I Don&#39;t Understand You

Gotta write every day.

That's the broad goal. That's the brass ring. Keep my writing crisp, tight. Together. I have no compunction to do much else. I want to be a writer. Not a plumber, not a carpenter, not a computer technician. I want to be a writer.

And why shouldn't I? It's an honorable profession. It's better than robbing a bank, or being a dope fiend, common thief, shit head. Besides I like it. I wake up in the morning thinking this, fresh from a fascinatingly real dream. I take a shower at Four in the morning. I am still so asleep that I wake up in the shower washing myself with my underwear. I can hardly believe it myself. I stare at it in my hand, covered with soap, my washcloth on the shelf rest outside of the shower. What am I supposed to do now? Wear the washcloth?

I head back to my bed, swinging in the wind, but there's no one awake to notice. I dress quietly, sit on the edge of my bed for a few minutes, then I go into the bathroom to shave. Mike Murder enters in behind me. "I can't sleep. The LITHIUM knocks me out good, but doesn't keep me out. I need my AMBIEN."

Sorry to hear that Mike. "Guess who called me today, Hobobob?"

Who Mike? "My mother." Shit, even I, as cold and callous to many of these guys issues that I am, I completely shocked. Your mother? "Yeah, she called. She's going to send me money to come down and stay with her in North Carolina." Well, that's motherfucking good news. "Yeah, she said she'd keep me up until I find a job and everything. And life is cheaper in the South. I can get a three bedroom house for five hundred a month." Mike doesn't know that I've heard all this rhetoric before. I've been the recipient of this type of mental doodling from many people extolling the virtues of the South over the North. And New York in particular. He goes on and on as to how he has options now. He can wait for his Social Security checks to kick in and get an apartment in the city, or take the money down South and use it to get a car or a motorcycle. He waxes on and on. I listen because that's what I'm good at.

I shave in the mirror as we have this lengthy discussion about the future. I'm glad that Mike Murder is planning for a future now. Now we might not have the take the sharp objects from him any longer. I return to my bed, clean shaven and check my feet.

My feet.

They smell. They always smell. I can't seem to wash them hard enough. I put baby powder into my socks and in my shoes. I rub my feet down with fragrant oil and then spray them with cologne. Nothing seems to work though. They come out of my shoes smelling like shit every day. It's because they sweat so badly under the hood. They sweat until they swim in my shoes. That's the rub. That's what causes all of the stench. I'm always thinking now on how to treat them. It seems like my entire body wants to make me into a Skek now. Everything is assuming the position. Why not my mind?

Maybe that's how a SCHNAPP happens? Your body turns against you, succumbing to the ways of a skek, the smell, the look the wrinkles or the fat. And then once you look the part, you SCHNAPP and become the part. Maybe my battles are all uphill and I'm defying the natural order of living on the streets? Maybe I'm destined to become a skek, no matter how hard I try otherwise.

Or maybe I just have bad feet.

I end my day in the Madison Avenue Starbucks with OBSIDIAN, talking current events. Skeks don't keep up with current events. There is a disconnect there. They want to be separate and apart from the ebb and flow of life and reality. There's no need to watch Hurricane Gustav and the perils of New Orleans. Who cares about McCain and Obama? So what that there's an unpopular war in Iraq. They are content with the operation of the soup kitchens in the area. They are more interested in today being Tuesday, chicken sandwich day at the Franciscan Fathers. You are not concerned with things that concern them, just as they are not concerned by the things that concern you. There is a clear demarcation between the real life and the Skekified existence. They have been thrown clear of the wreckage of the world. They are no more part of the clock as a tick tock is part of a swan's song.

We defy the Skeksies. We travel in the opposite direction from them even though we travel with them. We are in imitation, but not a copy. Clones with our own minds.

And then that's the rub now isn't it. As I sit in Starbucks and type my ruminations I realize that that's the thing. The mind. To wrap it all up in summary, it is the mind that is the battleground. Not the outward appearance, but the inward person. Sanity is a fragile cord, a very slim reed. It can be easily snapped or broken. The Skek does not know where he stands with this. He is comfortable being like Yoda, shitting and pissing in his pants, marching up and down Madison avenue in layer upon layer of black, dank clothing, hair long and uncombed. His mind is broken.

And that's the battlefield. A war of the mind. Dope it up, or let it fly apart, the war with the powers that be in the shelters, the war with the powers that be on the street, that war is in the mind.

Think about it.

Hobobob