Short and sweet but bitter like limes:
Walking through the produce at the grocery store and passing the fresh limes, I think Coronas sound good today.
Later at work, turning down an invitation to a cocktail party.
Tonight, I complete the first draft of a 46 page story--I want a beer to celebrate. Bitterness.
Coming feature tomorrow (hopefully): an updated account of exploitations at Cotton's Wonderbar.
Day 3, solid but annoyed
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Summer Day
Ah, those lazy summer afternoons, lying in the sun...or sitting in the computer lab at the public library. Either way, I'm enjoying it. I've actually been out for the last few hours helping Mack replace the stickers on the family recycling cans around Crystal Lake Park. We finished forty-five minutes before his scheduled finish time since he had a little extra help.
I love Crystal Lake Park. The name alone suggests a darker side for all the Jason Voorhees fans out there. Although, there have been no reported sightings of hockey-masked maniac wielding a rusted machete, Crystal Lake Park has not been free from the occassional dead body floating around in its waters. Between the dead bodies and all of the geese feces sitting on top of the water, I think it is time for a more appropriate renaming of the park, or at least the "lake," which is really about the size of a large pond. I'm not sure exactly what we should rename it. All of the bird excrement makes Lake Lepto sound just about right, but Lake Springfield already has the distinct honor of that nickname. T.C. Boyle's "Greasy Lake" sounds interesting enough, but of course is also already taken, and seems more fitting in the sense that it had a bunch of pseudo-greaser yuppie gearheads visiting its shores. Yet, this could be the right track. Who is most often walking the grounds and lakeshore of the park. There was the Homeless Cowboy who would often visit once a month to grill out with the food that he had recently received from one of the local shelters. It took me a while to understand that the mumbles and gutteral sounds with occassional bursts of yelling and then laughter were actual words uttered in some strange, perhaps half-crazed, dialect. In the time that I worked for the park district here, it seems like the homeless and the unemployed most enjoyed Crystal Lake as their favorite stomping ground. Even when I didn't see them or wake them by rolling up in the garbage truck at 6 am and emptying the trash cans at the pavillions--most often a lone guy would be sleeping on one of the picnic tables under the shelter--I would come across their left behind stashes. The choices would sometimes vary. I would occassionally come across Colts or Cobras or even a High Life, but the most common choice would be the Steel Reserve tallboy--a high life, indeed.
So, now, it seems most appropriate to me that Crystal Lake should be renamed Steel Reserve Lake--I mean "lake" just sounds more pleasant than "pond"--and the adress will be changed to 211 Broadway or 211 Park, the two main streets that intersect around Crystal Lake. I think it's time that we consider those who really utilize the public areas we provide in the community. And I'm not talking about recognizing the homeless in films like the new "Hobo With a Shotgun", starring Rutger Hauer. I saw it at the late night movie showing at the Art Theatre, after the premier of Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life." "Hobo" had its moments but, over all, was rather degrading and excessively campy. It also did little to make a socio-political point about homelessness in this nation other than make a tongue-in-cheek joke about the homeless being people to and the fact that the entire world was their home--at least the 70s B movies that it attempted to mock would do more than that even if the point driven home was incredibely heavy handed.
I'll end by simply saying that the two nights I attempted to sleep in parks this summer were both thwarted by local law enforcement. Each time, I was asked to leave by first University police and second by city police. They were very courteous, but also very clear in that my presence was not desired there. I ended up sleeping in my car parked on the street, quickly learning that the carseat would not work for an extended period of time as a bed. I know of one local homeless man, dubbed Grizzly Adams by some of the local town residents, who sleeps and lives in the front entrance to the City Building. I guess he gets away with it because he's been living around the downtown area for so long now, his previous domicile being the stairwell of the only parking garage downtown. Maybe, I just need to be more creative, or at least not leave my car in the park parking lot, drawing police scrutiny. It just makes the whole idea of homelessness a lot more real when you see the sun setting and know that you may have trouble finding a space where you can simply be for the night. Thankfully I have a few friends with comfy couches.
Day 2: If you're wondering, I met friends at a bar last night. Had to watch them drink down their craft beers while I sipped my water. Passed one of the local dives on the bike today and thought how nice it would be to grab one of their dollar pints of PBR and catch a Cub's loss on the tube if they are in fact playing on just another one of these lazy summer afternoons. Peace.
