Lawrence Sally and allthat
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Subject: Lawrence Sally and allthat
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 11:46:46 CDT
So...
Lunch at the Lawrence Sally. Salvation Army, of course. Yesterday, eating at LINK (Lawrence Interdenominational Nutritional Kitchen), Clark mentioned there were over 200 people here in Lawrence living on the street. I've been thinking about that and question that figure. Where did he get his information from? I'll ask, next time I see him.
Lunch at the Sally. A group of maybe 25 people, and no need to check yr bags at the door as at the Sally in Tulsa. Tulsa was so damned paranoid we might actually carry some food away for later, I guess.
Here they had a table laded with pies and pastries and openly encouraged us to take whatever we wanted. Twas lovely. A lunch of disreputable looking pizza, with green beans and corn on the side. Apple pie, cake, and doughnut holes for desert, plus tea as a drink. Not bad at all.
And the two lady volunteers were friendly. A far cry from those burnt-out cases in Tulsa where they looked at you through blanked-out eyes and a friendly hello elicted a grunt--if you were lucky. Homeless fatigue, I suppose.
A black man was leaning up against the wall when I came out. "Nice bike," he said. "Want to sell it?" Hellno. This is mah babeeee. Gits me around the streets of Lawrence at just the right pace to see things.
And Lawrence is such a graceful and gracious city. Lovely parks, gorgeous trees. So many of the streets are like driving through little tunnels, the foliage overhead is so thick and covering. I love that.
And I love the alleys. Some are brick covered, some paved, and some merely graveled, but there's always this sense of discovery. Lawrence is a yuppy kinda place. All the rich kids from Kansas go here as their University of choice. Heck, I even went here many years ago, even tho I wasn't rich. I dated Miss Chi Omega when she was still in high school and I was a freshman. Now she's a yuppy herself, a successful attorney in Alaska, and I....starving artist.
Well, not starving, of course. And the alleys are a treasure house of discarded nearly-new things. As are the curbs, awaiting the rubbish men. We all know this. No one need be shabby here.
I rode up the gradient in the lowest of my 18 gears. I was breathing hard, but not breathless. A nice ride. Left the bike locked to the rack outside, with the blue backpack Mickey so admired in one of the baskets, the other holding the food I took away from the Sally.
Have spent the past hour catching up on my correspondence, so if I didn't get to you this afternoon, will be sure to do so tomorrow.
~~~~~~~~~~~
I am technically still on the street, but the feeling is so incredibly different here. I'm living in the backyard of Nancy's daughter's place, beneath trees whose limbs reach almost to the ground. There is a stand of echinacia planted outside the foliage which stretches up around 6 or 7 feet, so I am invisible from the levee. I leave everything inside the tent w/o the slightest fear of ripoff. And even if that were to happen, all can be so easily replaced here.
Lawrence is...homeless friendly, I would say. There are coffee shops galore, used bookstores everywhere, and that small town ambience where people still say hello, wave, nod. That kind of place.
Border's is just across the street from Java Break and it, too, has a friendliness to it which I love. Can go in there and read for hours at a time and no one comes along to shoo you off or bother you. A clean, well-lighted place, thank you, Mr. Hemingway.
Tulsa did not have that. After the library closed there was literally no place I knew of which was warm, lighted, and safe. It lacked these options.
And to take a shower was an exercise in humiliation. No privacy, and the showers were less than clean. Here, there is a lovely Community Center which opens at 7, with showers, lockers. A weight room. Machines to transform ya into an Arnold Wannabe. Quite often a pickup basketball game in progress.
~~~~~~
I continue to remain silent at AA. It's strange. I've never felt this way before, that I have nothing of value to say, that I can no longer toe the party line, that the most I feel I can hope for is...serial sobriety. Sober 3 or 4 months, tipsy a couple of weeks. Back and forth. I just don't know. It's not that I feel terribly discouraged or anything, just that I no longer really believe I'm capable of long-term continuous sobriety. Continuous.
The only time I've been able to do that (and it was easy then, actually) was when I was with a strong woman who did *not* want me to drink. Then I just respected that and stayed sober. It was not a big deal. The companionship was great and the hassle of forcing the drink was just too much. So I elected to stay sober.
Why am I saying all this? No idea. Just talking, rambling. But I did see that alcohol was the number one factor in keeping people down at that level. And that it is very dangerous for me. That helps me stay sober for months at a time, at least. I remember in Ft. Smith, where I had my last drink, looking and looking for a safe place to drink w/o fear of cops coming along to arrest me for a PI. Public Intox.
I want to stay sober for the foreseeable future, at least until I can get back on my feet, working, with some cash built up. And maybe I will change my mind, gain confidence in myself as I go along. Not had a drink since the 4th, so that's something, at least.
Life seems so short. I still find it terribly exciting, still think in youthful ways, but move now through the streets of Lawrence as an aging William Burroughs type. Well, lots younger than Burroughs, who came here a long time ago to retire, did so, and died here a few years ago. Wish I could have met him.
Lawrence was always that outpost of sanity to me. And when I first came here, in 1965, just before my 21st birthday, I saw my first long-haired guy. My redneck uncle just stared and stared at him. I felt instantly at home.
Lawrence was a woman raising the hem of her dress in those days, that promise of sensuality everywhere, of endless partying, of beads and sandals and beards and long hair and peace signs. Peace, people would say upon parting. Peace, I would reply. The fingers held up in a vee. Peace. Was the sun brighter then? The grass greener? Was the hope more hopeful?
Still that innocence back then. Then the riots, the shootings, the deaths, the burnings, the rage, the...sellout. Drugs came in, hard drugs, and somehow almost overnight that summer of love which had at one time seemed like an endless summer, came to an abrupt halt.
I worked driving Yellow Cab in those days with Darryl Bockman who later put a shotgun in his mouth over in Honolulu and blew his brains out. I just don't want to start over again, he wrote to me. I just can't bear to do this all over again.
And last March, coming back after all those years (left in 73), Lawrence, old town looking so much the same, but that mad explosion of growth in the outer rings...
Now there are crack-houses, I'm told, and despair stands upon street corners staring numbly at nothing. Children walk through the doors of the Alano Club, saying their names, that they are addicts, almost with a swagger of pride. This is me, I am different, I am an addict.
Cathy said, it's time to do it. To write. I really don't know of anything else to do. I will continue to design, screen, sell t-shirts. And the Mission continues to call. And I can think of nothing I would rather do than the Will of the Dancer. My Higher Power.
I've never wanted money. Never turned it down, just never felt it romancing me. I always wanted...meaning. Purpose. That when it comes time for me to lay my head down for the last time, that I can do so with a sense of having done the Will. Whatever that might be.
I ramble.
Until next time.
