Creatures of the forest

For the past week, elk have been bugling in the forest near my camp. That means it's rutting season. I don't hear it in my car at night, but it's hard to ignore during the day. The males call to each other, I imagine they are saying, stay out of my territory, bro. I may have liked you yesterday, but today we are sworn enemies. That cow is mine!

I have not seen any elk yet, but yesterday I was overrun with chipmunks, which is actually preferable. Everyone out here feeds the little rascals, so they are bold  beggars. One audacious chipmunk jumped into my car while I was typing. I felt something touch my foot. When I looked down, I saw nothing. A few minutes later, same thing. Finally, I caught the critter in the act. Who could be mad at a chipmunk? It's the packrats and mice I don't want in my engine. My neighbor uses mothballs in his engine bay. Today I got some at Walmart. Lavender scented. Big mistake. My eyes are burning. But if it saves my wiring being eaten, worth it.

When you hang around an area long enough, and walk by campsites day after day, people start to recognize you. Let me tell you about some of the other creatures I've met this week. It's funny that last week I blogged that I needed more friends. Be careful what you wish for.

JOHN

John is a fifty-something bald man with a white moustache and a desperate desire to get laid. (Not by me, obviously. Old enough to be his mother, yada yada). John and I were parked on the periphery of the same clearing. My minivan fits in small spaces. John drives a red monster jeep thing and pulls a 25-foot trailer. He rides his bike daily, wearing no shirt, no hat, and no shoes. He likes to get high in every way conceivable. Wine, whiskey, and weed seem to be what he mentions most. John believes he's connected to the Earth through the soles of his feet. Yesterday, he visited me on his bike and said he intended to sell his vehicle, trailer, and bicycle and buy an electric bike that can pull a small two-wheel trailer, in which he plans to carry his camping gear, a small power station, and a portable solar panel. With an extra battery for the e-bike, he said he can travel fifty to sixty miles per day for a lot less money than he's spending now. He reassured me he's done this before. He said he needs to cut back on his drinking and smoking before he implements his plan.

GEORGE

The camper who took John's campsite is named George. He drives a minivan and sleeps in an orange tent. His minivan is a mess, but he has a huge fridge with a freezer and a Jackery 1000 to run it. He has 200 watts of solar on the roof. George is tall, thin, maybe a couple years older than me, with a salt-and-pepper beard and mustache and very little hair on his scalp. He's a real estate developer who has some deals in the works but is currently broke. George is estranged from his daughter. George reads a lot and isn't shy about telling me what to read. He thinks Ariana Huffington is the bomb, by which I mean, he thinks she's a total "babe." I asked why he called her a babe. He got defensive and praised her other attributes. Today he expounded on the many reasons why people are messed up, offering explanations such as ruined gut biome, metabolic dysfunction, and Adult Children of Alcoholics. 

MARK

A few days ago, I walked up the road past an open clearing. A very large pickup truck was parked by an old mid-sized trailer (similar to John's). A bloated man sat in a camp chair in the sun with a small fluffy dog at his feet. The man waved and said "come on over," so I navigated the terrain and met Mark and his dog, Ozzie. Mark is clearly unwell. He said he had a heart condition that required him to wear a monitor that sent data to the medical data specialists, who most likely can do nothing if Mark has a heart attack out here in the middle of the forest. Mark was drinking coffee shirtless in the blazing sun while wearing rainbow wraparound sunglasses. His ankles and hands are red, chapped, and swollen.  Ozzie kept licking his leg. After telling Ozzie to cut it out, Mark recommended I get a small generator and put it in the passenger seat of my van.

MARTY

On the way back from meeting Mark, I ran into a woman with two dogs. She was going my way, so we walked together. Marty is maybe mid-fifties, a little shorter than me, with gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her two dogs were mid-sized things. One had beautiful blue eyes. I forgot to ask their names. Marty had a lot of stories to tell, one of which was of interest to me. Recently she bought 4.7 acres of land in Goldendale, AZ. She put a shed on it to store her furniture, but she isn't supposed to live there because she's not hooked up to septic and the shed isn't up to code as a livable space. She lives in her motorhome, hauls water, and relies on solar. The law in Mohave County says she can only spend seven days out of a year camping on her own land, but she ignores the law. She said she didn't know what she was getting into, and now she's spent all her money. 

LISA

In the wayback corner of this clearing is Lisa and her spindly chihuahua Ginger. Lisa kept to herself for most of my time at this campsite. She drives a white minivan similar to mine but more beat up, and she somehow managed to pitch an enormous white tent. She's short but strong, I'm guessing. She came over to talk after two men pulled up in a big black pickup, parked, and unloaded two motorcycles. She asked if I knew them. We got to talking. She's an architect with a disconcerting habit of laughing at what she says. I got many glimpses of her perfect teeth. Lisa is worried about the recent Executive Order giving authorities permission to force homeless people into treatment. 

THE FUN NEVER STOPS

Mark pulled up when Lisa and I were talking and proceeded to act like a jerk when he heard Lisa talking about rangers photographing our license plates to add us to the database of homeless people who might need to be institutionalized. Mark's opinion was that it would never happen. He called Lisa an idiot. She defused the conflict with remarkable grace and skill, I thought. I walked away before the conversation was over. 

George went away and came back and gave me the update, with details, on the sad saga of his real estate problem in Marana. Yesterday John rode up on his bike and talked to me at my open sliding door. George came over to join the conversation. It was a two-way conversation, with me as witness. It's amusing to be a fly on the wall, observing the banter of two men who are using words to arm-wrestle.

Today, George said that what is wrong with everyone (including me, apparently) is that we don't know how to eat, sleep, think, or poop. Something like that. He gave me a list of books to read. Then he gave me his entire life story from kindergarten through the Vietnam draft, which he escaped by virtue of winning the number lottery. 

The theme of this week is listening while others talk. And talk. And talk. Now that I've met a small sample of forest dwellers, I can offer a tentative theory: These people are lonely eccentrics who are hungry to be heard. They latched onto me like a mosquito probing for a blood meal. 

I know how to listen. I can be pretty good at it when I really try, and I'll put up with a lot, offering platitudes like "oh really!", "how did that go?", and "it sounds like you've had an amazing life." I do this because I like being of service. It's a small gift I can give that costs me nothing. It's kind of fun to see them bloom. Like thirsty desert flowers, they open up and bask in the attention. At last! Someone is interested in me!

Nobody asked me anything about myself. I volunteered a few things at first, but I quickly realized they didn't care about me, so I switched my strategy and kept my responses short and empathetic, along the lines of "me, too!", and "I had a very similar experience!"

Today after George berated humanity for not pooping correctly, I'd had enough. I said something like "this just proves that humans are too stupid to live" and walked away. I think he was a little taken aback. But he still can't stop talking. In fact, all these creatures can't seem to stop talking. Bla bla bla, yada yada yada.

I asked to meet people, and this is what is out here. Probably there are a few "normies" like me who are trying to maintain a semblance of their "normal" lives but just happen to be doing it in a home on wheels. I won't find them, because they are avoiding the creatures of the forest, which is probably what I need to start doing, now that I've had a taste of their desperation.  

Weirdos on the road

Mike (not his real name) is a flabby grizzled aging man with no front teeth and a cute roly-poly dog named Roxie. I met Mike and Roxie this morning at Buffalo Park. He's parked his 26-foot Class C RV in the gravel strip outside the main parking lot for the past month or so. I don't know if he ever leaves, because I come and go. Everytime I've been to the park, he's been there. 

Today as I was changing out of my walking shoes into my sandals, I saw him pull out a doormat and a folding chair. He placed them outside the open side door, took off his shirt, displaying flab and a drooping chest, and sat in the chair, soaking up some nice healthy high-index UV rays. Rock music blasted from somewhere inside. A short-legged fat brown dog laid down on the rug beside him.

Pretty soon, his dog got a stick from inside the RV and begged him to throw it. Because I was parked just a few yards away, I went over to say hello to his dog. That's when he told me his dog's name was Roxie. 

Roxie brought the stick to me to throw. I did my best and ended up almost putting Mike's eye out. Good thing he caught it. I was never much good at softball, although we won City Champs when I was in seventh grade, no thanks to me.

Anyway, Mike obviously hadn't spoken to anyone in a while. I recognized the symptoms of social isolation, because I feel them myself. Even though it soon became obvious that Mike was a jerk and a crook, I still enjoyed the interchange. I kept listening, and he kept talking while we took turns throwing the stick for Roxie. 

Married with kids, divorced from his addict wife, who got cancer and died two months later, after he'd had to sell his house and all his toys. Camarillo, CA, I think he said, even though he has Georgia plates on his RV. 

