Homelessness

Homelessness

“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”  May 9^th, 2012 President Barack Obama.

I am floating in the abyss of the homeless.  Not, pushing-grocery-cart homeless, but that place where you don’t know location yet.  I think the most common method is to retreat.  You head back home; however, to “go back” can be as tricky as “home.”  I watched a friend recently retreat back to the safety of the past; it is comfortable and easy sometimes, but there is no going back.  We retreat to places that are different because we are different.

*

As I left Austin, Texas to end my 3 months on the road, I left with sadness in my heart for try as I might, I couldn’t win the love of a beautiful amazing woman.  Trying too hard was one of my problems.   I drove just to edge of town during rush hour traffic, pulled into a gas station to check the van out for the 2000 mile journey back, but it no longer felt like going home.  Home is a complex concept, as elusive as the perfect wave.  It appears during certain tides with certain swells travelling at certain speeds and touching at just the right break.  It comes and goes the way being in love seems to fade in and out.  I had 2000 miles in front of me and a wedding to attend for one of my best friends.

I pulled into the gas station and started the fill up process.  I went to open the hood of the van to check the engine, but the hood doesn’t open with only one person.  It takes two.  One person pulls the lever while the other pulls up on the hood.  Because I travel back home alone, and Chico, without thumbs, can’t help with this task, I lodge the hide-a-key box behind the lever.  I have done this many times now.  This way the lever remains pulled and I can walk around and pull open the hood.  It was easier when I was travelling with another person.

*

If I have learned anything in these years of trying to understand home, I have learned that it revolves around love.  They say home is where the heart is.  I have tried hard to understand what that means.  Many times now I have worked to build a home.  While I do think home is wrapped up in a location, in a neighborhood and the friends and family that live around you, there is an intimate part that is closer to the heart.  For me, home begins with a good partner.  I feel, finally, to have come full circle in all my writing about this.

*

I pop the hood up on the van and check the oil level and it looks good.  1300 dollars and four weeks later, the van is running again.  They had to replace all the bushings on the front end and the tie rods.  I had sheared off thee of the four bolts holding the radial arm to the axel and the suspension.  The steering had become dangerous and I feared I would lose control completely.  The steering and suspension feel better now.  Being stuck somewhere never feels good; however, I am a person who tries to live in the moment.  I tried to enjoy being where I was and with the people there.  I figured, life was teaching me some lesson.  Pay attention dummy!

*

Like any good journey, it doesn’t really have a true beginning; we just start in the middle when a beautiful, strong-willed woman I loved left me to go to Africa so many, many years ago.  She never really returned.  I didn’t understand that at the time.  I thought identity was more concrete.  I understand now that every step of experience changes you.  When you are away from someone, you both change and you can’t ever have the past back.  Why would you want that anyways?  I travelled to see her, to try and be a part of her experience; meanwhile, my own life challenged and changed me.  If home is about a partnership of experience together, our home crumbled.

*

I heard the gas pump kick off.  Because I hadn’t removed the hide-a-key from the hood lever, the hood wouldn’t shut so I softly lowered the hood down, but couldn’t shut it all the way.  Many times before I had forgotten that the hide-a-key was still jammed in the lever and I would go to slam the hood down and it would crash hard, but not shut.  This time I gently laid it down.  I went over to the gas tank, removed the pump, screwed on the caps, walked around the van checking on the straps holding everything on top, climbed back into the van, wrote down the mileage, put on my seat belt, checked in with Chico to see if he was OK, started up the engine, and pulled out of the gas station to begin the long, long drive home.  It was time to process what had happened on this trip.  Mostly, I needed to understand how I tried to form a new home with a new woman and why it didn’t seem to work.

*

I tried a second time to build a home with an incredible part-Italian woman from the central valley of California.  Never before had I tried so hard to give my heart to a person who never fully believed me.  It was my own fault.  In the confusion of my own heart, I lost my trust with her and never gained it back.  No matter how many places we travelled, no matter how hard I tried to share a life with her, she couldn’t give her heart back.  I don’t blame her now.  We built a home together, but the foundation was sand.  While I planted gardens, remodeled the house, met neighbors, and walked the neighborhood of our house, the home kept washing away from under us.  In her unhappiness she tried over and over to leave while I talked her back down off the edge; it never worked.  The location didn’t work, and when we travelled to distant countries our problems followed us.  She eventually ran away from the whole thing, burned down our home and left the scorched remains of the lies and mistrust.  It needed it.  As painful as it might have been, it is like a wilderness lit by lightening.  In the spring, the fireweed ignites the hillsides with color.

