THE WAY LONELINESS CHANGES STAYS THE SAME

I never get lonely.  At least almost never do. 

Yet situations have changed for me.  The security that I once had is gone.  My old neighborhood, where I had lived for 15 years is...over.  While it is apparent I am having a bit of the typical delayed reaction to substantial changes in my life's routines and surroundings, I really did not know how deeply this move to a sordidly unpleasant neighborhood would affect me.  But here I am, living in a suburban approximation of a ghetto, and although the apartments where I live look nice on the outside, the neighborhood outside the gates is not exactly the kind of place I find growth-inspiring.  I knew this forced move would be difficult for me--moves always are, as are all big life changes--but I am a person who values place and having that place literally ripped away from me because of gentrification and rising rental costs, something HUD simply could not handle, has helped throw me off-balance.  Here I am, having to go through the motions of "building street cred" out on the sidewalks when I walk to the bus stop, to the grocery store, even to get cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings.  Unpleasant task, taking my place in street life one person at a time, but what else is there for me to do? 

Monday morning, walking to the grocery, I ran into one of the people for whom I have to remain vigilant before.  Not that I'd cower.  Not at all.  Such people literally feed on another's fear, and the last a person needs to do is display fear.  Even feeling that chill can be deadly like an announcement around here.  The guy's skin had that "extra black" tone to it, something with which I am familiar: Crack cocaine tends to turn a man's skin dark, and the usual translucence becomes flat and sickly.  Those folks are likely to pop-off in an instant.  One has to be careful. 

So I made a fist.  Like a black power fist.  But I put it on "the down-low", you know, down by my side.  The man looked down, then looked in my face.  Our eyes locked.  I didn't back down.  I said this silly thing:

"Remember the Alamo." 

He gave a half-grin.  The test?  Probably passed it.  One person at a time.  Word gets around.  I have to go there.  I'd really like to say, "Hello."  I can't.  Not here.  Not in this place. 

About three weeks ago, some loopy kids came ambling up the hill.  One gave me the old "pssst..." and asked me if I wanted some green, a.k.a. pot.  I asked him, "How much?" as if I was totally interested. 

"Five and 10," he shot back. 

I paused like I was thinking.  Then I said, "You accept VISA?" 

"AW MAN!" The guy knew he'd been punked.  I laughed.  One down, how many to go.  Once these folks know I really don't mess around and am not one bit intimidated, life may be a little simpler for me.  I really do not know. 

Five Points.  Number one violent crime rate in the city.  One shithole of a place for a sensitive human to get along, eh? 

Thank the greed-addicted real estate developers.  Do they care at all about people?  Only if the people = $$$

Compare this with my old neighborhood.  Behind the courtyard fence of a newly-constructed high-rise a pretty blonde is watching her dog as he wanders around. 

"That's a beautiful dog," I said. 

"He really is beautiful!" 

"How do you like where you are?" 

She smiled.  Paused.  Looked me good and solid. 

"I love it here!" 

Connection.  No street cred necessary.  While she and I never really became more than passing acquaintances, we always spoke, stopped to chat, never really said too much, but there she was, a friendly face, someone who seemed to appreciate my presence.  I was safe to her.  She to me. 

That sort of experience occurred all the time in my old neighborhood.  It was easy to meet people.  Some seemed a little snitty and arrogant, but then that's gentrification for you.  At least these people have interests, and have lives, and aren't down in the ditch of compulsive drug and alcohol abuse.  The absence of anger there was, well, palpable.  The lesbian couple up the street, always having morning coffee when I'd pass on my way to the Kroger.  We'd always stop to joke.  I remember when the neighborhood conducted the annual gay pride parade, the two women asked me if I was going.  I told them I'd probably go out to watch the wild-eyed and half-cocked parade.  Then I moved off to the grocery store. 

On my return, a bunch of their gay friends were also getting ready for the big to-do, and a couple asked me how I was.  "I don't know about you," I told those guys, "but I just passed a group of women getting their float ready, and believe me, Jesus, those women are so damned beautiful that I'M BECOMING A LESBIAN IMMEDIATELY!!!" 

Talk about some laughter.  I miss this.  I miss talking to Kathy, the line manager at the grocery store.  We'd always stop each morning to joke around and talk gossip.  She was one of those figures in my life who helped me set my day.  And Arnie, the 70-year-old sacker from Brooklyn.  He'd always have a mouthful for me.  I liked these people, possibly even loved a few.  Small contacts, of course, but who's begging?  I've never had huge social needs, even if I am quite social and talkative. 