"I used to be a landscaper and an electrician until 2008, when all the work dried up and I got behind in my bills."

I made some sympathetic noises. 

"I had the best front yard in the neighborhood. I designed and landscaped it all myself. I paid for it by padding my clients invoices. I had a smart taxman. You can get away with anything if you put your mind to it."

I felt compelled to respond with some inanity about living with myself at the end of the day. He displayed no chagrin.

"Where you going next?" I asked.

"Back to Georgia to help someone with some work, and then I think I'll head back to California. After that, Idaho. I want to do some fishing."

I thought to myself, wow, a true nomad. 

"I'd really like to meet a woman," he said, "but all the ones I meet just want to know how much you make, what you got. Nowadays, instead of asking what you like to do, you ask, how many prescriptions pills do you take, what ailments do you have. I met a couple cougars. They just wanted to know how much I was worth."

I clucked my tongue in sympathy. "Have you ever been to Quartzsite in the winter?"

"To the swap meet?"

"Yeah, and to the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous. You might meet a nice nomad woman there. Kindred spirits and all that."

He looked interested. 

After 15 minutes, I was feeling the heat. The clouds had moved aside, and relentless sun was blazing on my neck. I checked my watch. The mall opened at 11:00 a.m.  

Clouds have persisted the past couple days, which means solar has been iffy. I left the forest this morning to charge up the power station that runs my fridge. Now I'm at my favorite table in the mall, watching parents stroll past with their manic children and listening to old pop music echoing in the rafters. Not old by my standards. Depeche Mode seems like just yesterday.

I need some road friends. I'm sure there are some non-weirdo nomads out there on the road. Creative people who aren't jerks or crooks. I'm trying to be more outgoing. I'll sift big timber until I find them.

Sketchy isn't as fun as it sounds

This should be interesting. I didn't bring my keyboard into the mall with me today, so I'm typing on the virtual keyboard that comes built into the tablet. This will probably be a short post today. I'll be lucky to post something before I throw this oversized toy phone across the tile floor. I'm sure it will skid a long way, maybe all the way into the Artists Coalition of Flagstaff. Maybe it will wake up the dozing artist putting in his monthly hours on a quiet Sunday morning.

Rain is expected sometime this afternoon. Rather than run the risk of getting trapped by muddy roads, I'm staying at the few places I've identified in town that seem safe for nomads to park overnight. There are many of us, but we are barely tolerated by the locals. Walmart and Home Depot have been burned too many times, judging by the adamant no overnight parking signs on every pole. That leaves Cracker Barrel and a parking area by Buffalo Park.

I went exploring a possible camping road this morning. I'd seen many large motorhomes and trailers parked across a big dry lake from the road I take to get to a camping area I like. I figured if they could get over there, I could. I found the road, but as I drove slowly over washboard gravel, I saw no open spaces that were level enough for my car. The further I explored the road, the sketchier the area seemed. Some of the campers looked like they had been there a long time. You can tell by how many tents and canopies they've erected. Not to mention all the trash.

The volatile weather is wreaking havoc on my vestibular system. Sometimes I feel like my eyes are spinning in my eye sockets. That would be something to see, I guess. Maybe I could get up a webcam and start a YouTube channel. Maybe I could join a circus. Maybe I could say I've been touched by the holy spirit and join a convent. Next thing you know, I'll be writhing on the floor and speaking in tongues. I'm not sure what all that means, but it sounds entertaining.

Are you keeping count of my typos? Good. 

Dogs will be dogs

Monsoon in Arizona is late this year, but maybe it's finally starting. According to the weather app, it's supposed to rain every afternoon this week. That means the heat during the day creates massive thunderclouds that can produce wind, lightning, and torrential rain. It's pretty exciting if you have a nice covered porch from which to view the storms. I'm not afraid of getting hit by lightning or washed away in a flood, but I am afraid of getting stuck in slick red mud.

Thunder just rolled overhead, and now it's sprinkling. The rain wasn't supposed to start until tomorrow! What the heck? That's what happens when we fire our meteorologists. We get bad forecasts. 

There's no wind. The forest is still except for the occasional crack of a gunshot. The sky is mostly clouds. The lighting looks eerie, almost misty. Maybe that's because I don't wear glasses while I'm typing, so when I look out my side door, everything is soft and hazy. It's a bit muggy, but nothing like what my sister in Boston has experienced this summer. I'm not going to mention the sweat drenching my waistband of my pajama pants.

I stayed the past three nights in another Flagstaff location next to Lake Marshall, which is currently dry except for a small scummy pond inhabited by nesting ducks. When I saw the forecast for rain, I decided I'd better move camp. The road to the campsite area has been ravaged by previous rains and monster truck tires, leaving deep wallows in the dirt that remind me of the wavy roller skating rink at Oak's Park. That's in Portland, in case you are wondering.

I won't say I'm getting the hang of this camping thing, but I will say that I prefer camping in the forest to camping in the city. Knowing that I'm breaking the law by sleeping in my car overnight on public streets makes me uncomfortable. Knowing that I'm not welcome in any city that prohibits overnight sleeping in one's car on public property is disheartening. It's safer in the forest. The only downside, besides the gunshots and the grizzled weirdos, is the 14-day camping limit rule. After 14 days out of a 30-day period, you have to move to another camp at least 25 miles away. In other words, you can't stake out a homestead and build your own tiny fort in the forest.

With no solar today, after checking to be sure my shirt was not on backwards and that I was wearing pants, I took my fast-charging power box to the mall, where it charges up in about an hour. I found a small round table with a functional outlet on top. I plugged it in. It started slurping up power at a rate that far outstrips solar. While I waited, I did some work done on my dinky tablet with my giant Bluetooth keyboard and watched the mall-goers navigate the stores and kiosks. 

When I'm camping, I meet a lot of dogs. Two days ago, I met Bo and Little Man. I never asked the name of their dog walker. The dogs were chunky and energetic. The slender woman walking them took them out one at a time. I suspected those muscular dogs together could drag her into the next county. They were well-behaved dogs, though. She let them visit me one at a time when they seemed inclined to sniff me out. Then they peed all over the rocks in my campsite. 

"I can't stop them from doing that," the woman said, as if I was going to start yelling. 

"No worries," I replied. I didn't say I was actually more impressed by the fact that she wore the same loose white shirt and baggy green shorts every day I saw her. That made me feel better about my own overworked wardrobe.

Recently I was on the phone when a little white poodle-type mutt jumped into my van through my side door. It jumped around like it was on pogo sticks, sniffing and wriggling and generally wreaking havoc. I finally shooed it outside. I presume it found its way home. I never saw the owner. 

I haven't seen any lightning today, but the thunder is now rolling overhead. It just started pouring rain, just for a brief minute, followed by sprinkles, then a deluge, then a light shower. Typical monsoon behavior. Difficult to predict with accuracy, even with a full contingent of weather forecasters. I check the weather app multiple times a day. This morning it said rain was coming tomorrow. Ha.

I don't mind the rain. I'd rather be out here among the trees than parked at Cracker Barrel for fear of mud. 

Oh, by the way, not that you were wondering, but I'm off the Keppra and trying something else. Once again I'm a guinea pig, but more to the point, going off the Keppra means no more Keppra rage. Now I have no excuse if I have a conniption fit over spilling my coffee or running out of crackers. I'm back to plain old ordinary rage, if I choose to indulge. I don't often indulge in anger these days. I don't have the energy. It changes nothing, and it hurts no one but me. But it was nice to have the option and have something external to blame. 

The rain has stopped. The sun is trying to make an appearance. Soon, the dirt road will be powder again. Welcome to monsoon in Northern Arizona. 

Humans will be humans

Two days of hard rain in Flagstaff sent me running out of the forest back into town. No way am I getting stuck in this thick red mud. I drive a soccer mom minivan, not a 4-wheel drive monster truck. On the second night, I found a place to park with a dozen other nomadic vehicle dwellers. Better than Cracker Barrel. Although I'm grateful for Cracker Barrel, don't get me wrong. They welcome travelers. I parked there the first night. I don't mind the sounds of trains and traffic. I lived on a busy bus line in Portland for 18 years. Every fifteen minutes it sounded as if the bus was going to come right through my bedroom window. Eddie and I got used to it. Sometimes the silence in the forest is unsettling (see previous post).

I'm off the Keppra and onto an antidepressant. Now I can't blame Keppra rage when impatient drivers tailgate me. Sometimes I think they think I'm going the speed limit specifically to make their lives a living hell. One guy in a monster pickup passed me and then slammed on his brakes. Probably he's on Keppra, too.