 

*

I pulled out from the gas station and onto the highway.  The van doesn’t get up to speed quickly, but there was a long break in traffic.  At 35 miles an hour, the overdrive clunks into gear.  I get the RPM’s up to 2500 and that is all there is to it.  The van has two gas tanks and they are both full now.  That will carry me beyond anything I could drive for the night.  I am driving into a Texas sunset; Chico pants in the heat of the front seat next to me.  I pet him gently.  I don’t know if he feels the loneliness that I feel with her gone from the van.  I think he had started to bond to her as much as I had.  The sun is too much and he moves to the back to sleep on his bed.  Just as the van begins to get up to 65 miles per hour, I notice the hood start to move.  Oh shit!

*

This van trip was originally an escape from home.  I figured the last adventure was to live a transient life on the road and see what it felt like.  I never really made it.  Before I was ready to leave, I met an amazing woman.  A woman from my distant past and we surfed, walked on the beach, and I found a joy in my heart again when I looked into her eyes.  They have this amazing green quality to them and each day I saw her, I felt the two by fours of a home being built in the laughter I felt when I was with her.  The foundation was uneven, perhaps settled to one side, but doable.  It felt possible.  We weren’t in great places to take on new love, but it seemed we came together in spite of everything.  We hiked out to the beginning of the watershed for our hometown, past the sewer ditch we skated in high school, out to the waterfall we had both been many times when we were younger.  We didn’t stop there.  We decided to keep hiking.  Neither of us had gone further before for some reason.  The river opened up to meadows and rock faces with potholes filled with water.  We kept hiking and I think we both didn’t want it to end, but there came a time when we had to turn around.  I wanted to grab hold of her, to kiss her, to never leave, but we didn’t.  We walked back down, Chico running ahead, got in the car and drove back to town.

*

I had a few seconds to react as the hood fluttered, but I didn’t.  Then with a gust it flew up into the windshield and I was blinded.  Time slowed down.  The shoulder was blocked by cement barricades because they were working on widening the highway.  I looked into my rearview mirror for traffic coming.  I fumbled around for the hazards as I swerved all over the road, slowly breaking.  I watched the cement divider out the passenger side window as I pulled away from it and then close to it.  It pulsated towards the car and I hoped there wasn’t any quick turns coming.  There was only one driving lane, the center lane, and oncoming traffic.  I looked out the window to avoid traffic as I tried to slow the van down.  It doesn’t stop quickly.  All I could think about was totaling the van after just repairing it, about calling her up back at her dad’s house and saying, uh…come get me, I just wrecked the van.  It couldn’t happen.  Life wouldn’t do that to me.

*

When I was ready to leave Arroyo Grande on my great van adventure, I didn’t want to leave.  I was starting to build a home in my heart with this woman.  Never before had I met someone that made me feel this great.  We seemed to share so much in common.  The day I was packed up to leave, we met at the beach.  We held hands as we walked along the sand at Pismo.  She bought me treats for the road.  Both of our lives were unsettled and we knew that I had to leave, but when I returned things might be different.  When I returned, maybe we would both be ready to really open our hearts to each other.  It felt amazing and I kissed her goodbye, her eyes like an emerald ocean, I pulled away and headed north.

*

As I slowed the van down I tried to pull as close to the cement barrier as I could.  I quickly jumped from the car, but as I opened the door a purple Dodge Charger with horns blazing careened around my van just missing the open door.  I jumped around the van, pulled the hood off the windshield and slammed it down.  It clunked, but didn’t close.  I still forgot to remove the hide-a-key, but it would have to do.  I jumped back in the van and tried to keep driving down the freeway.  People were backing up behind me, but I drove slowly, watching the hood again and looking for a place to pull over.  Finally, a break in the cement barriers and a road that I pulled down, but still was too shocked to react.  I drove for a second, unable to make a decision and to really pull over.

*

As I left Arroyo Grande, I drove up to Chico to pick up the rack for the van, then to Truckee to see a friend, then to Idaho to my Dad’s, and then to Utah to my house.  The whole time, I dreamed about her.  I texted her, wrote poems, shared my past and wished for a future.  She wasn’t happy in her life and dreamed about getting away.  Finally, I talked her into flying out and meeting up with me.  Hah!  Who says studying writing doesn’t pay off?

*

The hood was bent, but it did shut, just won’t reopen now.  As I pulled back onto the freeway it started to settle in how close to wrecking I had been.  After everything, after weeks of waiting for parts and sleeping on the floor on her step-father’s studio, after a few fights, and almost blowing my chances with this amazing woman, I had to hit the road.  While I was supposed to be writing my dissertation, I spent all my time trying to be close to her, trying to win her heart.  Instead, I was overwhelming her and smothering her.  Now, I had four days to drive 2000 miles to get to my friend’s wedding.  I was supposed to be the best man and I had to get there.

