed.

Anyway, my friends seem to have shifted gears from reactive back to proactive and I've done the same.  I called one of them while she was at work (my long term friend) and I think we got it all sussed out on the phone to a better place.  At least I hope so.  My whole goal while staying here is to leave a minimal footprint of sorts.  To be as helpful and out of the way as possible.

Meanwhile, I await word on the job in NYC I interviewed for....

Unemployed and...homeless?

I think my gig here at my friends' house will soon come to an end.  Call it intuition born from experience or just good old-fashioned paranoia, but I see the writing on the wall.  My dog apparentlyy peed twice on the carpet while I was in NYC for two days interviewing for a job.  Although, my friend only told me about the one time, so I had that information to go on.

Well today, I woke up early and took him for a walk, determined to stick to the schedule of taking him out every fouur hours.  Then went back to my room, with him in tow, to work on growing my programming skills and staying well out of their way.  At one point, Jacques got up and and I let him out of the room, intending to follow him, but got hung up on something I was working on.  I heard the kids playing with him in the hallway and then the little girl took him into her room and closed the door to keep him in there.  I think this makes him anxious and so he peed in her room (though I didn't know that just yet).  She let him out a few minutes later and he scratched on my door to be let in.  Ten minutes went by and my friend's husband (whom I met as a co-worker about 13 years ago in SF, CA) called my name and gave me a huge chewing out about the dog having a "real problem" with peeing in the house.  And the evidence right there in the girls room.

My other friend was very upset at the whole thing and broke a bowl in the kitchen while I cleaned it all up.  Thing is, the pee is a cinch to clean up as I have a special solution that kills the odor and breaks down the enzymes in dog urine so it lifts right out of the carpet in seconds.  But I don't think that's what they were focused on.  It's more about the complexities of inviting someone into your life with the best of intentions.  Telling that person they have a home and to relax, go ahead and eat the food, use the electricity, yeah, bring the small dog.  And then forgetting what all of that actually entails when you already have two children to take care of and a job to work and on top of it all, a house to maintain.  I don't blame them at all.  I know how someone staying for free somewhere eventually, despite everyone's best efforts, adopts the target on their back.  It's simply inevitable.  I knew it would happen if I couldn't find a job and a place soon.

So yeah, I should have remembered that and stayed put in Western Mass where I at least had housing.  The money I borrowed from my grandmother could just have gone into rent there while I job hunted.  But I was so damn desperate to get out of there...  So here I am.

I've already called the United Way to figure out what housing options I have in the Boston area.  I'm just being proactive in case I don't get this job in NYC.  Experience has taught me to spot the signs of deterioration in a relationship ahead of time and to act quickly to figure out a safety net for when things fall apart.  Which in my life seems to be every six months or so because of finances.  

So tommorrow I'll be contacting the Transistional Assistance program to see about food stamps and the like.  Thing is, I didn't have any money last tax period so I didn't file.  I filed for an extension the year before that, so if they need tax papers from me for the food stamps and for applying for housing, I'm also shit out of luck.  Let's just hope the job thing works out.  Irony is, if it does, I'd be earning more money than I've ever made in my life.

I really wish things could just stablize for once.  I need to get back to my writing life.  Not my survival mode life.

Lonliness is a stange gift...

Well, time for a non-funny post.  I'm just in one of those reflective moods today.

I haven’t had a lot of time for updating lately. Big Media threw a lot of work at me, I’ve been trying to still set up my apartment and then a guest arrived this week for four days. Plus, I had to help Juan on Sunday as he had just shipped his boyfriend off to rehab that morning. Doug (Juan’s man) is now in some Betty Ford like clinic down in Florida.

They are also going to get Juan to go down there for counseling for a few weeks. It’s encouraging news. Because Juan is a good person, but I can only offer my ear and shoulder for so long. I need more balanced friendships where I feel like someone out there is supporting me back when I need it too. But with Juan, well, he’s all wrapped up in the main fear that drives most people. When I ask him why he won’t leave Doug he replies, “I’m more scared of being alone.” Most of us are. Hey, that’s a big pre-occupation for many. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not too used to the condition of beling lonely.  Of being alone. 

Well, all I've been wanting to do this week is to find time to write.  Write an essay, a poem, anything.  But work has continued it's steady, predictable ryhthm of unpredictable requests.  Emergencies that emerge from seemingly nowhere.  Editors who fumble with pixles, in a very real sense.  So my creativity is trapped and tapped by what I have to produce for others.  Still, I'm glad to be feeling the writing urge again.  I think I had to go through my initial romance with getting my new room, working hard, playing hard and finally allowing the dust from my recent transisitions to settle a bit.

Now.  I don't know.  A fellow graduate student has been staying in my guest room for the last few days.  A somewhat wearing experience.  She is a strikingly beautiful woman, I think, as far as men are opinined.  So being with her ensures completely that by the end of any given evening I will end up as the third wheel.  But on the other hand, she's been someone to experience other parts of NY with.  You know...all that cultural stuff.  Jazz, theater, dance, music.  But still the men who are lured to her ignore me completly, as if I don't exist.   She's also high-maintenance.  Men seem to love that too. 

Is it that men only like beauty?  Surface beauty?  Idealized notions of the feminine?  What about our perceptions of masculinity?  Are we (women) more forgiving (I think we are indeed)?

As I've watched at least one particularly creepy guy fumble in his attempts with her over the last few days, I truly wonder.  What is the notion of the modern day woman?  Size three or four waist, expensive accessories, plastic surgery, thin, thin, thin!!!! If her brain is the size of her pituaitary gland, it still doesn't seem to matter to most of the male race.  They find a way to rationalize it all. And if men are bald, squat, half blind, it's fine with us.  I'm so tired of it all. 

Anyway, she and I went to Lincoln Center last night to see the Martha Graham Dancers skitter like wind blown twigs across a light-splashed stage. And it was too much for me.  While C. watched, I excused myself and went and called my birth mother.   She lives in Arkansas where she works in a factory.  She's had a hard life and I suppose if someone were to ask me who my heros in life were, she would be on that list.  She gave up everything for my two sisters and when I came along, she had to give me up too (my father had left her as soon as she revealed she was pregnant and her husband before that used to hit her).  So I found her about ten years ago or so and we've been friends/family ever since.  Talking to her helps.  She is still single and in her sixties.  Owns a small house in a pod-sized Arkansas town. It's all chickens and Walmart and poor southern-folk there.  She works ten hour days on her feet.  And it helped to talk to her and hear her voice.  I hope she comes out to visit me soon.  She says she will. 

We're alike she and I.  We've had to deal with some bad things in life.  Had to learn to survive.  But still, I want something better than just surviving.  I want reliability.  Friends and family and lovers who come through when they say they will.  A world that promises to be around in ten years.  None of this seems to be possible though.  And this week I'm learning to sit down and deal with that fact.  Learning to deal with disappointments and a certain amount of lonliness (this is my experience no matter where I go).  But as E.B. White says in his essay on New York in the opening lines of Here is New York (1949): "On anyone who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy." 

This from a man who also used to say that "Lonliness is a strange gift."

I guess it is indeed.