So now I'm taking an SNRI to fix the chemicals in my brain. I'm not expecting much, but I won't know for six weeks or so whether it will calm the angry part of my brain that yells everytime the air pressure changes. I have to live through the side effects first. Like eating your meat before you get the pudding.

You may have received the impression that just because I'm currently a nomad I'm not working. I probably mentioned some time back that I was a contract editor for a for-profit college based in the Midwest. After two years, they eliminated the editor position, but offered the terminated editors the opportunity to apply to be  . . . I guess you would call us part-time contingent adjunct faculty. I'm not teaching courses, thank God. Don't want to do that again. Now I'm a Chair for two students and a Committee Member for four others. 

Everything happens remotely, just like the online university I attended. This college has distilled the dissertation production experience to a set of checklists, rubrics, templates, and approval hoops. It seems as if it should be well organized, and it could be, if humans didn't keep getting in the way. All the snafus I've seen have been because administrators and other part-time faculty don't follow rules, or there are no consistent rules to follow. 

What drives me nuts is the way the administrators express sanguine appreciation for faculty (and I use the term "faculty" very loosely). We are so grateful for all you do for our candidates, or variations on that theme, ad nauseum, until after a while, you get the feeling you aren't really appreciated at all. Of course, all you have to do is look at the pay structure to know the only way this college can keep its tuition so low is by paying its adjuncts a pittance. It's an old page out of an old playbook. 

I'm not mad. I like helping students work through the process of earning their degrees. I'm not mentoring for SCORE anymore, but this is not much different, just mentoring in a different arena. 

I'm not really an academic. I am reminded of that fact every time I see how other Chairs interact with their students. Where they are terse, formal, sometimes snippy, and authoritarian, I try to be collaborative, encouraging, and approachable. Maybe I'm too informal. I treat students like people who are just a few steps behind me on the academic path. 

I remember my experience with my Chair. She was smart, but impatient and condescending. I am guessing she was Chair to many students. No wonder she was cranky all the time. I had to post weekly updates. Usually it was all bull pucky. I know what students do. They muddle around for nine weeks and pull something out of their butts in week ten and expect their Chair to grade it and return it before the end of the term. 

No use being angry when humans reveal their humanness. 

I'm back in the forest, sitting in my car. The sun is hot, the air in here is too warm, and then a breeze blows through, and it feels great. 

Taking it all a day at a time.

Join me in the silence

I remember when my family used to visit my grandfather's cattle ranch in the high desert east of Prineville, Oregon. For a city kid, the silence of the open country was profound. At the time, I wasn't sure I liked it. Jets were tiny white dots in the sky, speeding toward Portland International Airport. They left contrails but made no sound. 

Living in silence in an age of constant noise can be disturbing. At times I feel very alone and disconnected if I don't have music or talk radio playing in the background. Other times, I sink into the silence like sliding into a warm bath. Mm. Bath. Haven't had one of those in a while. I digress.

Camping in the high desert of Flagstaff, Arizona, gives me a similar feeling. On a Sunday morning, nobody is up. I'm the only one walking along the gravel road, heading to who knows where, someplace I've never been. A few cars pass, kicking up great clouds of dust (implanting seeds of my future resentments). Before long, more cars, more people, and wonder of wonders, the sound of gunshots. Yep. There's a shooting range not far away.

Nothing shatters silence like gunshots. 

This is mining country. The mining companies moved on and left craters, half craters, slag heaps of gravel. The half craters make really good shooting ranges. I made the mistake of driving in that direction, seeking a better cell signal. I found the cell signal next to the shooting range. Two men were there, one supervising, and one sitting at a folding table aiming a long gun at a target some yards away. Blam! Then a few minutes later, blam! This morning was quiet, but around 9:00 a.m. the gunshots began again.

So there's that. 

On the bright side, I met a guy who addressed me as "neighbor," and we talked for a bit. His name is John. I hope I remember that. He lives in a trailer, drives a red car, rides a bike, goes shirtless, wears a Christian cross on a necklace, and has a mother who worries about his well being. Fellow neighbor, fellow nomad.

It's beautiful in the forest. Last night I dreamed it was on fire.

Walking in the early morning sunshine in a timber forest in the high desert puts me in the here and now. It's the safest place to be when one is homeless. Living today for a better past is futile. Living in the wreckage of the future is crazy making. The only safe place is the present. My demented mother was a Zen master. I learned a lot from witnessing her decline. 

I don't know if I'll live long enough to see my own decline into dementia, and even if I do, there's a good chance there will be no facility to take care of me until I die. My retirement plan is fentanyl. I can only hope my brain holds out long enough to score some and my courage holds out long enough for me to take it.

On that sober note, welcome to a new confounding fresh hell. There's room in the hand basket for you, in case you want some company on your own hellish descent.

High-class homelessness

After weeks of hiding out in Portland, living in parking lots of public parks during the day and trolling Portland streets for safe places to park at night, I finally hit my limit and left town. The weather sucked, as it often does in early summer. The beach was great, but eventually the nice casino security people would have told me to move on, can't stay there all summer, sorry. Portland was not welcoming me. I'd been to all the medical appointments, picked up all the meds, retrieved the junk mail from my brother . . . There was no reason to hang around a city where I was not welcome.

So I hit the road. From Portland I drove through Bend, then east toward Salt Lake City, then south Utah to Cedar City. I stayed at rest areas of questionable quality and a very nice Walmart parking lot, until finally I found a nice forest road just north of Flagstaff, and that is where I am right now as I'm typing this blog post. 

On my road trip, I was reminded of the dubious power of being the "pilot car"on a two-lane highway with few passing lanes. The so-called pilot car is the car that is going slower than the rest of the pack. I can count on one hand the number of times I actually passed a vehicle going slower than me. One was a truck going up a steep hill. One was a truck towing a camper. He passed me later.  I'm slow on the climb, but I'm speedy on the descent. Gravity is still working, even if other things in life aren't.

Like any society, homeless people have a hierarchy. You could say we have a class system. The lowest class homeless person is the person (usually a man) who curls up under a tree on a public sidewalk and throws a blanket over his head. He could be dead, he could be drunk. Odds are he would prefer not to be sleeping on a sidewalk. 

At the other end of the homeless continuum are the people who live in shiny new Sprinter vans, tow enormous fifth-wheel trailers with new Dodge Ram pickups, or drive new Class C camper vans, the ones with the bed over the cab. I would add the folks who drive giant Prevosts but if they can afford a luxury motor coach, they most likely own several houses, so I would not classify them as homeless. They may have been bitten by the wandering bug but they always have a home base to return to when they get tired of driving their entire house along a narrow two-lane highway. 

In between these two extremes are the rest of us, everything from tents and tarps pitched along the freeway verges to broken down motorhomes to minivans and sedans. There are a lot of unhoused people out there. If you know what to look for, they are easy to spot. The problem with stealth camping in a city, as I've previously discussed, is that homeowners (in the nicer areas) know how to spot a car that is not part of the neighborhood. In the bad parts of town, nobody cares, which is why any car can be a target for gas thieves. I digress.

At the Walmart parking lot, a woman pulling a little trailer with a relatively new SUV parked near me. She had a dog with her. She went shopping and came back with a load of stuff. The wind had kicked up, and a man came over to help her with the loading. He told her he was living in his truck and pointed to a nice pickup parked nearby. He asked where she was headed. She said nowhere, she lived in Cedar City. He said he did, too. 

Where do I fall along the unhoused continuum? Glad you asked. Compared to the street sleepers and tent dwellers, I'm definitely high-class homeless. I have a relatively new, mostly presentable soccer mom minivan. I have everything I need with me. I know how to keep myself clean, fix food, fetch water, and take out the trash. I practice leave no trace, I don't wave my arms and yell like a crazy person, I'm nice to dogs and their walkers . . . In short, I try to be a good member of the community.

And still, I'm not welcome. Homelessness is a crime in many places. It's not illegal to park your car overnight on Portland city streets but you'd better not be sleeping in it. Kind of like, you can buy a condo but you'd better not paint it bright pink. There are rules made by cities to keep residents safe. Many of these rules make sense. You don't want someone setting the neighborhood on fire just because they felt like making a decent cup of coffee instead of buying the swill at McDonald's. Homeless people are not considered residents. They are eyesores, pedophiles, whores, beggars, and thieves. They clearly made bad choices somewhere along the way, or else they would not be homeless. 

