Mush Brain

The weather's been cold the past few days. Today I woke to snow outside on the ground. It was a couple inches thick and blowing down in big drifts.

Heather, the lady who runs the SOS shelter came to me this morning and asked what kind of tent I wanted. They're closing the shelter on Monday, and I've been bugging her for a tent. She said they had all different sizes and shapes. I told her I just need a simple two-man, small and light, easy for me to cary and I don't really keep very much stuff anyway. She also said that she would get me a good sleeping bag that I could take with me.

Yesterday was my birthday, and they decorated the tables at the shelter for me. They had a banner that read "Happy Birthday" all the way down it, and I got to go first in the food line. It wasn't bad, felt nice the way everyone played along wishing me a Happy Birthday. And it wasn't too much birthday-attention. My new buddy, Dan got me stoned on a couple joints and some pot carmel that he makes. I just sat there and watched everyone around me, while waiting for bedtime.

Today, nothing is open. I went to the Day Center and it was closed for the day. CAP is closed also. I was able to refill my anti-depresant. That was good, but basicly today is a bust. I checked in with the Health Share program and that lady is out for the day. I left her a note so that she knows I came by, in case there's an opening she's trying to fill.

I found $6 on the ground on a MAX platform. That was cool. I was able to buy a fresh pack of smokes and a lighter. I have no idea how long it's been since my last FRESH pack of smokes, but I was hoping someone would buy me a pack for my birthday and they didn't. So, this was like a birthday gift from God... and the person who dropped the money. Thanks, where ever you are.

I came to the Beaverton library to use the computer. First I sat outside and smoked a cigarette. I just sat there on a park bench, smoking and staring off into space. I notice that my mind has become numb. I'm not sure when it happened, but I have actually achieved a state of complete mindlessness. I travel through my day, mostly biding time and trying to stay warm and dry. It's amazing how mindless that can be. I catch sleep where ever I can, and sit very still most of the time, just mindlessly navigating the day.

I Thank God

I was waiting in line by the glass doors of the church last night, when a dog showed up. It was a pit bull the size of Lexi, but this one had a slightly shorter nose. It was brindle colored all over, and it came right up to the front door and looked in the glass.

I asked the guy nearest the dog if it was his, and he said no it wasn't. Then I watched as the dog made it's way to a group behind us. I asked if any of them owned the dog, and they didn't know who it belonged to. Then Jeremy stepped forward and pointed across the overhang area and told me that the dog belonged to "that lady over there."

I knelt down and the dog came right to me. I petted her face and body as people commented all around on the pup. I herd one voice say it was a male. I didn't think so, and as I looked at her hind end she was confirmed to me as a female.

My heart jumped for a slight second, but my hands just reached out and rubbed the girl down on the sides of her body, the way I used to do for Lexi. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway. I poured out my love for Lexi on that dog, and it felt good. For a short moment in my day, yesterday, Lexi and I were together again.

The dog's name was Brini (short for brindle), she was staying in a minivan in the parking lot. I got Brini some water and said goodnight to her. When I went to sleep, I thanked God for the kind miracle he performed on my behalf. Thank you, Lord.

Sunday was nice. I spent the day with Jeremy. He's the same age as me, and he let me tag along while he checked out a campsite. He showed me some places in Forest Grove where I can camp if I need to. 

The cool thing was all the extras. He not only showed me camp sites, but also: a cool place to find about $20 worth of cans every Wednesday; a special wall I can leave messages for him on; and he introduced me to a couple of his friends. 

Making friends on the street has proven invaluable to me. The service agencies are great for getting into programs that will supply food and shelter long term, but street people are amazing in their willingness to help each other survive. 

The first thing I learned about street peeps is that they can only show you what and who they know. So it pays to pay attention to the homeless among me seem to be keeping it together best. They are always the ones who know the most number of people and have the biggest number of secret blessings they can clue me into. 

They tell me who the people are at the different agencies that are best to work with. They tell me which cops will be cool and which ones will be hard-ass. They've shown me where to camp or what door is cool to sleep in, and they've even let me in on the best places to find snipes (cigarette butts that have some length left on them).

Lately, I've been getting a lot of marijuana blessings. People have been sharing their pot with me, and it helps me to sleep. It's also a nice mental vacation when I have time to kill before getting into the shelter for the night. There are a lot of drugs on the street, but I have to say that Pot is truly a blessing to those of us who use it.

On Friday, I was told that my name came up on one of the housing lists I am on. That's when I found out that I need a copy of my birth certificate.  That is all I'm waiting on right now in order to complete the process for getting into an apartment. 

I know that I am no more than one month away from being off the streets, and that knowledge gives me a sense of peace. I am able to walk a little slower and to handle stress a little better, simply because I can see the end of this thing not too far down the rode. 

Once again, I am missing my pit bull, Lexi. I carved her name into a tree in the swam/camp that Jeremy showed me, yesterday.He led me to a wash in a flood plane that is overgrown with low lying trees and moss. There is moss all over everything. He calls the place "ewok forest". I felt honored to be given a tour of a the place. 

