They like to say "every person has a story", and this is, if only in a trivial sense, true. We all have these seemingly unique, personal, sometimes tragic, sometimes happy, stories. Usually, for real people, it is a mix of the tragedy and the comedy, the sweet, the sour, the bitter and the salty. For me, reflecting upon my life, I'd have to confess to a boring, mediocre, abortive story. I have been marginally successful at some points, absolutely pathetic at most junctures - my tragedies are lame when compared to the lives of actually interesting people, my "successes" are even more lame.
All this is preface to my current obsession: what happens to me next?
Right now my few friends and family, they are convinced that "Dan" (which is me) is "giving it another try" - picking himself up, dusting himself off, and trying again (like the song says). I may have even convinced myself that I have one more fight left in me. I might. I might have another attempt, another "try", left in me - but it's not clear to me that this is true.
I look into my soul, my heart, and I don't see green shoots of renewed hope - I see a darkness, a wasteland, a realm of dreams and desires that have been ground to dust, with only nightmares in their stead. Maybe this is why I've been thinking so much about these "tent cities", these places of social entropy, of turbulence, on the periphery or edge of human society. There are no more frontiers, no real frontiers that are open to anyone. The world is now carved up, measured, rectangular, digitized and ... who knows ... perhaps soon to be living on the blockchain. But the frontiers have been closed a while, and there are no longer places a man or woman can flee to - no more channels of escape.
I've been thinking about writing some kind of horror series, exploitation lit, about "life in the tent city" - but the goal is not to shine some light on the truth of the tent city ... nope ... the goal is to use this artifact of faux modernity as a backdrop to my own projected demons, my own fears. Already I can see stories, weaving themselves in my head, about this place. It matters not to me that there are "recognized and approved" tent cities run by democratic/socialist organizations. It matters not to me because I know the vast majority live in the unapproved zones, the "Jungles" that have sprung up around the USA.
An "approved tent city" has government backing, regulation, oversight, control. It is a zoo for homeless people.
The "open tent city" is made up of squatters, reclaiming unused lots for whatever life - no matter how horrid - they seek to live. It is filled with crime and depredation and horrors that cannot be understood by the middle-class Americans of "Magnolia" or "Ballard". Sure - the "normies" live near these places, but block them from sight or recognition by staring at their iPhones.
I don't know why my mind is fixated on this ...
Maybe it's like "deer in the headlights" - I am seeing the oncoming vehicle, heading my way, and mesmerized by my inevitable destruction. The knowledge that my death will come - sooner rather than later - is comforting.
Those are my Sunday morning thoughts.
(my TENT CITY HELL to come)