I love Crystal Lake Park. The name alone suggests a darker side for all the Jason Voorhees fans out there. Although, there have been no reported sightings of hockey-masked maniac wielding a rusted machete, Crystal Lake Park has not been free from the occassional dead body floating around in its waters. Between the dead bodies and all of the geese feces sitting on top of the water, I think it is time for a more appropriate renaming of the park, or at least the "lake," which is really about the size of a large pond. I'm not sure exactly what we should rename it. All of the bird excrement makes Lake Lepto sound just about right, but Lake Springfield already has the distinct honor of that nickname. T.C. Boyle's "Greasy Lake" sounds interesting enough, but of course is also already taken, and seems more fitting in the sense that it had a bunch of pseudo-greaser yuppie gearheads visiting its shores. Yet, this could be the right track. Who is most often walking the grounds and lakeshore of the park. There was the Homeless Cowboy who would often visit once a month to grill out with the food that he had recently received from one of the local shelters. It took me a while to understand that the mumbles and gutteral sounds with occassional bursts of yelling and then laughter were actual words uttered in some strange, perhaps half-crazed, dialect. In the time that I worked for the park district here, it seems like the homeless and the unemployed most enjoyed Crystal Lake as their favorite stomping ground. Even when I didn't see them or wake them by rolling up in the garbage truck at 6 am and emptying the trash cans at the pavillions--most often a lone guy would be sleeping on one of the picnic tables under the shelter--I would come across their left behind stashes. The choices would sometimes vary. I would occassionally come across Colts or Cobras or even a High Life, but the most common choice would be the Steel Reserve tallboy--a high life, indeed.
So, now, it seems most appropriate to me that Crystal Lake should be renamed Steel Reserve Lake--I mean "lake" just sounds more pleasant than "pond"--and the adress will be changed to 211 Broadway or 211 Park, the two main streets that intersect around Crystal Lake. I think it's time that we consider those who really utilize the public areas we provide in the community. And I'm not talking about recognizing the homeless in films like the new "Hobo With a Shotgun", starring Rutger Hauer. I saw it at the late night movie showing at the Art Theatre, after the premier of Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life." "Hobo" had its moments but, over all, was rather degrading and excessively campy. It also did little to make a socio-political point about homelessness in this nation other than make a tongue-in-cheek joke about the homeless being people to and the fact that the entire world was their home--at least the 70s B movies that it attempted to mock would do more than that even if the point driven home was incredibely heavy handed.
I'll end by simply saying that the two nights I attempted to sleep in parks this summer were both thwarted by local law enforcement. Each time, I was asked to leave by first University police and second by city police. They were very courteous, but also very clear in that my presence was not desired there. I ended up sleeping in my car parked on the street, quickly learning that the carseat would not work for an extended period of time as a bed. I know of one local homeless man, dubbed Grizzly Adams by some of the local town residents, who sleeps and lives in the front entrance to the City Building. I guess he gets away with it because he's been living around the downtown area for so long now, his previous domicile being the stairwell of the only parking garage downtown. Maybe, I just need to be more creative, or at least not leave my car in the park parking lot, drawing police scrutiny. It just makes the whole idea of homelessness a lot more real when you see the sun setting and know that you may have trouble finding a space where you can simply be for the night. Thankfully I have a few friends with comfy couches.
Day 2: If you're wondering, I met friends at a bar last night. Had to watch them drink down their craft beers while I sipped my water. Passed one of the local dives on the bike today and thought how nice it would be to grab one of their dollar pints of PBR and catch a Cub's loss on the tube if they are in fact playing on just another one of these lazy summer afternoons. Peace.
Monday, June 27, 2011
lovable lush
For the severaleth time in the last few years, I am 'back on the wagon."
This last fall was nowhere near the worst, though I woke up this morning with considerable cuts and bruises, but I realized where this was all heading today. I was taking the recycling out to the receptacle for my friend--a friend kind enough to loan me a couch to sleep on for the last month--in a pathetically small attempt to make up for my stumbling into the apartment at 2 am, waking her up, and scaring her when I loudly slipped and fell in the shower. As I was walking toward the big green can, I saw a familiar bald head and big toothed grin. It was my friend Mack, working for the city, putting the stickers on the cans--the stickers that indicate which items are recyclable etc. I hadn't seen Mack for a while. We used to work together washing dishes and pans in one of the dormitory cafeterias at the local university. For the last year, I had been working the early breakfasts, and he was scheduled on the late night shifts. We got to talking of course, and his wife called him on the phone. He told me how he was in trouble for something with her, and I told him that I was in the doghouse myself for last night. We laughed until Mack got real serious, and shared his own past problems with alcohol. He began with the question of whether or not I could believe it had been 15 years since he had a drink. He went on to tell how his simple drinking went from a few friendly beers and a joint to "crack cocaine" and three years of being homeless in Indianapolis. Mack spoke some of the wisest words that I've heard in a long time.
