Dreams and Wakings
I wake up alone again. This time on the air mattress my ex-wife and I bought so my mother would have a place to sleep when she visited us. It's comfortable as it goes but sometimes I wonder as I talk to various young people, my age and older, who would ever want to sleep with me? I sleep on an air mattress in a room of a shared house with windows facing the backyard pool hall where cigarettes litter the sidewalk. Seriously. I feel un-date-able whether or not I am because I feel unlovable. I feel like I am a bad risk to take.
And yet I know people, happier than I, who live in a tent city between Sarasota and Bradenton. Patrick, for example, and his pet snake, Smeagol, who drinks coffee with me every day and loaned me just the book I needed at the right time. The homeless 66 year old woman from Poland who blesses every day as a new opportunity to experience the world and its inhabitants. I helped her get a phone. She blessed me more than I blessed her with words like honey to my wounded heart. I witness a dozen miracles of compassion each week and nothing touches me anymore because it is so wonderfully sad and I'm frozen in sublime meditation for long hours at a time.
The phone wakes me up every morning at 8:30 am. Usually someone in foreclosure or about to be evicted. I witness firsthand the falling of dozens of families off the cliff of civilization into the chaos of the Second Great Depression of America. There is nothing I can do to stop it, but sometimes I help someone rewrite a resume, or get them a free phone, or a box of food. Sundries, articles, advice, direction. Sometimes they just yell at me for as long as they want and I say nothing. Several times a month we find someone whose rent we can get paid. This is my job. It's slowly eating my soul away.
I'm dying. And people keep telling me how young I look.
And yet I know people, happier than I, who live in a tent city between Sarasota and Bradenton. Patrick, for example, and his pet snake, Smeagol, who drinks coffee with me every day and loaned me just the book I needed at the right time. The homeless 66 year old woman from Poland who blesses every day as a new opportunity to experience the world and its inhabitants. I helped her get a phone. She blessed me more than I blessed her with words like honey to my wounded heart. I witness a dozen miracles of compassion each week and nothing touches me anymore because it is so wonderfully sad and I'm frozen in sublime meditation for long hours at a time.
The phone wakes me up every morning at 8:30 am. Usually someone in foreclosure or about to be evicted. I witness firsthand the falling of dozens of families off the cliff of civilization into the chaos of the Second Great Depression of America. There is nothing I can do to stop it, but sometimes I help someone rewrite a resume, or get them a free phone, or a box of food. Sundries, articles, advice, direction. Sometimes they just yell at me for as long as they want and I say nothing. Several times a month we find someone whose rent we can get paid. This is my job. It's slowly eating my soul away.
I'm dying. And people keep telling me how young I look.