Humans are social creatures. Whether I want to admit it or not, I feel better when I'm parked near (but not too near) other people who are living the nomadic lifestyle. Some choose it, some are forced into it, but whatever the reason, just like other members of a class, we find comfort in community. Most of us. There are always the ones who find the most remote campsites up the steepest, most rutted road and then drag a big log across the road and hang a sign that says "Space occupied, Keep the Eff Out!" Now that is an introvert.

I may have made some bad choices along the way, but one element working in my favor I had no control over: I got old enough to draw social security. If I did not have my paltry monthly allowance, I would be one of those tent dwellers, pushing my belongings in a stolen shopping cart, sleeping with one eye open, and waiting for the authorities to tell me to move on. I'm a lucky one. I can move on by choice.

My psychic friend says my situation will be changing soon, but she wasn't sure if it would get better or worse. Not sure how to react to that, so I will carry on and wait to see what fate brings me. Maybe housing is in my future. Maybe not. I think I mentioned I've started collecting stickers to put on my windows. No more hiding. I figured out I can buy adhesive sticker paper and waterproof markers to make my own stickers. If you have any design ideas, please feel free to email or text. Or leave a comment. I'm not sure the comment section on Google Blogger actually works, but you could try it.  

Meanwhile, the road trip continues. 

Relentless persistence

Sometimes when I'm walking around the reservoir at Mt. Tabor Park (my old neighborhood), I see an athlete. You wouldn't know she was an athlete just by looking at her. She's at least as old as I am, with saggy cheeks and crepe-skin knees. But after seeing her workout routine, I can only watch in awe.

Reservoir No. 6 is .56 miles around the perimeter. You can call it a half mile. The woman starts out with lunges. Not super deep, but lunges all the same, slowly and persistently, with bicep curls, all the way around the reservoir. How she keeps her balance, I have no idea. She makes a full circuit. 

She doesn't stop there. After a swig of water, she starts around again, this time with high knees. All the way around. She's not fast. I pass her multiple times as I stumble around, head down against the wind. I go counterclockwise. She goes clockwise. Each time I pass her, I feel like a colossal loser. 

After she finishes half a mile of high knees, she turns around and walks backwards, doing butt kickers. She checks behind her from time to time, so she doesn't run into anyone, but her backward glances are kind of pro forma. She can't go far off course. The reservoir is surrounded by a tall iron fence. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if she has eyes in the back of her head. I suspect she has god-like powers.

I walk around four times, just a regular head-down, try-to-stay-upright kind of walk.  Everytime we pass each other, I look at her, but she doesn't look at me. I can't read her expression. It's clear she is focused on the motion. 

Whenever I complain about my saggy butt and flabby thighs, I think of this athlete. I wonder about her story. Is she a marathon runner? I haven't seen her run. She's too thin to be a wrestler. Her bike shorts and T-shirt don't scream fashion risk taker. She's not taking video of herself, so she's not a YouTuber. What's her story?

My conclusion is, she's meditating. She's found a way to connect with something bigger than herself. I called her an athlete, but I could just as easily call her a Zen Master. A guru. A Yoda. I have a feeling if I could just get her to make eye contact, I would see a new way of being.

Meanwhile, I'm caught up in my own way of being, floundering through my days doing the next thing in front of me. The usual, you know: Working with my new PCP to find a medication that will settle my vestibular system. Keeping my car running. Learning how to use Amazon lockers. Waiting on waitlists for housing. Waking up at 4:00 a.m., vigilantly listening for gas thieves. Trying to stay under the radar so homeowners don't call the police to report an old lady  who has the temerity to sleep in her car outside their house. 

I'm really tired of hiding. I have started putting stickers on my car windows:  Artsy fartsy; Wild and free; Take the long way home, shortcuts miss the view; All cultures, beliefs, colors, sizes, ages, identities welcome; and my personal favorite, Jesus loves everyone you hate. I'm going to keep adding to my collection. If I get some money ahead, I will have my own designs printed. I have lots of ideas for stickers, mostly along the lines of How's my driving? Call 1-800-BiteMe.  

After I find out if my new med is going to kill me, I think I'll head east, back toward the high desert of Northern Arizona, where the nomads wait out the summer heat. I met a man at the protest yesterday, who said he loved Portland for its beauty, diversity, and energy. I nodded as if I agreed. No need to start a fight with a No Kings comrade, especially given the no-violence mandate. Besides, I don't need to explain or justify myself, although when cornered, that is my usual response. 

I don't trust my intuition. I believe Portland is not the place for me. I always knew I would leave. It still confounds me that everytime I left, I came back. When I moved to Tucson, I was ready to love the place. For four years, I tried. Eventually I realized Tucson was not the place for me either (see umpteen previous blog posts). 

The country is big. I've live in only big cities. Surely, somewhere in this country, there is a small place that feels right. Family and friends warn me that small town folks might not be like me. That's okay. All my friends are online.  

Having said all that, if my name comes up on a waitlist, I don't care where the place is. As long as it has hot water and no cockroaches, I'm saying yes.

Where is my tribe?

When I'm at the coast, I take long walks on the beach. I aim for the middle ground between soft dry and soggy wet. I walk in the early morning after coffee but before the fog burns off, before the wind kicks up. I have a lot of time to think while I walk, which has debatable value in terms of changing my housing situation. Eventually the endorphins infiltrate my brain and I get to the point where I just don't care anymore.  It's not a bad place to be, compared to living today for a better past or trying to control the wreckage of the future.

Being in the present moment has never come naturally to me, probably because I live my life in constant fear. Fear of what, you ask? Doesn't matter. Fear of everything. Now that I actually do have a lot of danger to face, I think I can say I come by my fear honestly. But nothing much has changed. The only time the fear eases up is when I enter the present moment. To get there, for me, takes about 2.5 miles. I never get to happiness, joy, or contentment, but on a good day, I can get to neutral. 

People I know do a lot to make peace with reality in the here and now. Some meditate, some go to special classes, some join groups and seek mindfulness together. I've never been much of a joiner, preferring to be on the periphery, watching, observing, not in the middle, not on center stage. I am sometimes dumfounded that I was a teacher for so long. I attribute my 10-year career as a college instructor to the revelation that as long as they were on their side of the table and I was on mine, everything would be fine.

As I have grown older, poorer, and sicker, my interest in being around others has waned. I want community, but I can't fake it anymore. 

Part of me wants to plaster my car with bumper stickers. Here are some possibilities:

• Not all who wander are lost. 
• Art is for everyone. 
• Tell your cat I said psspsspss. 
• Hearing impaired, dizzy, half-blind, ancient tired driver, please be patient. 
• If you can read this, come on in for coffee, enter through tailpipe. 
• Hey, NIMBYs, if you want to end homelessness in your neighborhood, increase the flow of fentanyl across the southern border. 
• I'm hungry, and your dog is looking pretty tasty right now. 
• Push if you think it will help; I could use the money. 
• I brake for no reason, get over it. 
• How's my driving? Call 1-800-upyours.

It's not me talking. It's the Keppra.

I always come back around to the futility of thinking and feeling. The Universe, if it responds to humans at all, doesn't give a crap about what we think and feel. Change only comes if we take action. 

Action is not hard to do. The hard part is trying to predict the consequences of the action: Will the outcome be good or will it be bad? Then I have to go through the whole thing of defining what is good and what is bad. What if my actions lead to disaster? What if my actions hurt someone? What if my failure to take action is the wrong path? What if I should have turned there instead of here? What if I do nothing? What if I do everything? 

There I go, back down the rabbit hole. The only way out, for me, is 2.5 miles on a windswept foggy beach.

If you can't help, get out of the way

You know how after you have a run-in with a stupid person who accuses you of something, you get all defensive and start trying to deny their claim or justify your actions . . . And then after your heart rate has settled back to low-grade resentment you think of all the pithy, profound, cutting things you should have said?

That woman who lives in my old neighborhood, yeah, the one in her cute little bungalow house, with her cute pesticide-free yard (she has a sign proclaiming it) and her cute little mop-haired floppy-eared mutt, the one who asked me in a supercilious tone, "Why don't you go to a shelter?" That woman? She's still on my mind and under my skin. I've been trying to figure out what I should have said, other than "Eff you, you stupid b-word, eff off and leave me alone." 

What I could have said, should have said, depends on what I wanted to elicit from her. Compassion? I think she probably is a compassionate person, from afar, that is, just far enough so she doesn't have to smell the stink of human suffering or get her hands dirty actually helping dig latrines. She probably donates to environmental causes, maybe not Green Peace but the Nature Conservancy or Save the Butterflies, if there is such an organization. She might contribute to humanitarian causes, maybe Amnesty International. No, more likely UNICEF or Doctors without Borders. When she's feeling particular magnanimous, around the holidays, she might even send a check to the Gospel Rescue Mission, in hopes that will help erase the homeless population that frightens her so much. God knows, homeless people could use more Jesus. Lack of Jesus is what got them into the mess in the first place. 