Sylvia, the really pretty hot Latina who looked a little like Yoko Ono, always wearing black with sunglasses, and her fun son, and her brother.  I'd always have some tease to pull on her.  "How's Yoko today?"  "I can certainly tell the yoga is working," I'd flirt.  All registering that familiar laugh.  She'd always send her son down to bring me doughnuts on Sundays.  I'd give her boy books.  I could buy books for a dollar at the neighborhood library.  If that family ever needed anything, I'd give it.  And when I got so sick I couldn't even walk to the grocery store, Sylvia dispatched her brother to take me to the ER.  The bus stop, six blocks away, was too far.  And the phone number.  "When you get out, call us, we will come get you." 

Nine days later, there they were, in the parking lot, asking me how I was.  Neighbors. 

The kids in 209.  El Nino Gigante, the four-year-old with an attitude, running up the steps, giving me the stink eye and then flashing me the finger.  His sister got him in trouble for that one.  The next day, an entire crowd of kids were at my doorstep to apologize.  I let the kid off the hook.  But not after raising my eyebrows and stepping forward as if I was going to yell.  Being invited to the little girl's confirmation dinner was an honor. 

So much kind contact there, literally none of that here.  All that equals this gnawing loneliness.  From what I've seen here, I really do not want to know anyone here.  Lots of shut-down people.  Lots of shut-ins.  I don't want to be a shut-in.  I have way too much life in me. 

My friend Jolee is on my case about coming to her readings, Stone Soup, and I'm now enough in need of some social contact that I'm going to go.  I don't care if the rat bastards who put me down so hard two years ago are there or not.  I'll just shove shit in their faces and laugh.  Daniel, an old friend, wants to go to coffee with me.  So does Martinez.  I should take them up on this.  I practically have to pry myself loose of that old disgust with people who blatantly refused to understand what had happened to me two years ago.  I don't blame people for being a little scared, a little shocked.  I made the mistake of simply not telling people that such episodes were possible.  But I am on disability.  Did those nut jobs ever stop to wonder why?  It's not as if all of this is serious.  I'm usually quite normal. 

The last couple of months, when a mania threatened, and when I did sometimes panicked, have been both enjoyable and trying.  Now that the up, up, up is leaving, I am going into what is technically called "mania recovery", but I don't like this phase, mainly because I am irritable.  It's not because of anyone.  But combine the irritability with the loneliness and sometimes I seem like an unhappy whiner.  I am sure that, given a few weeks, I will be fine. 

Sunday night, my next door neighbor decided that three a.m. was "the perfect time" to move.  I sleep lightly.  All his furniture shuffling and loud conversation woke me at 3:30.  I couldn't sleep for all the banging.  So I got up, made coffee and went to work.  I was just bitching all day long.  My friend Robyn was laughing at me.  She's so accepting and understanding.  She's like a mind reader.  I am glad to have her in my life. 

Other uncertainties and ambiguity are typical for what else is occurring in my life.  I'm uncomfortable.  The other is uncomfortable.  Negotiations are often uncomfortable.  Who knows what tomorrow brings? 

We are all rivers.  We are processes.  We flow forever until we die.  Nothing is fixed.  I like living with this.  Keeps me on my toes.  What can I say? 

THE ZOO, ALWAYS THE STUPID ZOO

When I was little, I thought going to the zoo was great.  I was too small to comprehend what penning animals in cages or even "compassionately" reconstructing their habitats within walls was doing to them.  How could I have known?  I was just a kid.  Kids do no have the ability to see the consequences of "fun stuff" that may be hurting, in this case, the animals that deserve to roam, to hunt, to live wild and to be free.  Sure, back then, when I was too small and too myopic to understand, we all teared-up watching the movie, "Born Free", the story of Elsa, a lioness that eventually was granted freedom.  "Born free / free as the wind blows...." 

Then I grew up.  I saw zoos for what they are: cruel instruments in which animals are utilized for entertainment--and of course profit.  Sure, zoologists will claim they are conducting valuable research and helping endangered wildlife populations survive, but when orcas start dying at Seaworld, someone somewhere has to see the truth: Those beings are not designed for confinement.  They simply aren't.  Let the little kiddies cry and release the orcas into their world--as far away from ours as possible. 

I also hate being "pegged"; you know, penned in by some reductionist BS that "requires" I behave in certain ways, or dance the dance I may or may not want to dance.  What's up with that?  I was kidding this morning when I "castigated" the poetry e-zine for conducting another pretty lousy poem about "the cray cray" and the self-deluded, but I asked one serious question:  If human beings are actually processes, entities that move and forever change, what is the role of poetry in all this?  Does a poem suddenly mean the process, the river, needs to stop flowing immediately?  Or is poetry a moment's monument, a documentation of a state-of-mind left as an artifact for readers, listeners and the curious.  I choose the latter.  Poems are meant to explore a mental/emotional or even physical constellation that occurred or perhaps was imagined by the poet.  We dream.  Dreaming is not illegal.  Dreams have functions: Dreams tell us things we need to know about both ourselves and about our pressing situations in ways that, like poetry, speak in metaphor, and often, in dreams, metaphor is emotionally charged, ambiguous, numinous (one of my favorite words) and they are messages that go far deeper than Twitter or e-mail. 

