Whatever you are going through, even if it’s threatening to rip out the foundation you stand on, life continues to move.
People keep working and talking and eating and sleeping. The only thing that matters in a bubble is you, and what you think of your own situation. Other people can be road maps or beacons along the way, they can point you in the right (or wrong) direction, but when it comes down to it, we have ourselves and maybe something outside of ourselves, too, call it nature or god or the universe. Or maybe you don’t believe in that, you think we were formed for no reason and are hurtling towards nothing. I’ve felt that at times. But when shit gets rough, I need to believe in something.
As creative people, we need space. We need time to breathe, think and be alone. Yesterday was rough. I’m still trying to figure out where/how to live on my own once our lease is up in this apartment in July. I am totally going to miss having space. In this situation, I will find perhaps that I am in the opposite situation—crammed into a space with other roommates I don’t know, trying to navigate being around more than one person every day and night for the first time in ten years.
There’s a part of me that just wants to pack up all of my stuff and hit the road. There’s a wanderlust I’ve had since I was little, the feeling of already having lost it all or let it go—every time I left home, my parents would throw away all of my things. When I hit the road, I had only what was on my back. I often lost that when getting shipped back, too. I learned to lose things.
In the last ten years, I’ve become anchored to my stuff. When I lived in my grandparents house, I realized that all the stuff they’d collected during their 80+ years of life now meant nothing to anyone. It was just taking up space in the house we were trying to live in. As I packed it all up, I came to the conclusion that too much stuff is a burden. I got rid of a lot of my stuff after I moved, mostly because it had been rotted with mold, but also because I was just tired of shlepping stuff around everywhere.
The biggest anxiety I’m having right now is where I’m going to keep my musical instruments and computer. In order to save enough money to find a place of my own, I’m going to have to sublet, sleep on couches and pack light. It’s probably going to suck. I’m not going to have space like I want it, for a while. I said I would talk about autonomy, and whether or not it’s something we can all have at once in this society. Maybe this ties into that.
I had a thought the other day, about how so many people come into the library starved of resources. No place to live or sleep, no food to eat, no family resources or friends. They are horrified often when they find they can only use the computers for an hour. And I wondered the other day if it would be possible–as I was driving through West Oakland, taking in the graffiti and disheveled people leaning against houses and buildings, aimlessly wandering–for all of us to have a space of our own, health care, a job in society that made us feel we were included.
Is it possible for us all to have a space? Or in order for society to function, do we need to continue splitting things between the rich and throwing scraps to the poor here and there while the middle class shrivels up altogether, barely getting by until they just can’t anymore.
I tell you what. I don’t see a huge difference between me and the people wandering on the streets. The biggest difference I find it that I am holding on to this part-time library job and the freelance assignments I cobble together. But soon, I will be drifting, too.
When I was 21, I had a real job in San Francisco. I had lived in the tenderloin in a piss in the sink hotel where you paid by the week. I had lost my $800 a month space in the sober living house (crammed in a room with five other girls) out near San Francisco State due to having some beers at a party. I found a room in between Hayes and Fell, a big spacious room with a hardwood floor, for $800 a month. Since I earned about $1800, I didn’t think that was a big deal. I had no car, I had no expenses, really—I lived on crackers and TV dinners and sardines in a can. I had no insurance, no instruments that worked. I had a tiny little computer and some furniture I’d had since I was a child stored away in my parents rented house out in the ‘burbs.
I was excited to have my own room. I shared a bathroom at the end of a long hall with three other people. I filled my room with movies and bought my first TV with a VCR.
The excitement of having my own room wore off rather quick…
I was lonely.
My ex popped back into my life. I remembered how much I loved him, how he was my best friend. He found me a place, and the landlady said she would only rent it to use if we moved in together. So we did. We married a year later and lived together until now…
He put down a deposit on his own place yesterday. I hiked to the top of a giant hill and smoked a cigarette. It tasted like shit. I called a friend who used to sponsor me in AA about 9 years ago and told her I was sitting on top of a hill smoking a cigarette for the first time in two years. You aren’t smoking if you don’t smoke another one after this and you leave that pack where it is, she said. Don’t you sing, she said? And aren’t cigarettes a million bucks now? Imagine how much you can buy instead if you don’t continue smoking. Remember how hard it was to quit? You could buy a pair of boots with all the money you’d save from not smoking.
She made me laugh. I left the pack on the bench and dragged my dog the rest of the way through the hike. The view of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area was to die for. It felt good to hike.
I don’t know how things will work out. It’s hard to just get through each day as it comes. I feel like all my happy endorphins have been wiped away. I just want a room of my own where I can write like a motherfucker and get it all out.
I pray I get it.
Awesome post…we have much in common…God bless your pursuit!
I’d love to hear more about your journey some time cloudborne!
Thanks for your interest, I have recently updated my “About” page…just a little more about where I’m coming from…my poems tell a little of where I’m going!
Hi Kyrsten, I have to say that it’s crossed my mind this week that this might be your one opportunity to get away from the Bay Area scene (cocoon) for awhile, at least. When I was your age, my wife and I moved several times with less that $1000 to our names. To Tucson, then S.F.
What about San Antonio, New Orleans, even here in Milwaukee? Almost anyplace is going to be less expensive than where you are! And the minimum wage is about the same everywhere, even if you can’t do better than that for awhile. We’ve got a beautiful 2 bdrm flat in one of the best neighborhoods, near the university, for $930/mo. Which is what we were paying in Oakland for something similar place 20 years ago!