Yeah, super compassionate, but not enough to vote to change zoning laws to allow affordable and low-income housing in her neighborhood. Not enough to actually change anything to make it possible to get people out of their tents, their cars, their busted-down RVs and get them into proper, safe, affordable, dignified housing.

Just down the hill from where I park at night (near her house), there's a parking lot behind a chain link fence. Inside the fence are about a dozen sheds, barely bigger than outhouses. These sheds are the manifestation of the liberal solution to the homeless crisis. Give them a tiny box, barely big enough for a bed, not even big enough for their bike, and then admit the qualified (best) homeless people (no addicts, nobody who needs a bath or a haircut or some mental health services), give them a key to their own little hut, put all the huts behind a chain link fence, with one opening monitored by a guard, to keep them in, to keep others out, I don't know. Then you can finally feel safe, even if you aren't actually safe.

If I were a homeowner in a big city like Portland, I would be terrified. Not just for my personal safety and the safety of my belongings, my family, my pets, but also for the value of my asset, my house. It must be a gut-punch to discover all the tent cities down the street have cut the value of your property by a third. What if you want to sell and go somewhere safer (whiter, richer)? Who wants to buy into a neighborhood of tents and trash, used needles everywhere, and feces on the sidewalk? 

Certainly you wouldn't want to add an ADU to your property and charge a nominal rent so some nice senior lady could live a quiet, safe, affordable life. You might build it for your mother-in-law, but not for a stranger. In a big city, it's too hard to be an independent landlord. Tenants are nuts. They don't pay rent on time, they don't leave when you evict them, and when the sheriff finally kicks them out, they've trashed your asset and left you with massive bills. Such disrespect.

It's human nature to circle the wagons when the homestead is threatened. Survival instinct is how the human DNA has managed to make it this far. At some point, though, a civilized society comes to realize that when one person is unsafe, then no one is safe. Segregating the community into in-group and out-group ultimately destroys the very security the haves are trying to protect. 

Let them eat cake. 

Everyone dies. 

It takes a lot to awaken the sleeping giant, but people with nothing left to lose can do a lot of damage as they work toward changing the system to be more fair and inclusive. You can either get on board and lend a hand, or you can stand in the way and watch your house burn down. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I would never condone violence. 

But I wished I'd told her to eff off and mind her own business. 

Oh, well. Next time. 

Nowhere can also mean everywhere

Most of the time I forget that I'm an outcast. Every now and then people remind me that I don't belong. It's always people, only people. For example, weather is neutral. Weather doesn't care where or how I live or die. Whether skies are sunny or gray, no judgment. Trees, grass, flowers, all that spring greenery that makes me sneeze, that stuff doesn't care if I dump my pee jar where dogs pee. Trash cans are neutral, too. They receive my neatly bagged trash no matter what I throw away, be it poop or my ziplock bag of clip-on sunglasses or a hand towel I really liked or a rain jacket that no longer repels rain. I really like trash cans for their stoic receptiveness. I think I'd be a lot happier if I were more like a stoic trash can.

It's people that remind me I'm not safe. 

I've more or less assimilated the trauma of waking up to thieves trying to steal my gas. It was a week ago. The upside of getting old is that traumas fade. However, today I was reminded again that I don't belong, even in my old neighborhood, even parked on a public street maintained by my tax dollars. An irate homeowner came out to see what I was up to. I was writing, just doing my thing, but from her point of view, I could have been shooting heroin and watching porn on YouTube. I mean, who could blame her for being wary of a strange car outside her house. 

I got out of my car and asked her if I was making her uncomfortable by parking next to her house. She asked me why I didn't go to a shelter. I wondered if she had ever been to a shelter. I haven't either but I imagine we've both seen similar images of shelters on the news: rows of cots in a big cold room, no place to store your belongings, constantly having to worry about being assaulted by weirdos and druggies. Why on earth would I do that, given I have my house with me. Her house happens to be stick built on a nice corner. My house just happens to be small and have four wheels. So what?

I told her I used to live in this neighborhood, just around the corner. I could tell she didn't believe me. Why should she? We probably don't watch the same news shows. To her, every homeless person is a lying drug addict.  To me, every homeowner has a stick up their ass. 

I don't really believe that. I understand why homeowners don't want low-income riffraff pulling down their property values, even if the riffraff happens to be seniors scraping by on social security while they wait for their name to come up on a subsidized housing unit before they die. If I had property, I'd probably feel the same way. Circle the wagons, don't let in the other, because if you do, they will destroy you, your family, and your way of life. 

A life lived in fear is a life half lived. Said the person who has nothing left to lose.

Winning the reverse lottery

First off, nobody died. Just want to make that clear up front. Nobody got hurt except my bank account and the environment. I guess if the world decides to bestow personhood on the earth, then I'm going to hell. I'm sure I'll have lots of company. 

Early yesterday morning, just after daybreak, I heard something bump my car. I assumed thieves were going after my new spare tire, which I proudly display on my roof rack like the badass old lady urban nomad that I am. Not wanting to lose my $400 tire, I started yelling, "get off my car, get off my car!"

I looked out the driver's side window and saw a chubby Hispanic- looking guy scrambling to get into the passenger seat of a small silver sedan. He and his driver took off. 

I fumbled around in the dark for my glasses, my pants, and my car key so I could hit the panic button. I'd never pressed the panic button before, so I didn't know what to expect. My horn bleated once, and that was it. Not exactly the alarm I'd been hoping for. My fear was that I would accidently presss the "open all the doors and come on in" button, which might not not have ended well. 

I yanked down all my window covers and got myself over the console into the driver's seat in record time. As I started the engine, the silver car returned from the other direction and stopped right next to me. The driver wore a mask pulled up to his eyes. I flipped him off and hit the gas. As I left, I heard a thumping bumping sound from somewhere near my back left tire. I kept going.

I drove a few blocks on autopilot, found a side street, got out of my car to see if my tire was still there, and smelled gasoline.

Yep. You guessed it. I got drilled. Or rather, my gas tank got drilled. Gas poured out a hole about the size of my thumb, onto the street, into the gutter, all my lovely near-full tank of gas.

I called the fire department. A big red firetruck arrived, lights flashing, but no siren. Three firefighters jumped down and rolled their eyes at what they were seeing. One of the firefighters was a woman. They made her crawl under there with some of that magic plastic putty. She couldn't fix it. In her defense, it was a big hole spewing a lot of gas. One of the guys dumped a pile of kitty litter to keep the gas from spreading downhill in the gutter, in case it reached a storm drain. 

"You got any plastic containers?" asked the guy in charge.

I pulled out some plastic bins I had in the back. He situated the bins under the stream of gas. One filled up. He moved a second one into place. At that point the stream trickled to a drip, probably because the gas had dropped below the level of the hole.

The firefighters got ready to go. I said, "What about these containers of gas? Can't you take them?"

"No, we don't take gasoline."

They left. I called my new insurance company (the one I'd had for thirty years cancelled me because I wasn't able to give them all the names of the drivers in my new Oregon household). While I was waiting, I stuffed my most important possessions into a bag. What are my most prized posessions? Thanks for asking. My phones, my calendar, my tablet, my notebook of important documents, and my medications. Plus my laptop. It was kind of an epiphany to realize my entire life could easily fit into one backpack. All I would need to do is add a toothbrush, and I'd be good to go.

Roadside assistance eventually sent me a contract tow truck driver. He called my cell and asked what color my car was. In a few minutes, a slim young Middle Eastern-looking guy pulled up with a flatbed tow truck. 

"I help you," he said.

I pointed out the two containers of gas under the car. He put on rubber gloves and moved them to the sidewalk. Knowing what I know now, I'm sure he would have driven over them without a thought.

"Did you bring a gas can like I requested?" I asked.

"No, I don't take gasoline. It's not my job," he said as he lowered the back end of the flat bed.

He took my car key, started up my car, and floored it up onto the flat bed. Gas spewed everywhere, all over his truck, onto the street. He secured one wheel. Then he got in his truck and drove away with my car.

I sat on a low wall by the sidewalk, wondering what just happened. I called his number. He answered.

"You left me here," I said.

"You didn't say you needed a ride."

"Come back and pick me up," I said.

"Okay, I do it for you, because I love my mother."

In a few minutes, he came back. I hoisted my crap into the passenger seat, boosted myself up, and didn't bother putting on a seatbelt, thinking who cares at this point. It's a nice big windshield, and I'll have a lovely view of the street while I am being decapitated.

