Carry Your Own Load

I finished.

I'm through stuffing the new bag. It's huge, and it holds at least a third of my shit. Very good. I sit back and look at the monster. It's a big bag. I try to lift it, and find that I can. With it, my gear on my back and other shit, I should be able to do it. Two or three trips should be all it takes. It should be no problem. I need another bag though.

I go under the bed, where the storage compart- ment is, and produce a luggage bag that I won in one of the attendance drawings. It is a narrow, and yet tall, piece of luggage, with wheels. I stand it up and begin to fill it with books and toiletries. In no time it is packed and ready to go. That makes two bags. I can roll this one.

Now, the load for the first run: My backpack, twenty eight pounds; The new bag, thirty five pounds; and the roller luggage, ten pounds. The second run should be another toiltries bag, another thirty five pounder, which I have to go out and get, a computer printer and a shoulder strap bag. I wonder if I can get the printer in the shoulder strap bag? I fucking think I can.

The Plan continues.

Tomorrow I have to go to the Duffield Job Center in Brooklyn and get something called a Budget Letter. I've done this before so it is no mean feat. The only difficulty is the time and patience that it takes to deal with the numerous hordes of the insane that are there. Score upon score of the uneducated, uncouth, uncivilized and uncultured, packed densely in a single building, add a little heat, some seasoning and you have dynamite.

So volatile are the tempers in this place that I wonder why someone hasn't entered in with an automatic weapon and spray the area down liberally yet. It could use a little fixin' up. I loathe having to go there again for anything, but that's the experience that the state wants to make of it for you. If it's miserable for you, you might not come back.

But think of the people that are forced to work there. Are the Stygian Stable cleaners so bad that you condemn them to such suffering? I wonder what the suicide and alcoholism rates are among their workers? It must be high, as well as mandatory vacation and holidays. It's just that fucked up in that place.

But that's part of the Plan. To get in, and get out, like ducks fucking.

I sit back and look at my handiwork. I'm almost there.

Coming from the SHOUT OUT with my brother and D2theL, I avoid anything to get high on carefully, because this is the rubber game of the match. I have three days left on the clock. Why fuck up now?? That's the question. Why come so far to screw up now? I walk with my two brothers, who are obviously banged up in the head, and feel like an outsider. There is nothing so boring than to be the designated driver, while everyone is having fun around you.

We stagger up the blocks to Lafayette, and as they settle to talk a bit, I say goodbye. It's time for me to move on. My brother walks with me down to the shelter though and he hops on the train. I, for my part, head upstairs.

I hit the laptop hard, getting things done, preparing for my feature tomorrow evening at Sam's Soul Food Restaurant in the Bronx. I go through my favorite poems, print out the ones that are on my computer that I didn't have on hardcopy. I'm ready. I retire late, around midnight. No one bothered me about the curfew.

I slept like a baby.

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