I wasn’t going to bring this up, but since it has crossed your mind, decided to at least mention it.
Mike
Oh, believe me. It has crossed my mind. Mostly, “Why keep fighting?”
Not that you need more ideas of what to write about, but you could actually write down what you think are the pros and cons of staying and leaving. It does sometimes help me to actually put it in writing rather than just having it flit around in what’s left of my mind.
Mike
I could see the crash of the middle class coming a few years back. The powers that be ran out of poor whites to kill off in the middle east. Obama is desperate to invade Iran, so the middle classes must be bankrupted to force them into the military.
On the East coast, I”ve seen countless working white communities that have been there since we were English colonies completely disappear and morph into hideous illegal latino slums. They were brought in and given jobs the working whites were then fired from and the displaced whites were forced into the military to survive. They were called “racist white trash” if they complained, mostly by white middle class people.
Karma’s a bitch.
Susan, I’ve got to say I think you are being racist here. Other than the Native Americans, we are all immigrants, or descendants of immigrants. And, I’m sure the Indians complained about the Whiteys ruining the neighborhood!
Few of the immigrants, whether they were Quakers, Irish, Polish, Chinese, or Latinos would have chosen to leave their ancestral homes, and sometimes families, and come to America if they had had any way of taking care of their families wherever they came from. Knowing that they are going to have to take the most menial jobs, and live in slums, and basically ‘take shit’ from most residents.
I don’t believe that many Latinos “were brought in and given jobs the working whites were then fired from.” Most came and took jobs that no whites would take.
I do agree that the powers in this country have always liked to have an underclass that could be made to work for almost nothing, join the military, and help put downward pressure (racism) on whatever the latest round of immigrants happened to be.
My ancestors came here to avoid being cannon fodder in the Franco-Prussian War in the early 1870′s. When, and where did your ancestors come from?
Until this, I’ve agreed almost completely with your comments on various blogs, but I’d like you to rethink this.
Mike
Mike,
Take your head out of your ass and face the truth.
Whites were the native peoples of the Americas. The Asians crossed the Bering Strait found whites already here and ethnically cleansed them. Look up “Across Atlantic Ice,” “Windover Bog Mummies” and “Ice Age Columbus: Who were the first Americans,” the list goes on and on.
The Anasazi were white. The indians ate them. Scientists found out because indians ate the Anasazi and threw their bones in a trash pile. A shit was then taken on the pile. The ancient shit tested postitive for a protein only found in humans. The skeletal reamins, 15,000 of them, were European.
Illegals take jobs from whites all the time. I”ve lost jobs to illegals. Many, many working whites have. I have friends that came back in body backs or with limbs missing because illegals took their jobs. They got to starve or join the military. People like you have the blood of their deaths on your hands
And by the way, the same powers that be that are blocking the fact that whites were the indigenous Americans are also blocking the fact that you west coast ‘tards are already starting to die off from Fukushima radiation. It hasn’t been fixed, no one knows how to fix it. The west coast is dead man. Karma has kicked in.
I guess you would have to consider me a midwest ‘tard, but I did live in California for a decade. Maybe it rubbed off on me. Kyrsten definitely qualifies as a west coast ‘tard’ though.
Do you consider all Latinos ‘illegals’? And, I don’t really care what was going on 10,000 years ago or whatever. Let’s narrow it down to the last 500 or 1,000 years. I’m pretty sure there were meskins all over ‘our’ southwest before your ancestors reached this continent. It was us that was the ‘illegals’ till we took Texas, New Mexico, part of Colorado, Arizona, and half of California from Mexico in the 1840′s.
You’re a bit over the edge Susan. Have you considered therapy to help you deal with your anger, among other issues? That’s probably all another plot to brainwash people though, right?
good luck with your karma,
Mike
Pros and con lists are always a good practice. I find I have fun putting thoughts on paper, it’s very visual.
Of course I’d rather you stay here, but with how often we visit each other, I bet we’d end up seeing each other just as often. Who knows, maybe more. Or maybe I’d have an excuse to travel.
Maybe you should take a month to travel and think? I don’t know how difficult that can be with a regular job though….
I always liked the stuff in grandma and grandpa’s house. I would probably still only keep 50% of it though, primarily the stuff that dummy relatives threw out from Grandpa’s art laboratory. I’ll never get over that. It’s like a part of grandpa left behind.
If you feel like aimlessly texting anytime, feel free. No one aimlessly texts me.
I have a working phone and everything!
When I lived in AZ for a while and I moved to NV (Las Vegas) at short notice, I just tossed out anything I wouldn’t have a place for. It was astonishingly easy and really changed my outlook on hording stuff. You know how pack rat I’ve always been. For me it’s down to “Is it replaceable” and “Would I even feel like I needed it again?”
It was pretty traumatizing having Grandma throw out childhood toys. I loved going in that shed and just finding things I hadn’t seen for years, it’s not Super important though, so once you get past it, it’s easier and easier to eliminate things.
This is back up to Susan. I also find it curious that you are only concerned about ‘poor whites’. I’m sure that ‘poor blacks’ serve in the military way out of proportion to their share of the population as a whole.
What can I say? RACIST
I think we should move our ‘discussion’ away from Kyrsten’s blog.
My email address is mfsmith46@gmail.com
Mike