When a homeless person takes you to their camp, they are making themselves vulnerable and unless they're a complete fool, they only bring people to their campsite that they trust. So fare  I've been taken to two campsites and invited to stay at both. There's a third campsite I've been invited to, but I haven't had time to check it out yet. 

I think, at least 'till my housing comes in, I will be camping in a tent when the SOS shelter closed at the end of this month.

Saturday

Saturday is always hard. There's very little for me to do. All the service agencies I deal with are closed and I have to occupy my time from 7 in the morning until evening church begins at 6pm.

Yesterday, I found some pictures of Lexi online @ my old flickr account. I had tried to access it earlier but could not remember the password. I thought that my ex had gone in and erased it but was very happy when I discovered it was still there.

I took over two-thousand pictures while I was with Ritchie, and only a small fraction of them are posted to flickr. But those few pics are of great value to me today. They represent a reclaiming of my past. It's very strange to look at the photos of our trip to Seaside last year. It was at this time that we went there with Lexi, and I had no clue that my world would be so different just one year later.

I still think of Lexi every single day, but my thoughts of her don't sting quite as much. It's as if the memories are finding there way to a deeper place in me, and I am allowing myself to smile at some of them.

I walked past the Trader Joe's near the motel that Lexi and I spent over two weeks at. There are some tall ornamental grasses out front, near the sidewalk that Lexi loved to wander through and brush against as we would pass by. They've recently chopped all the grasses down to small mounds. Something I'm sure they do every year at this time in preparation for Spring. I was able to smile as I visualized Lexi's wagging tail following her through the grass as I tried to keep her from tangling the long leash that she had.

She is a truly an amazing dog, and I've never felt so strongly about a pet. Sometimes I wonder if a big part of my bond with her is simply the things she and I went through together. And then I think: No, she really was the best dog I ever had, regardless of the circumstances. I send a prayer of love to her every day. When I get to the point where I think I'm getting too depressed over losing her, I simply send a prayer of love and look forward to a day when I will see her in heaven.

2/10/11

Today, I'm a little bit closer to getting into housing. I've had several meetings this week with different people in order to get onto the wait-list for a program called "Shelter Plus". It's a HUD supported program that will pay for my housing while I continue on the wait list for Section 8, wich is another HUD program that will pay for my housing for as long as I need it.


"Shelter Plus" is designed for homeless people with disabilities, to assist them in getting off the streets. It's because of my HIV status that I am qualifying for this.


I miss Lexi (my pitbul) today. Truth is, I miss her every day. I feel like I failed or let down a very important family member by not being able to keep her with me. The idea that I will never get her back hurts deeply. I can't remember having that sense of bond with any human in recent years. I don't even give my ex-partner a second thought. He's just another jerk who abused me and treated me like an object that he could toss out.


I knew for a couple months that I was going to have to break up with him at some point. Ever since I started having panick attacks while I was with him, something that never happened before in my entire life, I knew that I was with a really sick person who was mentally torturing me. The thing about my ex is that he started lying to me from the day I met him, and the lies never stoped. I fully expect that he is lying his way through his day today, and that he has told many lies about me to many people. That's just what he does. It's very much a part of who he is, and I don't expect any different. So, how can I feel any loss or remorse from that relationship. I allready grieved the loss of any real connection with him long ago.


Lexi, on the other hand is and was pure love and adoration. She didn't have the ability to lie or be lied to. If I was having a bad day and tried to fake it for her, she always saw right through me. When everything was well with me, she would respond with a wagging tail and strut in her step. She just knew, and I just loved her for that. I hope and pray that she's with someone or a family that appreciates her for her amazing ability to sense human emotions and respond to them. Lexi would never allow me to get so angry that I would yell. If I raised my voice around her she would bark at me. If I cried, she would lick my face, and if I smiled, she would wag her tail. That's just the kind of girl she is.


Bless you my sweet little girl, where ever you are. Your daddy loves you very much.

God's promise to me

Last night, I attended a church service called "Light My Way". It's a small church that meets in the back of the big church that is providing the shelter I stay in. "Light My Way" is designed for people dealing with addictions and who are on parole or probation. 

This minister  quoted many scriptures, but one stuck out to me and spoke to my situation personally. It was Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord God, to prosper you and not to do you harm." The passage goes on to talk about the blessings that await God's people when he brings them out of exile.

I feel as though I am in a kind of exile right now. I had so many dreams in the place where I was living before that I have had to release, thinking that they were dead forever. That scripture brought back the hope that "All things are possible with God." and that it is even possible for God to restore the good dreams he gave me from before.

You see I believed for years that he was going to give me the land where I was living, that I would one day own the home that I was living in, and that he would bless me there and use me for his purposes. I carried this dream for over a decade, and many people tried to convince me that I was wrong and that God did not want to give me that piece of land. However, my reason for holding onto this dream was because of the way it came to me.

It was the one time that I actually heard an audible voice of God speak to me. I was despondent. My dad had just died and it looked as though I would be homeless again. I spread a small amount of my dad's ashes on the property where I was living, and asked God to bless that land and all the people who would ever live there. It was then that I heard his voice. 

