The Hellish Handbasket Blog

  • Wherever you go, there you are

    I still haven’t learned that I can’t outrun myself. I keep trying. Moving from place to place, job to job, relationship to relationship. Everytime I look over my shoulder to see if I finally ditched my shadow, there it is, following me step for step. It’s not fair. I want to be somebody else.

    I was thinking today about the strangeness of being in a body. Not just this body, any body. Like, how does consciousness suddenly enter and animate something, turn it from a nonliving thing to something that lives and maybe breathes, eats, poops, and grows? I don’t get it. I keep trying to get it. Which is probably part of my problem.

    I think having a place to live has caused some cognitive dissonance in my aging brain. It’s such a profound difference from my previous living situation. It’s like I melted and recoalesced as a different person. That’s probably why I keep thinking I have to keep running to escape whatever residual trauma I’m dragging along with me.

    I think a lot about the journey of the past year and a half. The places I saw, the people I met, the disasters I somehow avoided. I have certain images etched into my brain. The forest outside of Flagstaff. The desert in Quartzsite. And the epic roadtrip across the country to Boston and back. Now, from the safety of my tiny small-town burrow, I have a profound disbelief that the person who saw all those places was me.

    Here are this week’s five words that prompted the scene below.

    authority

    charlatan

    swivel

    green

    coffee

    Dave and I met at the local diner for coffee, as we usually did on Saturday mornings. We never say much, just the usual chit chat before work. Today Dave stared into his coffee for quite a while. 

    Finally I noticed. “What’s up Dave?”

    “Frank saw an alien at Fred Meyer pharmacy a few days ago.” 

    “Wow. How did Frank know it was an alien?” 

    “It was short, thin, and green.” 

    “Green? Was it wearing clothes?”

    Dave said, “Frank wasn’t sure if it was skin or if it was some kind of uniform. Definitely green, though. Kind of a neon chartreuse. He said it hurt his eyes to look at it.”

    “Oh brother. Dave, a lot of people are short, thin, and wear green. Frank was pulling your leg. It might have been a kid dressed like a dinosaur. Maybe it was a protester in a frog costume. What made Frank think it was an alien?”

    “Frank said its head swiveled in a circle.”

    “Swiveled! What do you mean, swiveled? Like in the Exorcist?”

    “Yep. He said it was really something.”

    “It sounds like it was something alright. A tequila-induced hallucination. Dave, you got snowed. I have it on good authority, Frank is a charlatan. He’s pulling your leg big time.”

    Dave scratched his head. “I dunno. I was coming out of Walmart, and I saw something green get into a little silver car, shaped like a Beetle but rounder. It started rolling toward the shopping carts, and I yelled, ‘hey, look out.’ He stopped and leaned out the window. He asked me, ‘Do you want a ride?’ I said ‘no thanks.’ He drove straight up in the air and disappeared.”

    Ha. Maybe all I need is to meet an alien in a silver Beetle. Beam me up!

  • Attitude of gratitude

    I took housing for granted. I didn’t know it at the time, but now that I’m housed, I realize being unhoused is not normal. Shelter is a human need. Even animals need shelter. They dig holes, they build nests, they hang out under rocks. I supposed there are some that live under the open sky, but humans can’t for long. I’ve seen them try, and it doesn’t end well.

    I was lucky, so lucky, I had a car. Many unhoused people are not that lucky. I am grateful for that car, and I’m even more grateful that now it’s just a big hunk of metal on four rubber tires, sitting in the rain in the parking lot. It’s hard to believe I lived my life in that box for a year and a half. It’s hard to believe I don’t have to anymore.

    Now I am slogging through dissociation, trying to assimilate my new living situation. It feels surreal to walk across an entire room, to have two hallways to mix up (which one goes the bathroom, which one to the front door?), to have a bed way over there, ten generous steps from where I sit now typing. It’s been almost two months, and I still can’t believe this is where I live. That this space is for me.

    Eventually my brain will settle in, and the time I spent living in my car will fade into memory. Already, I’m marveling that I had the courage (and naivete) to drive across the country, sleeping overnight in rest areas and parking lots. It’s almost as if someone else was brave (and stupid), not me.

    This self-questioning has happened to me before. I’ve done things in my lfe I can’t believe I did . . . produced fashion shows, ran a marathon, taught at a college, earned a doctorate, published books . . . Now I can add my epic cross-country road trip to the list. I’m grateful to the Universe I was able to make that trip, because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do something like that again.

    Speaking of which, did I mention I tore out the build in my car? My little house on wheels is no longer habitable. It’s just empty space now, with a steering wheel at the front. If it disappeared from the parking lot, I would be sad, but I would be okay. Everything I need is within walking distance. Food, doctor, library. What more does one need?

    My friends tell me I sound a lot more relaxed now. I am. I can feel it. The tension in my body has dissipated a lot, in spite of arthritis eating at my hip, in spite of my continued dizziness. I have a lot fewer things to worry about. On the road, I was constantly planning and doing, white-knuckling in the moment. Now I meander from one activity to another, with long stretches of time during which I stare out the window at green grass, trees, and clouds, doing nothing. The only thing I lack is a bathtub. If I had a tub, I’d be in it right now.

    I still have plans, but now my plans don’t involve devising survival strategies. I’m noodling around with my next writing project, trying to find a way into a new world. I’m spending a lot of time (for very little compensation) being a helpful committee member to wannabe dissertators. I go for walks when it’s not too cold. I eat more vegetables. I keep blogging.

    On the downside, I spend way too much time watching independent news channels, but on the upside, I also spend a lot of time enjoying Korean romcoms. It’s a nice balance of terror and comedy, a small personalized reflection of reality.