I listed 15 things last night and by that time was tired enough that I didn't practice, just vegged out for a while watching idiotic stuff on YouTube.
I woke up, or was kind of half-awake, around 5 and got a call from Ken. He'd gone over to the landlord's office and settled the rent, and they admitted the check might be lost in their office, and they even waived the late fee so it's all good in that department.
It just plain poured overnight. Sometime around 5 or 6 in the morning so still dark, a bum came through. He had a big grey plastic sort of tub on wheels, full of cardboard and the usual crap. It was hard to push. He stopped in front of here and tried leaning against the building to avoid some of the rain, but the wind was not in his favor.
The guy was short, bald on top, and wearing the world's baggiest pants. The thing is, a hat or anything improvised as a hat would have been a big help. And his cart of crap, with rain pouring on it, was only getting heavier and heavier. Just simple trash bags, the big black kind, would have been a great cover fo the cart and an improvised poncho for himself. He eventually dragged his ever-heavier junk away to places unknown.
First, it's been no secret that this weather is coming. If it were me out there I'd have found a way to get to Stevens Creek Surplus and gotten surplus Army stuff. A poncho and poncho liner would be just great. Army boots and Army wool socks, and I've seen German Army wool pants there too.
When I was at H Mart I'd seen the bum again too. They've hit on the idea that if you're moving, you can more effectively panhandle. I told them I used to pick a street, say Castro Street in Mountain View or California Street in Palo Alto, and panhandle up the street one way then down the other, and if I didn't have enough I'd hit another street. I didn't get much of an answer.
The thing is, though, that I have some real advantages over the average panhandler. Firstly, I speak recognizable English rather than the underclass grunt-and-mutter that I can barely understand, myself. I also have skills in music and in arts and crafts, and a fundamentally middle-class mindset.
My first big interest was in collecting seashells, and from that I learned that the shells are out there but you have to go out and find them. Later when we'd become very poor, I learned that fish were out there but I had to be persistent to learn to catch them. In our middle-class days we'd done the usual things like trying to hustle Almond Roca door to door. That was a hard go, considering all the other kids had been through first. But it's very middle-class that you have to keep at it, anyway. Much later we did this stupid Walk For The Whales thing that feral kids would have quit right away but we walked that whole stupid route in the hot sun.
Part of being middle-class at least American middle-class is the idea that you have to justify your existence. You have to make yourself useful. So as a kid I strung all kinds of jewelry and set up a little stand and didn't sell a thing. And made airbrushed shirts that took a lot of work and carefully cut stencils and didn't sell a single one. Artwork was one very thin trickle of money, along with babysitting, weeding, really any work I could get.
So a fundamentally middle-class person who finds themselves homeless will find some way to make themselves useful. Assuming no one will hire you, due to lack of documents for instance, what can you still do? It turns out all kinds of things from playing street music to doing odd jobs for small shops like mopping the floor or cleaning the loo, to detailing cars, yard/lawn work if you can get it, and I still think sign painting is a good one.
These bums I see around here have no developed talents, no interest in gaining any, and seem to think the world owes them a living. But they've got plenty of that "poor pitiful me" feeling. They have no concept of the social contract and I'm convinced that the social contract is what makes us human.
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