2009-05-15-2009
Very much not present or thoughtful.
So: last Friday I paid $45 for 3months' rental of a mailbox + $10 setup fee:
Sixty-Five Fifty-Six Pardall Road Number One Twenty-Five
Goleta, CA 93117
I also added $25 to the phone and got the number changed to an 805 area code.
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That was sort of watershed. What -- will I stay here 3+ months? Will I often return to or remain near UCSB? Why should area code / phone # be related to identity?
Soon after, I registered to vote, changed address with DMV. How you locate one's self--what is your residence?--how it is assumed you have one--If not, what do you put? On voter registration I put: Pardall and Camino Pescadero (near a central IV park, difficult to spell: "anis'oquoyo[?]"); for the DMV, after one perjurious address change, I listed 5986 Sandspit Rd, 93117--the address of Goleta Beach Park--as my residence.
The fires were happening. People were camping everywhere, & people were helping them do so--different than worrying about cops finding you or citizens telling cops about you. Also the contrast between camping out here vs. near Ensenada (food and water free here but must hide more? what else?).
I walked through vast amounts more of open space too--in, & surrounding Isla Vista.
And-- a deadline came and I bit. Restless, I'd been looking at part-time jobs on craigslist, elsewhere. Lifeguard for UCSB this summer was posted multiple times. I registered for the class (-$164) this past Tuesday and paid another $25 for a 20-swim pass good at one of their pools only between 1130 and 1300. I felt it would be good to care for body (at least by swimming), & to find a way to access weights, rec facilities (perhaps as an employee).
And when there is a job I can actually conceive of doing. . . I go with it.
I would not need many clothes for this job [lifeguard].
Also, I was at sea, wanting structure. The class at least would give me some.
I applied for the job. A good challenge. Small chance of them hiring me?--perhaps. But this will give me CPR, First Aid recert (necessary for challenge course work) and another possible role should I apply for residential camp work.
I made some breakthrus in the managing of docs for job applications--google docs + my html/css awareness helped.
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Also, I met two homeless guys. One in Girsh Park. I saw him across the grass. Debated self-consciously about offering some of the dinner I had finished cooking--and did (he was appreciative and accepted and said oh this looks good after I gave him some, at his suggestion, on a blue plastic plate I got from a nearby trash can, waiting till his hit subsided and I was about to leave--it was getting dark--to eat).
I listened to rambling, wandering, a bit disconnected, pot-high, but helpful, friendly discourse. He did say the university cops were ordered to cite anyone (non-student? I may ask at some point) found sleeping at night on UCSB land, and that they had bought up more and more of the open space. He let me know there's a good free lunch every weekday at St Mark's Church across from the Hillel (12-1230) [I've since been twice]. He said he's 72, but doesn't tell many that--with how healthy and energetic he is they won't believe him. Once you get to 65 and have less than $2000, Uncle Sam gives you $900/mo--so after years and years of little income he now has more than he knew what to do with--via a Bank of America ATM card. He got a very warm North Face down bag [he has a tent off somewhere and keeps it there and gets around by bike mostly, or bus, as in today--he had got a flat]. He can buy big Hershey's chocolate bars with nuts. He started going to movies. He's a graduate of UCSB from the 50's (?) not long after it had moved to IV from the previous location (where SB City College is now). He goes to many campus cultural events--concerts, art shows, movies. He attends campus receptions (great food--and a prime season, graduation, is coming up). He has a chair in the Barnes & Nobles in the mall nearby and loves to be there and read the new books--more and more books about finer and finer points of history are coming out--he mentioned one, I think, devoted entirely just to the last day of the US Civil War. And spoke a lot about a graphic novel-made-movie -- something like _The Watchmen_. . . with superheroes, one "Rorschach(?)," (ever-changing inkblot facemask) another, the main guy, in a suit of blue LEDs. He loves to go to movies with a Colt Magnum he drinks from a soda cup and converses with--the movie? That _Watchwhatever_ movie, he saw it on the last day it showed in the area. At the end he was alone in the theater. The blue LED guy (Captain ??) helped the US win in Vietnam, and Nixon got a 3rd term.
A problem for the outdoor dwellers may be lack of relation.
I feel it at least.
I was happy to talk with Art, but have avoided calling Jacob, a housed and girlfriended friend I met at my stint as a volunteer in the kitchen at Quail Springs during a permaculture course.
Art loves this country. No one else has been able to do what has been done here, especially right here (the Santa Barbara area?). The Romans may have had palaces, but we (he gestures around him) have this, which offers a bit more room. He used to rotate between Santa Cruz and Berkeley (on a nearly day-long sequence of city bus rides that cost him <$5), and has dwelt in the UK and other countries. I agree with parts of his assessment of where we both are. I'm happy to have found the place he's chosen after years elsewhere.
[Another Art-ism: there's no morality (law, morality, is generally constructed because it is useful), but there are consequences to everything, even to this conversation right now. Another: some people are born generous, some not. The selfish, the evasive, the criminal will stay that way. It's nature far far more than nurture--I used to discuss with my Swedish rock singer girlfriend (when I was in the UK) about that. You just need money to get in to the UK, after that, you can stay--my singer friend did that.]