He put it to me straight and in plain, experienced words. He brought up the fact that he could tell three years ago when we met that I drank from the way I walked, talked, looked. He remembered seeing it then in the dishroom. He remembered seeing me laughing and talking to my girlfriend then--one who I could only remember and think of through a clung-to hatred until a few weeks ago. Mack looked at me and said, "You don't drink because you want to, you drink because you're running from that thing. When you're ready to get serious about stopping, it'll be when you're ready to face the thing that's got you drinking." You got to face it...face myself, I thought. It's about time I became a man and assumed some real responsibility. Mack got me seeing clear again today, and I thank him for that.
This post is the first in what I hope will be a daily blog. I say hope because I'm partially homeless right now, and my main access to internet is the public library, so I may miss days here and there--if I'm gone for a week, assume the worst. This is my sort of public outing and declaration of self-change, and it's been a long time coming. While my friend was yelling at me this morning, the one word that painfully stuck from everything she said was "disrespect." There are a lot of people that I have disrespected drunk and sober in the last twenty-three years. I apologize to all of you and myself as I have disrespected myself considerably through the bottle. Last, I'll apologize to you, for the messiness of this first post. I don't want to make excuses, but it was kind of a spur of the moment thing, and I'm still really hung over.
If you know me or randomly found this and think that I'm relatively interesting or worth listening to, please stay tuned and follow...and tell your friends, so I can actually get some readers.
Day 1 "You're only twenty-three now. You don't want to wake up tomorrow at thirty-three with nothing from the last ten years."
This last fall was nowhere near the worst, though I woke up this morning with considerable cuts and bruises, but I realized where this was all heading today. I was taking the recycling out to the receptacle for my friend--a friend kind enough to loan me a couch to sleep on for the last month--in a pathetically small attempt to make up for my stumbling into the apartment at 2 am, waking her up, and scaring her when I loudly slipped and fell in the shower. As I was walking toward the big green can, I saw a familiar bald head and big toothed grin. It was my friend Mack, working for the city, putting the stickers on the cans--the stickers that indicate which items are recyclable etc. I hadn't seen Mack for a while. We used to work together washing dishes and pans in one of the dormitory cafeterias at the local university. For the last year, I had been working the early breakfasts, and he was scheduled on the late night shifts. We got to talking of course, and his wife called him on the phone. He told me how he was in trouble for something with her, and I told him that I was in the doghouse myself for last night. We laughed until Mack got real serious, and shared his own past problems with alcohol. He began with the question of whether or not I could believe it had been 15 years since he had a drink. He went on to tell how his simple drinking went from a few friendly beers and a joint to "crack cocaine" and three years of being homeless in Indianapolis. Mack spoke some of the wisest words that I've heard in a long time.
He put it to me straight and in plain, experienced words. He brought up the fact that he could tell three years ago when we met that I drank from the way I walked, talked, looked. He remembered seeing it then in the dishroom. He remembered seeing me laughing and talking to my girlfriend then--one who I could only remember and think of through a clung-to hatred until a few weeks ago. Mack looked at me and said, "You don't drink because you want to, you drink because you're running from that thing. When you're ready to get serious about stopping, it'll be when you're ready to face the thing that's got you drinking." You got to face it...face myself, I thought. It's about time I became a man and assumed some real responsibility. Mack got me seeing clear again today, and I thank him for that.
This post is the first in what I hope will be a daily blog. I say hope because I'm partially homeless right now, and my main access to internet is the public library, so I may miss days here and there--if I'm gone for a week, assume the worst. This is my sort of public outing and declaration of self-change, and it's been a long time coming. While my friend was yelling at me this morning, the one word that painfully stuck from everything she said was "disrespect." There are a lot of people that I have disrespected drunk and sober in the last twenty-three years. I apologize to all of you and myself as I have disrespected myself considerably through the bottle. Last, I'll apologize to you, for the messiness of this first post. I don't want to make excuses, but it was kind of a spur of the moment thing, and I'm still really hung over.
If you know me or randomly found this and think that I'm relatively interesting or worth listening to, please stay tuned and follow...and tell your friends, so I can actually get some readers.
Day 1 "You're only twenty-three now. You don't want to wake up tomorrow at thirty-three with nothing from the last ten years."
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