*

After Utah, I drove to a conference in Estes Park, over the Rockies to Denver to hang out with a good friend, down along the East-side to the Great Sand Dunes, and then crossed the Rockies again to see some old family friends in Pagosa Springs.  In Pagosa Springs, I thought often about the first home I ever had.  These were our neighbors.  Their daughter was like my Winnie Cooper.  One night, when I was about 7 or 8, she slept over on the floor in sleeping bags in the living room.  Late at night, she reached into my sleeping bag and held my hand.  I did my best to never move the rest of the night, my hand sweating into hers. 

I spent a week in Pagosa Springs reminiscing about the past, but my mind was dreaming about the future when this new woman would fly out.  She bought her ticket to fly into Durango, CO and my heart floated in desire.

*

I was driving with a destination and a time-frame now.  Tonight, I would drive until I couldn’t drive anymore, until my eyelids feel heavy.  Cruise control, a Texas oil field sunset, the passenger seat empty now, I pull behind a big rig, try to match their speed, and drive.  I have found that I like getting behind the rigs and letting them run blocker for me.  I put enough space between me and the truck so I can stop, and if they can’t stop for something in front of them, well, they should clear the path for me.  So, I find my spot behind a Mayflower moving truck and stay there until one in the morning when I pull off near Fort Stockton, crawl into the back of the van and crash into sleep dreaming about the girl I left in Texas.

*

When I picked her up in Durango, we were both excited to see each other; however, she had warned me that she wasn’t feeling great.  She had a major loss in her family right before coming out and almost didn’t come.  Me, being so caught up in the idea of love, caught in this new feeling, talked her into still coming out.  I tried to tell her no pressure, and it would be good to get away and have some time in nature, while my head drew up designs for homes, blueprints, and permits.

            I picked her up at the airport to an awkward kiss, van loaded, groceries bought, and we drove towards the Bisti Badlands.  Somewhere on the dirt road towards the Bisti Badlands we pulled over, engine running, headlights illuminating the dirt road, a cold winter wind still blowing across the high desert, and me looking into her eyes, the new moon stepping away from the night sky and letting the Milky Way explode and expand across the darkness.

            In the morning, the wind whipped cold sand against the van.  Rather than stay, we decided to keep heading south to look for warmer places we would never quite find again.

*

In the morning, up early with the sun and back in the car, I resumed my position behind a big rig.  I was passing all the places I had planned to visit.  First, Big Bend, I sighed at the sign and thought about the ways life teaches you things, the way you blind yourself to love and life.  At Juarez/El Paso, I made the first loop and touched road I had already been on before, saw a Wal-Mart parking lot we stayed for a night.  Their security cameras on our van all night makes me wonder if anyone goes back and looks at them. 

I left Texas and into New Mexico seeing sites we saw together.  I passed more signs of places I had hoped to go to on my return home: Chiricahua National Monument, Tombstone Arizona, Sierra Vista (where I had hoped to see an old friend’s family, a friend who I was supposed to be the best man at his wedding, but I was too lost at that time to recognize the honor), Coronado National Forest, Santa Catalina, Tucson, and Sonoran Desert National Monument.  The desert was blooming.  Ocotillo lit like torches against the desert beiges.  What had I done?  Why am I passing all of these up? 

I stopped for the night at my grandfather’s place outside Phoenix.  I ate some food, said hello, and crashed into sleep in the van parked in his driveway.  In the morning, I ate breakfast with my grandfather and we talked about life.  Growing up, he and my grandmother were the models I had for love.  My grandfather, a stoic man from my childhood who watched the news and grunted at us kids, was sitting in a rocking chair watching the morning news when I noticed that my grandmother’s name was hand-written at the base of the chair.  I didn’t want to ask why.  It has been some years now since she passed, but I would do anything to talk with her about love now that I am old enough to respect what she would say.  I talk with my grandfather nonetheless.  In their final years together, I saw how much he loved her.  I saw what it means to have a partner together, and now I see how you move forward with love.  He is newly remarried; he and his beautiful wife sold this house and were moving back to California to start a new home together.   Yes, it does make sense why we do what we do.