The entire drive, he regaled me with stories of his family. Wife, three kids, and his demented mother all live in one household. Mom has some brain thing, probably Alzheimers. Doctors in Afghanistan couldn't help much. Now she's on a med that is working wonders. 

"I'm so happy for you," I said. "Love your mother while you still have her, because mothers don't last forever."

We made it to the mechanic without mishap. The tow truck driver backed my car off the ramp as fast as he could, scraping both the front and the rear of the car, which doesn't have a lot of clearance, being a soccer mom minivan, for crying out loud. He gave me a big grin as he handed me the keys.

Then the young Afghan tow truck driver gave me a long, long, long hug. 

The rest of the day was just a wait-around-and-see-how-much-money-this-is-going-to-cost-me kind of day. I got to know the mechanics pretty well. They told every customer who came in about my car getting drilled. That's the term, apparently. Drilled. 

"How could they do that to an old lady?" one of the workers huffed. I enjoyed hearing the righteous indignation on my behalf almost as much as I enjoyed being called an old lady. 

Somebody told a story of a woman whose car was being drilled, and she was in the driver's seat. She backed up and ran over the miscreant. He won't be doing that again, although now she has to live with the knowledge that she killed somebody, even if "he deserved it." 

Somebody else told me a story of how it cost $2,000 to replace his gas tank. "I would have gladly have given him gas money, if he'd only asked." 

I had to concur.

Lucky for me, it was a one-day ordeal. The mechanics were able to find a gas tank at a salvage yard. By the time they added their markup and labor, the final price was a third of what I would have paid for a new gas tank from the dealer. Not to mention I got mine in one day, and a new one would have taken a week. I'm counting my blessings. It was a long day, but I survived. 

I filled out a police report today. To do that, I needed to find the location of the scene of the crime. Other cars were parked in that spot this morning. I didn't see any Tupperware bin in the gutter with my tire tracks on it, so I guess they took it with them after I split. If I were truly a badass, I would have gone around the block and rammed them. But you can't really do much damage with a minivan. It's like putting a lightning bolt on the side of a wheelbarrow. I can dream, though.

My car seems to be running fine. It seems that cars get drilled often here in the big city of Portland. Still, people park their cars on the streets all over the east side of town. I'd like to put Kevlar all over it, but apparently that's not a thing. I just have to chalk it up to the annoying phenomenon known as winning the reverse lottery and try not to imagine lightning will strike twice in one place. 

Invisible but still a threat

You know you aren't in Southern Arizona anymore when an older woman living her car feels the need to pull out her stun gun and press it when you walk by her car on the way to your own little house on wheels. I didn't know what it was, having never seen a stun gun or Taser, so I didn't have a reaction until I walked by, got in my car, and Googled what does a Taser sound like? 

The only visible difference between us, besides that her car was a lot nicer than mine, was that she was Black and I am White. So there you go. Usually I am invisible, but not to her. I'm guessing her lived experience was a lot different from mine and possibly not in a happy way, if she felt the need to rattle her weapon when I walked by. 

I visited a childhood friend this week. Remind me not to do that. To some people, I'm an outcast, I'm a pariah. Wrong life choices, yada yada. To others, I'm a curiosity, a specimen to be examined and interrogated. My beloved Arizona friend is the only one who checks in regularly to see how I feel about being unhoused. We figure it out together. To everyone else, I'm shunned, ridiculed, or ignored. 

My new unicorn, I mean, PCP, prescribed a stronger statin to help prevent stroke and heart attack. Unfortunately for me, it enhances diarrhea. I hope the symptoms are on the wane, and I'm glad I stocked up on plastic bags. You haven't really experienced van life until you have diarrhea in your car. There's nothing quite like it. 

My labs show that I'm still slightly anemic, ho hum, old news. He didn't seem to think it warranted any hand-wringing, so I'm not going to worry about it. I spent the past couple years freaking out about health stuff. I'm so over it. I'll try to up my vitamin game but other than that, I will carry on. Everyone dies sometime. 

Meanwhile, rain. More rain. Showers. A little break, followed by more cold rain. A big reason I left Portland (besides that I could no longer afford rent here) was the incessant cool gray wet weather. I have a link to a temperature map on my phone. Today, almost every place in the continental U.S. is warmer than it is here. As soon as my meds are refilled, I'm leaving this slogfest.

I'm not sure where I will go next, because as you know, weather doesn't stay long in one place, whether we want it to or not. I haven't mastered the skill of traveling with the weather, but I plan to work on it over the next few months. Assuming I don't get tased by a paranoid fellow traveler. Or yelled at by a crazed homeowner who thinks the street in front of their house belongs to them.  Or sideswiped by a semi. Or bled dry by car repairs and dental work. Or shamed into nonbeing by my so-called friends. 

Resisting and persisting in slow motion

The theme of the week is persist and resist. Persist at the personal my life sucks and then I die level, resist at the existential cosmic no kings very bad hell bummer level. Maybe I shouldn't try to make a distinction. If the planet goes belly up, whining about persisting at the personal level is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I tried to find another metaphor but I'm not finding my words today. Uh-oh, stroke, you might say. TIA. High blood pressure. You might be right. More important, who or what can I blame? Too much salt. Not enough salt. Who knows, who cares. Words are meaningless in this new era of name stuff anything you want. Want to call it the Gulf of Your Name Here? Go ahead. Mapmakers might protest, but who cares about tradition?  When elephants are in charge, vegetation is shredded, water sources are fouled, and everyone get trampled in the end.  

I'm sure I'd feel better if the weather weren't so volatile. Welcome to my head. Wherever I am, there it is, rattling like a tin can full of tiny angry pebbles. I hope I can hit the road for a while next week. I'm getting tired of trolling the same old neighborhoods for stealth parking, pretending I am a local (in fact, I was, once) and hoping nobody will see me getting up to pee in my jar in the middle of the night.

Speaking of persisting, I met a unicorn this week: my new PCP. Dr. Mario was nice, but he looked worn out, and it was only 9:30 in the morning. He reviewed my meds and suggested some referrals, but he didn't ask many questions about me. Like, what do you do, what's your life like? I filled out some forms before the appointment, answering questions like how often last week did you feel depressed, and how often does someone verbally or physically abuse you. Wow. Compared to some, I'm living a life of luxury, apparently. In my experience, doctors don't read those forms. They like to hear it from the dying horse's mouth. So the fact that he didn't ask about me made me think he was too tired to care.

One of the mark-a-box questions was yes or no, do you live in an insecure housing situation (e.g., with a friend or with family, in a tent, in a car, on the street, etc.). I could have lied but then what? Sooner or later, I'd be outed as a nomad (i.e., a person who pretends they live in a vehicle by choice so they can live a life of freedom and frugality), and then I would have to explain, justify, defend . . . Ho hum. 

So now it's in my medical records, if anyone bothers to read those forms. I can't imagine how anyone could. The forms I filled out with a Bic pen were essentially unreadable. The line spacing was crammed, the fonts were miniscule, and there wasn't enough room to write much, let alone explain, justify, or defend. 

Nobody cares, anyway. Healthcare professionals don't have time to care. Healthcare professionals are underpaid and underappreciated. Who can blame them for phoning it in? I bet they are still waiting for their award for surviving on the front lines of COVID. They don't realize the rest of us have moved on to the next existential crisis. (That would be the assault on democracy, in case you are keeping track of crises).

Good news, I now have a stronger medication for high cholesterol, so I'm sure the thing that will kill me will not be a stroke or heart attack. It will probably be the daily grinding realization that people (and when I say people, I am referring to Americans) are too stupid to live and will take everyone and everything down with them when they self-destruct. What a waste, but nothing lasts forever.  

Meanwhile, we persist and resist, if we are able and inclined. 

There's lots of room in the handbasket for you. See you in hell.

Normalizing the nomadic lifestyle

Spring in Portland is an on-again off-again phenomenon. Now you see it, now you don't. Now it's sunny, oops, now it's raining. A couple nights ago I parked in a great spot under a tree. Wind came up overnight. Around midnight I heard a monstrous din on the roof of my car. Bam! The roof rack rang like the Liberty Bell. I lay awake wondering if the tree was going to fall on my car and crush me into my foam mattress. 

In the morning, I discovered a pine cone on the roof, and not a big one. Maybe there were more pinecones, maybe even a small branch that flew off when I drove to the park to make coffee. Wind, is what I'm saying. Sun, rain, wind . . . This is spring in Portland.