I remember working as a legal assistant.  We conducted legal work for many companies and corporations, and one of our functions was to "solidify" a liquid situation, thus making it an object, a company, a merger, a deal.  This is fine in the theater of business, but like everything else in this corporatism that bleeds into polities and politics and even society and culture, all too many of us believe that "solidification" in relationships, in social networks, in important activities is what actually happens. 

That does not actually happen. 

I refuse to be "pegged" in such a way.  My life is a process.  And, like everyone, I make mistakes.  I transgress, I trespass, I make poor decisions.  Nobody's perfect: great 20th Century axiom.  We all do.  There is no avoiding this.  Sometimes, we have the very best intentions when we choose a certain path, and then the unknown, the future, reveals unintended consequences not even a seer or prophet could divine. 

Only sissies run from uncertainty.  Keats called this insanity "irritable grasping" in his famous "negative capability" letter in which he laid down the hard facts of the matter that human beings live in ambiguity, and that nothing is solid or defined.  It just isn't.  Nothing is "forever".  Our lives may last 70 + years, but that's all too short, really.  Why reduce anything to a dogmatism, an ideology, a belief system, some didactic pabulum that will not stand the test of time even when designed to last forever?

You're a bad person because we say you are a bad person? 

Says who? 

Think of beautiful women.  Right now, they're irresistible, but in a few years, they become crones, and while the vanity right now is enjoyable, and beauty-as-weapon is entertaining, it's not going to last forever.  I always feel sad when I see a once beautiful woman, a woman who has aged-out, crazy-sad and trying to reclaim her youth.  That must be especially difficult for women who have utilized their beauty as stock-in-trade for getting what they want when they want it.  Men also go through this: We are not forever strong.  We lose our strength.  But some men hang onto their youth as if, at 70, they are still Superman. 

Nothing is the only thing that lasts forever. 

I am not going to be pegged.  If I feel abandoned by someone, if what I have said or done is uncomfortable to someone, or causes someone a bit of fear, that's too bad.  Every word we speak or write is about the moment, spoken; the moment, written.  There is no, "You sang and now that's that."  That's a social contrivance, a little machine, no better than the plastic clock on the wall. 

I always liked the old song, "Don't Fence Me In".  Sadly, fencing people in is a cottage industry these days.  The wild animal that is a human being gets suffocated by that kind of zooing.  Humankind's biggest predicament is coming to terms with the animal we each are and the social and cultural and political demands we learn to live together without too much hassle or violence.  Wars begin when the animal can no longer take the zoo.  Look at all the great wars: They are signatory of huge changes is paradigm.  Now that humankind can destroy humankind, perhaps it's time to learn that, indeed, we are still going to be wild animals no matter what phantasms we place over ourselves, those grids, those ideologies, those cultural games or social dances. 

Why fit in if fitting in shuts you down? 

My mind turns to an evening almost 35 years ago.  Thirty five years ago, a big time literati and editor, Gordon Lish, astonished the world with his short stories and some of his literary education projects.  Lish was invited to Dallas to read at Southern Methodist University, and interested in seeing what he had to say I walked to SMU to attend the reading.  All the dimwits in suits and fancy dresses.  Lish was on stage in blue jeans.  He did entertain the audience, but I sincerely doubt many in the auditorium had the faintest of ideas what he was saying.  Then, someone invited me to the after party.  And I went. 

A garage apartment near campus.  Some students hosted Lish.  When I arrived, all the young students were, in the manner in which they thought proper, were all dressed to the nines.  I looked at those little fucks.  Sports coats, nice haircuts, so much affectation I felt like pulling out a can of Raid and just killing the insects on the spot.  It was ridiculous.  Students trying to say clever things to impress someone who would be here and gone. 

Why not be real? 

I looked at Lish.  He looked back, his expression of frustration palpable on his face.  So I stepped forward and grinning, upbraided him for not being "dressed properly". 

"Get me out of here.  I hate this shit." 

So we stepped out on the porch and smoked a joint.  That little act traveled like the wind throughout SMU: Gordon Hilgers broke the rules. 

I still laugh about the affected ones, all concerned about the freaking dance. 

Get real.