*

From Bisti Badlands, we went to Chaco Canyon, from Chaco to Albuquerque, then over to the Gila Wilderness, the Catwalk, Aldo Leopold, the cliff dwellings, we looked for warmer places.  At the southern end of the Gila National Forest, we found hot springs.  We seemed to slide back from lovers and into friends and I hoped that was OK.  At night, while she slept, I crawled into the hot springs to try and understand why I was doing this alone.  In the hot springs were a Lakota medicine man and his longtime male partner.  They were happy.   They offered me an orange and water and we talked about our lives for a while.  His voice was calm and soothing.  They had just finished a fluorite mineral hunt and were relaxing before heading back towards Albuquerque.

When I finally crawled back into bed with her, I told her about who I met.  I had hoped she would feel jealousy at my great experience she missed out on, but she just went to sleep.  I wanted to steal her away from her texts on her phone, but I couldn’t. 

In the morning, they were in the hot springs again and we all talked.  After the soak, they came over to give us some fluorite.  He told us that it provided clarity and we both looked at each other and were grateful for the chance at this.  He wished us a beautiful safe travels in Lakota, and we loaded up the van to drive again.  Perhaps, the clarity it gave her was that she needed to be out of the van.  She asked me to drop her off at the nearest town and she would rent a car and drive alone out to Austin to see her family.  She called a few places, but nothing was really available or affordable for a one way trip to Austin.  I offered to just drive directly there and drop her off.  I would come back and hit all the places I wanted to see on my return trip.  I knew she was thinking about loved ones in her life—those gone, those far away, and the ones getting closer. We settled on a compromise to stop at a few for short stays as we headed towards Austin.

*

From Phoenix, I drove to LA and saw one of my best friends.  He and his fiancé had moved their recently because of their business, but also because they were looking for a life together.  Business partners, life partners, and their home just kept getting better each time I see them.  From LA, I went north to Arroyo Grande, left my dog at my sister’s home, jumped on a train, and took it to Chico, California just in time to fulfill my duties as best man at my friend’s wedding.  I didn’t have much to do really—walk down an aisle, pass the rings over, walk back down the aisle; however, I did have a speech to give.

*

From the Gila and Silver City, we went to Truth or Consequences (that seemed logical), then to White Sands, down to Franklin State Park, but it was closed, Wal-Mart in El Paso, Guadalupe National Park, a day at Carlsbad, a night in an oil field outside Monahans, and as we got closer, she wanted to slow it down a little bit.  I never understood why, but I hoped it was because she wanted to spend time with me.  We decided to camp outside Austin for a couple nights.  As we pulled into Boerne, we saw a brewery and decided to stop and have dinner and a beer.  This was different.  She met a waitress there that seemed to like us and invited us to park the van at her house (ended up being a mansion sized house where she lived with her parents).  We slept through some close tornados there.  The waitress went with us into San Antonio to see the Alamo.  After another Wal-Mart parking lot, we pulled into McKinley State Park for a few nights just outside Austin.  She didn’t want to see her family just yet.  We set up a tent, the weather finally warm, and rested for a day.  I was starting to think this whole thing might just work out OK.  I’d drop her off, maybe see Austin for a few days with her, and leave her to deal with her grief and hopefully come to see that I wanted to be there for her.  Yes, I’d leave on a high note, and write poems to her from the places I would visit on a slow drive back across the southwest.  Then, on what I was thinking was one of my last days, I had met her Dad, her step-father, her sister, and saw a bit of Austin, I started to notice that the van wasn’t driving right.  The suspension was squeaking, the steering too loose.

*

My speech was easy.  My friend getting married was my climbing partner, second paddle in the raft, mountain biking buddy, a fellow hiker, a person with whom I could walk home from the bars.  We weren’t the fastest, the strongest, the craziest, but we had a good time together.  He was a good partner for these things.  He was marrying a good partner for life.  He was finishing up the landscaping and showcasing the home he created with his new partner for the wedding.  And as much grief as a wedding can be for analyzing your own failures in your love life, they are also amazing ceremonies—families and friends coming together, a ribbon cutting for new homes.

            I think life is all about friends, family, and partners.  You find people to love in the world.  People you are willing to tie yourself to in the event of any danger, any trouble, and love.  It doesn’t matter the sex, the gender, the age, or anything else some culture deems correct right now in history.  You never know how long it will last.  Maybe just a van ride…or half a van ride, maybe 50 years, and I’m not sure if we hope for life, but that seems logical to me.  Nonetheless, you take a hold of love when you can and let it go when you have to.  There is this wonderful line in Harold and Maude when Maude is dying and Harold tell her he loves her.  She says, “That’s wonderful; go love some more.”  Letting go can be the most difficult I have realized.  Yeah, love blinds us, it crashes up into the windshield and sometimes you just might crash and burn, but you get up, you fix it, and you love again.  Why else live if not to love?