I grew up in it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. The weather was the main reason I moved to Tucson. The weather in Tucson is the main reason I'm back in Portland. You see how this works? No place is perfect. I'd have to be driving all the time to stay in good weather. Spring just sucks, no matter which way you look at it. Sure, it's a welcome respite from winter, but the volatility of spring is hard for me. My head won't settle.

Volatility seems to be the theme of the week. The weather, my head, the stock market . . . Ho, hum, who cares about money, la la la. Nothing I can do about it, and we shouldn't trouble our heads over it anyway. Best to leave it to the experts who obviously know better. 

Speaking of knowing better, some of my family members apparently blame me for the housing shortage. I don't know why they give me so much credit. I'm not a land developer. I've never owned anything but a series of used cars. Not a house, not a condo, not even a shed. As far as housing goes, I tend to think of myself as powerless over supply and demand. 

I know I'm in the doghouse with my family member when I text a picture of a walking path in the Sandy River Delta and they write back, "Playing tourist?" What do I do with that? Almost every text I send receives a reply ending in "Any leads on housing?" I understand my family member is concerned, and I'm trying to have empathy for their fear. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I'm done trying to live my life so they don't have to be afraid.

I know I've said this before. 

Speaking of getting old, I went hiking in a nature park I love and dropped my straw hat. A friend phoned me while I was walking, and as we were talking, the sun came out, and I realized my hat had departed my pocket. I retraced my steps, holding the phone over my head when I went into hollows and behind hills. Eventually I'd walked the entire route twice. I headed back to the parking lot. Some kind soul had found my hat and left it on a rock where I would see it. I probably dropped it the moment I left the restroom. 

I knew the hat would return to me. So many things do. But sometimes the Universe decides someone else needs the item more than I do, no matter how much I cherish it. Every time I walk away from my car, I prepare myself for the possibility that it won't be there when I get back.

The reason I mentioned the dropped hat is because when my mother was alive, I learned to follow one step behind her so I could retrieve the things she dropped. Used tissues, of course, but also sunglasses, hats, gloves, scarves, cigarette lighters, and cigarette pouches. Purses. Those little dealies that can hold a pack of cigarettes. I was grateful that someone put my hat where I could find it. And I still feel chagrin that I dropped it in the first place.

On the bright side, I got double my steps in that day. 

I often wonder what I did to create this strange situation. I don't feel responsible for the lack of affordable housing. I know many seniors are in the same boat. Car, I mean. I wonder if I should seek a communal housing situation, maybe a big house of five other women. We'd share a couple bathrooms, share the cooking and cleaning, maybe give each other rides places, and watch old movies together. 

If that sounds like fun to you, you are not like me. To me, that sounds like utter hell. Even one roommate was too much for me. When I imagine the amount of time and energy it would take to find and maintain that type of housing situation, I am more certain than ever that being a nomad (i.e., living in this car) is the right choice for me.

Maybe someday I will stop feeling ashamed and talk about this as if it were a normal lifestyle. Maybe if more people knew that old ladies were living in their cars because the rent is too damn high, the Section 8 lists are closed, and the only way to get an apartment in senior housing is for someone to die, well, maybe then society would see that there are many ways to survive and even thrive while living an alternative lifestyle. 

Meanwhile, I skulk around the streets, troll for parking places, and wait for my appointment at the DMV. Once that happens, I can get my car registered and plated and get the heck out of Dodge. Well, I drive a Dodge, so I don't mean that literally. It's a figure of speech. You know what I mean.

On my way to hell in a handbasket. See you there.

Hiding in plain sight in Portland, Oregon

I find myself driving aimlessly around the city, looking for something that isn't here. Home, I guess, although I'd settle for someplace safe to park and get some work done. Portland is rife with huge parking lots, many unused, surrounded by chain link fences to keep out the bedraggled unhoused. Seeing so much unused space ticks me off. You could put a lot of tiny homes on that acreage, if only the neighbors would allow it.

I'm not bedraggled, so I can sneak around and blend in. I'm the elite of unhoused, living in a veritable mansion compared to some of the tarp and tent contraptions I've seen strapped to trees and buildings. Some of the motorhomes along the main streets haven't moved in years. The only thing holding them together is the piles of trash around their wheels. If you removed all that trash, some of these rigs would collapse into a heap of metal and meth. Allegedly. 

From an unhoused person's perspective, Portland in the spring is a sad, lonely, dirty place with really crappy weather. We had a few sunny days, but the breeze still bites. I got a bit of solar to charge up my batteries. Then the clouds rolled in and my head started churning. The relationship between weather and my vestibular system couldn't be more obvious. I wanted to blame Arizona. 

I have been doing a lot of walking, which is good. I need the exercise, and it gives me time to think. I know what you are thinking: Thinking is a highly overrated past time best left to those equipped to handle it. But I can't help it. I make sure I have my phone on me so my step app can congratulate me or berate me, depending on how I did, and then I focus on where I put my feet while I ponder my plight. 

A few documents have arrived at my brother's house. I could go wait in line at a DMV location, but that could mean sitting all day shoulder-to-shoulder with weary, irritated, coughing strangers and screaming kids (if I'm lucky enough to get a seat), only to have an employee shut the doors at 5:00 p.m., so sorry, come again tomorrow. Well, I'm sure they would not say sorry. They would say, make an appointment like a civilized person. My appointment is May 5. Do I want to take my chances, waste a day as a walk-in nobody, or wait until May 5 and waltz in ahead of the walk-ins and only waste an hour waiting for my number to be called. Decisions, decisions.

Back to walking. I used to live near a large park. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember I mentioned Mt. Tabor, the extinct volcano inside Portland city limits. It's still there. The cinder cone, the tall trees, the steps, the reservoirs, the trails, it's all still there. While I walk, I encounter many other walkers. The older ones acknowledge me, especially if they are alone, and if I smile first, they will smile back. Rarely does anyone say good morning. If hikers are in pairs, they rarely look at me. If they are young, they ignore me completely, except for a few random hippie girls who probably say hello to trees and flowers, too. Nothing against hippie girls. I'm happy if anyone acknowledges my existence these days.

In this city, I lead an undercover life. Street parking is easy to find, but you need to be careful of parking in front of someone's house. Park by a fence, but not an industrial fence, and not too far away from other cars. Park on a street where there are other cars, but not so many you get blocked in. Find streets that don't have steep gutters, else you will end up sleeping in the crevice between the wall and your mattress. Watch out for streets with fast cars. Be careful of neighborhoods that have services for the unhoused nearby. Make sure your doors are locked, your windows are covered, and you don't make much noise. 

And be ready to leave as soon as it's light enough to see. 

It's easy to leave a place, but it's not always simple to figure out where to go. I don't regret leaving Portland, and I look forward to leaving again soon. Where to go is the question. 

That's why I find myself navigating back to the neighborhood, the park, the store, the streets where I grew up, where I lived with my cat, where I took care of my mom, where I packed up and left because I couldn't afford the rent, complaining to nobody, I just want to go home. 

In the broader context of what is happening in the country, my challenges are minor. I'm okay for a while. It could be worse. I could be trying to maintain a life under a mildewed tarp or a tent pitched in tall wet grass. My problem is a luxury problem compared to the existential challenges of so many people in the world. 

In other words, quit whining.

Chop wood, carry water. Speaking of which, I joined the protest yesterday in downtown Portland. Nobody noticed me, but I felt satisfied to be one insignificant drop in an ocean of determination.

Welcome to Oregon, now go away

When did the Department of Motor Vehicles turn into such a bureaucratic pithole? I've been to several DMV locations in the greater Portland metro area. They all seem designed to accomplish one goal: make customers wait so long they finally give up and go away. Why did I think Oregon would welcome me back? How naive. It's almost as if they resent me for leaving. Every DMV face (with one exception, the woman who took the photo for my new license) expressed the same sentiment: We told you so, loser. 

That's me transferring my resentment onto the hapless, abused, long-suffering employees behind the glass walls at the DMV. The first day, I walked in, thinking, okay, maybe a couple hours to get my license transferred and my car registered. Ha. Some locations let you make an appointment online. Walk-ins are "standby" customers, meaning you receive service after the appointments are served. My ticket was S171. The leaderboard said next to be served: S30. I'm not good at math, but even I could tell there was a long line of people ahead of me. 

I hung around for a while, then went out to my car and ate breakfast. When I went back inside an hour later, they were serving S60. It was about 2:00 p.m. The office closed at 5:00 p.m. I gave up and made an appointment. The only appointment I could get that wasn't a month out was at a far-away location for two days hence. I grabbed it.

The kind, patient GPS Lady led me to the place. I got there an hour before it opened, two hours before my appointment. Walk-ins were already lined up on the sidewalk in cold, windy rain, waiting for the doors to open. 

