Coming into town yesterday–this is the barren you see.
I’ve learned so much hanging out down in San Vicente. I needed to go, because the lone wolf mental bandwidth let me add the film channel to this blog, and even let me start saying the things I’ve needed to say, half raging politic and half brazen belletrism.
But coming back–is okay. I don’t feel hemmed in. I’ve learned how to be free in myself and to do what I need to do. (So far.)
A few days ago I was afraid of losing my foothold in the ditch, my fingernail grip on Bullard Street. I will lose it, of course, in its current incarnation, less than three months from now. I was afraid, of not being able to afford any of the options for staying.
I may not be able to afford any of them. But I don’t feel so much fear about it, now that I’ve beat back once more to my fallback place.
That’s what the cold Sand Rock moon is teaching me tonight.
It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve failed, to get a consonant regular job down there in the last two months. But I have. I think … I’ve had the bitter fragrance of the rebel all over me all my life. I also think that I did a damn good job of covering it up for decades.
I just can’t bring myself to be bothered to cover it up any more. I don’t give a fuck if the employers of La Cienega saw the real me and it made their blood run cold.
The money’s running out and still I don’t care.
The money’s running out and that’s why I was fearing.
I like living in that town, and it would be a setback if I couldn’t no more. But it might be true, that twentyfive years after not being able to afford to live there the first time, I still can’t, quite yet.
Only in passing that barren, only by landing here in this hole again, only by sleeping in my overcrowded $500 a month house on the bleak side of the Interstate, only by beholding that same moon over my head did I see at last.
It doesn’t matter where I go, or live, as long as I know who I am.
Almost the only practical thing of value I did today was getting the Starlink to recognize that it was in a new place and that it still had a job to do. It’s doing it.
Now it’s my turn, to use it to find a bloody income stream and inject that savings account with fresh green blood.
I’ll head back down in a matter of days. The clock will start ticking again. I’ll have, let’s say, ten weeks to find that injection.
If it all works out, maybe I’ll be a nomad, or maybe I’ll hole up in a different San Vicente parking place, but with a proper trailer.
If it doesn’t–I’ll be back here where the moon is cold and the landlords are cats.
What the fuck ever. I’ve found my groove.
Either way and any way, worst case included, it’s gonna work itself out.