I was kneeling down and praying. The voice came to me from behind. It was as if someone had walked up behind me and spoke from a standing position. The voice was above my head, but it clearly had an external direction to it.

I remember a simple clear, male voice tell me, "You will never have to move again." That was it. I stood up and looked around. No one was there. I prayed and asked God if it was him speaking to me, and I heard another message, "I will give this land to you." 

I began to argue with God, explaining to him all the reason's why this was such an improbable proposition. The last message I heard from God that day was this, "I am God. My word is sufficient."

His promise is alive in me again this morning, and I feel the joy of the Lord. To trust in him is a good thing, always.  My exile has a limited number of days, and God is my resource in all ways.

Lexi intro

I want to talk about my dog Lexi, today. She was on my mind when I woke this morning in the shelter. I gave her up almost three weeks ago in order to pursue an opportunity in Southern California that didn't materialize.


I first met Lexi at the Animal Shelter in Clackamas, Oregon. My partner at the time, Ritchie, had never had a dog and he saw how much I loved the two dogs at the house where we rented a room. So, Ritchie took me to the animal shelter to look for a dog that we both could own. There was a little black and white female collie in the very first cage when we entered the adoption area. Right next to her was a female pit bull that gave a loud bark when I first look at her. There was no way I was going to choose a pit bull when Ritchie had no experience with dogs, and I wasn't even sure I would know what to do with such a notorious breed. I had never had a pit, and so we settled on the collie.


Our dog had to stay at the shelter for another week, so she could be spayed. But after that she would be coming home with us. While we were waiting for her, we gave our new dog a name, Lexi. Ritchie wanted to call her Alexis, but I insisted that Lexi sounded better. We got a call one day on Ritchie's cell phone, while we were shopping for groceries. It was the shelter and our new dog had died on the operating table. We both were bummed. The shelter said that since we had paid and already been approved for a dog, all we needed to do was return to the shelter and pick out any of the other dogs that were available.


I wasn't sure about a shelter that would lose a dog on the operating table, but they assured us that this had only happened once in the last twenty years and that it was probably because of some underlying illness that the dog had. That's great, I thought, blame the dog. Well, we decided to go back and see if we could find another dog. We looked at every dog in the shelter and none of them were a good fit. They were either too old or too high strung or just plain too ugly.


We were ready to leave disappointed at having spent our money and time with nothing to show for it, when I decided to take another look at the pit bull who was still sitting in the cage next to where our collie had been. I looked down at this forty-five pound pit, and this time I didn't feel so scared of her. Somehow she knew not to bark at me, and I simply thought: what would it hurt to take her out and get a closer look at her.


They took us to a room where potential owners can spend some time interacting with their chosen dog. I sat down in a chair at one end of the room while Ritchie stood at the other end, and we talked about being unsure around a pit bull. I had images of pit bull attacks that I had seen in the news and told Ritchie that we would simply see what happened, and that if either of us was the slightest bit uncertain we wouldn't get her.


When the attendant brought the dog in and let her off the leash, the little pity walked right to me and jumped up, placing her front paws on top of my lap and started licking my face. I was nervous and thrilled at the same time. Was she going to bite? I didn't know. But her tail was wagging and she had the most happy look on her face. I was sucked in before I knew it, and all I could feel coming from this little dog was love. The fact that she was a pit melted away, as she ran back and forth across the room kissing and playing with both of us.


We chose her right away, or should I say, she chose us. When it came to a name, I still liked the name Lexi. Ritchie had other suggestions, but I stuck to my guns and Lexi became my very first pit bull, and eventually she would become the best dog I ever owned or had the privilege of knowing. I miss her today, as I sit her thinking of her. I know she is in a new home and off the streets. I pray that her new owner is busy spoiling her and treating her like the little queen of dogs that she is.

blog intro

Today, I start my new blog. It was on or about 12/12/10 when I was put out on the streets in Portland, Oregon by the man who said he would love me forever. I had just finished telling him how I didn't want to continue the relationship and that I thought it best if we split up, when he ran to the motel manager and had my room key deactivated. I went from being in a relationship with a man who financially supported me to being a single/homeless person in an instant. To this day I have never retrieved the family photos or personal documents he stole from me. I could care less about the clothing and other items lost.


I have been crushed by many experiences during my couple months on the streets, and lifted by others. But it has been my complete lack of voice that has hurt me the most. There are days when I don't know if I will survive and days when I wish for death to come quickly, but the idea... the thought that my story, who I am, my history, will disappear into thin air troubles me daily.


I cannot rely on others to tell my story, as I have experienced too many distortions of identity as strangers and family attempt to interpret my words and actions through their own sense of value and judgement. I have been told by many that I chose to be homeless, and still others claim to know of some drug addiction that does not exist. I am a homeless man, 42 years of age, who is HIV+, and a born-again Christian who sees a God who loves and accepts me as I am. I have chosen to remain celibate while on the streets, and so far have kept to that way of being without any struggle.


I intend to be completely honest in my blog entries and will only keep back information if it would jeopardize my safety in any way.