About 45 minutes after my appointment time, my number came up. A530. Yay. The guy behind the glass wall gave me a fake smile. It wasn't even noon. I could tell he was already fed up and burned out. I was able to apply to get an Oregon license (only $64, not a real ID because I didn't have two pieces of ID with a residence address), but I wasn't able to register my car because I didn't have the original title. Arizona doesn't print vehicle titles like Oregon does. I had the mistaken impression it could all happen online. Ha. Joke's on me again. So now I'm waiting for my Arizona title to arrive at my brother's house, so I can surrender it to Oregon and wait for a new title and license plates. 

I confess, there were moments I considered giving up. However, once you've started going over a waterfall, you cannot change your mind and paddle back upstream. In Oregon, your car registration and driver's license have to match. I'm either all in on Oregon, or it's back to Arizona, still with no permanent residence address, still not able to rent a mailbox anywhere.

It's cold here right now. It's a typical Portland spring: intermittently windy, rainy, and cloudy, with rare moments of blue sky. Day time temperatures are mid-50s to low 60s. Nights are just below 40 F. Early mornings are the worst. Waking up before the sun to frigid air is brutal. Getting up to pee in the night is no fun either. 

There are many places to park on the street for a minivan like mine. I blend. But I can't stay in one place anywhere. In Tucson, the nomads in town hang out in a huge parking lot by the bike path. Nobody hassles you when you put out your solar panels. When you get sick of traffic, you can drive an hour to get to BLM land and camp for free, work on your car, cook food, and enjoy the desert scenery with great cell signal for internet. There's nothing like that near Portland. I never thought I would miss Tucson. But for a person living in a vehicle, Tucson is Death Valley. Not possible. It's 90 F there this week, and it will only get hotter. Then monsoon, and the fun really begins. Been there, done that, turn around, don't drown. 

Portland has been overcast, rainy, and windy since I arrived last week. That means my vestibular issue is churning. It also means I can't recharge using solar. Without power, I can't run my fridge, so I put it into storage, and now my menu consists of items that don't require refrigeration. That means small portions I can eat in one sitting. Being vegetarian means no canned tuna or chicken, no chunky beef chili, no chicken noodle soup. Being sensitive to food additives and chemicals means no ramen, no cup o' noodles. I have a little ice chest, but getting small amounts of ice daily is a major hassle, not to mention expensive over time. A 7 lb bag of ice is only a few dollars, but I have to dump most of it on the ground. 

Yesterday I traded four hours of gasoline taking a peaceful trip up the Columbia River Gorge to recharge my power stations. It was a nice drive, but it would have required another four hours to get to 100% power. In Tucson, I could drag my power stations into the mall, one at a time, to recharge at the counter where the unhoused plug in their phones. The mall here has only USB ports, no AC outlets. I did a little reconnaissance to find an accessible outlet. I found one by a bench across from Annie's Pretzels. Another adventure to look forward to while I wait for my documents to arrive in the mail.

This is such a strange way to live.

Being in Portland, the city of my birth, brings up a lot of grief. Certain parts of town remind me of things I'd rather not think about. The death of my father, my cat, my mother. The schools, the parks, the roads. The city looks different, after four years away, but some things are the same: the weather, the potholes, the unhoused.

I don't regret leaving Portland. I do regret moving to Arizona, but now that I'm here, I appreciate what Arizona gave me. In Arizona, I was one of an armada of nomads. There were license plates from everywhere there, Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, on sprinter vans, motorhomes, and trailers. Snowbirds are a thing. Maybe as summer approaches, Portland will start to fill up with nomads from Arizona, and I won't feel like such an outsider. Maybe next winter, I'll sprout a pair of wings and follow the sun south, back to the desert.

Meanwhile, I lurk in the neighborhoods I grew up in, sniffing out parking spots that aren't directly in front of someone's house, on streets that aren't too busy or populated by broken down RVs and tent cities, where I can blend in and pretend I belong in that place, just another neighbor, just another visitor staying with a friend for a night, to be gone at daybreak. 

Waves on the beach

I'm boohooing the blues back in my hometown, Portland, Oregon. Cool but not freezing, raining but not all the time, and relentlessly gray skies. Yep. Home. I remember why I left. I wasn't crazy. I wasn't built for this SAD-inducing climate. Some people seem to like it. I saw a man talking on the phone outside his apartment. He was standing on the sidewalk. His feet were bare. 

I'm parked in a parking lot, as usual. It started out empty on a Sunday morning. Then the restaurant next to it opened and the place got swarmed. Now the brunch crowd is moving on. Security swings by every half hour. If I had my solar panels out, they would have busted me. Ha. Joke's on them. And me, I guess. No sunshine means no solar. No solar power means my fridge will be dead by tomorrow, unless I hit the road again. 

I spent four days driving and three nights contorted in the front seats of my car. I thought I could put the passenger seat back, but the floor was occupied by six gallons of drinking water. I sliced my mattress into sections and put them across the bucket seats. The ancient foam promptly sank into the bucket, leaving my butt marooned on the console. I put the driver's seat back as far as I could without shoving my fridge on the floor and fit myself into the slot between the seats and the steering wheel. I had my blankets, and it wasn't really cold until just before sunrise, so I was warm enough. But it was hard to sleep with the constant fear of hitting the horn. I managed to avoid that, but in the parking lot of a Bakersfield Cracker Barrel I accidentally bumped the lower panel and set off the hazards. Just blinking lights, no horn. There weren't many overnighters in the lot, but I wouldn't want to disturb anyone else who might be fooling themselves they could sleep sitting up in their car. 

Maybe if I were younger.

I spent the first night on my road trip on familiar desert BLM land in Quartzsite. That was only a four-hour drive from Tucson. The next day I hoofed it to Bakersfield. I realized at that point I needed to step it up if I wanted to make Portland in time to offload my boxes into their new storage home. So I hauled my stuff across the Oregon border, where I was welcomed at the Oregon Welcome Travel Center. Well, it was Friday after 5:00 p.m, so actually nobody was there to give me the free coffee the sign in the window promised. I wouldn't have taken it anyway, but it's the thought that counts.

At that point, I was running on empty, so the slog north on I-5 through Medford, Eugene, and Salem wasn't much fun. Seen through my rear view mirror, white cars with black trim look like Storm Troopers breathing up my tailpipe. Lucky for me, my car was loaded almost to the ceiling, which means I didn't have much of a view out the back. Sometimes it's better not to look.

I booked a storage unit standing outside of a storage place near my brother's house. At that point, I didn't care about price. I just wanted to unload and put my bed back together. It took me three trips with the rolling cart to pack my boxes into their new closet. I don't have much stuff left, and probably I could have jettisoned half of it. Should have. Didn't. Easier to just pack it and move it when departure time is imminent. Sort it out later. 

The two crates and miscellaneous items strapped to the roof made the journey intact. I was fully expecting to see my blankets and pillows flying out in my wake to make the driver behind me have to swerve and dodge bedding I should have donated. I did not anticipate the layer of dead bugs on the front edges of the crates. I fear my journey decimated entire populations. I'm not proud that I'm a murderer of insects, just like I'm not proud that my car uses gasoline, that I throw away four plastic bags every time I poop, and that I go through paper towels like they grow on trees.

The weather in Tucson is lovely right now (so I hear), and I might head south again after I take care of my paperwork. Swapping my Arizona driver's license for an Oregon license should be easy. Registering my car should not be too hard. Hm. I wonder if I need an emissions test. The main issue is that I need to get new license plates. Getting new plates after I bought the car in 2021 took four months, but that was during COVID, so maybe this time I'll get lucky. 

Meanwhile, here I am in the city of my birth. Portland streets seem narrower than I remembered. Maybe I got used to the three-lane Autobahns through Northwest Tucson. The streets here seem more congested. Probably Californians, buying up condos on the River and bungalows in the Albina district because their mansions burned down. Maybe Oregon seems like a safe bet when it comes to wildfires. It's raining now, but all it takes is one stupid kid with a firecracker to set off an inferno in the summer. 

As you can guess, I'm winging it. Day by day is all I can do. One mile at a time, one moment at a time. Deal with the thing in front of me, first things first, and try not to think too much about what is happening in the world, in the country. I'm sad I missed all the marches on Saturday. I drove under a couple underpasses where people were waving signs. The signs hanging from the overpass in the Medford area didn't appear to align with my values. The overpass I went under in the Salem area was definitely populated by my kind of people. I was doing 65 mph and could not slow down to wave or honk. 

I have a feeling for the foreseeable future, if we have a future, these protests will be like waves on the beach: If I miss one, I can catch the next one.