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Well, that lack of relation. I felt it in Art's great joy/drive in talking and in the other guy I met. . . It's mostly in me I guess (so I see it in them)?
Everyone else is running around and we are not?
We've been bought off? Even though the helpfulness of the others' running around is maybe doubtful, we are dependent (are we?) on their running yet have no part in it, except as scenery (perhaps we're in the way), or as people to help out on occasion, and the path we're on has no relevance to theirs?
Now attending the lifeguard class is way up there in oddness / art. I have my pack. I'm older [Bob, who runs a small Christian camp near Cold Springs Tavern is older]. People do treat me differently, some of them. [It has been hard (physical, chilly--an outdoor pool at night, sometimes too much time standing, wet, on the deck.) and fun, and there has been relation, connection (saw Nicole with whom I practiced strangles [the drowning person grabs you around the neck and won't let go] and escapes in the checkout line tonight. Megan is friendly. Max, a good guy. Amid too.), though maybe one is afraid to recognize my possibility (Or is that just me? Would non-recognition matter? What am I not recognizing? This b aimless thought? Breathe and smile. . .).
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Why do these people rush back and forth between perfectly good dwellings? An office to sleep in-- and the students have a huge amount of open space where they could comfortably camp.
A car-bent historical marker marked the site of a camp of Juan Bautista (?) near a former Chumash village.
Now we have isolated, fearful (some of them) campers, hidden tents. . .
The rich relation once offered in the Chumash village. . . well, now only an approximation of it can be found by those who live in buildings and commute?
SB Info Shop has a zine library at the Isla Vista Coop. There is another opportunity for a village relation for outdoor dwellers? I just read a zine by minor cavegrrrl at excite.net on dropping out. Sbdiy.org
So I watched myself applying for that $9.50/hr lifeguard job (answering questions about why I was applying, what I have to contribute, what makes me the best for the job--maybe i'll paste my answers below later). I watched myself smile and ask Satish [a thin, young, Filipino(?) i guessed to be gay when I saw him, but that may be the style--similar to some HS-aged neo-breakdancers who came to the Kroc Center, or maybe to the Mexican emos] if he'd received my app (and watched myself wince at the memory of that) after he'd visited our class to solicit more apps.
And the thought has occurred: do I need money? What happens without it? [Might I try, as a kind of discipline, a year without working for money (knowing I have food stamps)?] "Folks (i don't trust) Call Me Bill" (he later told me his real name) said he'd lived without money for a while. It seemed he wasn't even getting food stamps. But he could pass for a well-to-do bicycle tourer.
What would I do with myself?
We may be finding out. I'm not yet ready to sell myself full-time to a residential camp. UCSB may not want to interview me given the oddness of my app (most recent job paid more in a half day than their job would pay in a 20-hr week--but that's only part of the oddness. In time, maybe, I could make it less odd.)
What would I do?
The lifeguard class will be over Thurs. That bit of structure will be gone. Maybe I'll read the raw food books at the coop and use food stamps to help me apply that.
I may be doing my 17 hrs volunteer work with the Backyard Harvest program of the SB Food Bank. I'll ride around and help pick fruit (incl. avocados), nuts and ?? from houses in the program. Maybe.
We'll see.
But just for example, today I structured the whole day, mostly, on needing to find a copy of the $35 _Lifeguarding_ book to study. Oddly, the book was not included in the class price. Oddly the Red Cross HQ at 2707 State St would not let me read the book there, though they will sell copies. A friendly lifeguard at Los Baños pool downtown let me sit in the lobby and study until it closed at ~215. Then I came over to Shoreline Park to cook, and now, to write this. Now I should soon head to catch the (1935) SBCC -> UCSB express bus. There's a fairly good camp spot over there (near UCSB) even if I want to sleep in or cook--and since class has gone till ~930 and the walk back to that spot is ~:45, I've not been keeping the guideline, "the homeless rise at dawn," or before dawn in my case, with an alarm at 0445.
You have life. (when you wake, and when you wake that early)
What do you do?
A breath and a smile.
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Back when I was still reading a bit, not lifeguard-training or -applying, here's something I wrote:
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Asunto: omg
2009-05-07-1900
The sun is setting.
Fire is burning.
Kitesailors sailing, swarming, flying, speeding, floating, hypnotic for hours, pivot on wave lip carving graceful
Cooking in the strong sun on the UCSB beach. Is there any other campus?
Now, and why I write, Knut Hamsun's "Isak and Inger." Beautiful. Earlier, too, I left off considering how to sell self. Many opportunities? No need?
"Will you be coming back maybe?" [-Isak]
--we can support ourselves. . . If we are allowed to.-- (Zapatistas or a people near them? Give me land, not food?) I'm in the UCSB library for the first time.
"Ho," says he.
"And what'd you say to a house with two rooms in?"
"Bring up a good-sized basket, or a box,"
"I'll just be wanting it,"
Oh my god and tears in eyes--life, language, awareness. . .
"What do you say, Isak?"
"Wedded?" "Why, yes, of course."
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