It was only a matter of time before I found it. Dotted with palm trees, Chess Park sits on a choice piece of beachfront just south of the Santa Monica Pier. About fifty metal chess boards are inlaid in the park's wooden tables and there is even a giant concrete board on the ground. (Though the giant chess pieces are locked up tantalizingly nearby, I've never seen anyone play on it yet.) On a sunny weekend there can be over a dozen games being played at once, with numerous spectators as well.

The battles can be fast and fierce, especially when they are "blitz" games in which each player only has a total of five minutes to make all of his moves. Humorous trash-talking is quite common as opponents seek to unnerve or belittle one another. While the games are often fascinating, it is the players themselves who are the real entertainment. Here are a few that I've come to know the best.

Sitting tall in his wide straw hat, Duckworth is probably the best player overall. He plays his chess with quiet efficiency, but between games he can sometimes launch into political rants about the election primaries or debunking conspiracy theories.

Shoma is a very friendly and funny Russian immigrant. When he found out about my practice, he tried to give me twenty dollars. We've had a couple of interesting discussions on philosophy, spiced with his humorous insights. His daughter was tragically killed by lightning when she was only fourteen years old, so he's rather cynical about religion in general and God in particular.

Gentle Gene is a kind fellow that I often spar with. He also has a meditation practice and actually went to Japan with Alan Watts, who played a seminal role in the transmission of Buddhism (particularly Zen) from East to West. Gene gave me some Cho-Wa (Japanese for "harmony") herbal tea, which, according to its information, "...can raise and harmonize your 'Ki' (life force)...[bringing you] into harmony with your world." I tried it at the Zen Center and I did seem a little more focused during the meditation, but it's hard to tell with my erratic practice.

Wolf is an amazing story. He's Apache and has recently turned his life around. He was a drug-addicted alcoholic who spent four years in prison for assault and then became homeless when he got out. Now he's got a construction job, has his own place, has kicked all his addictions (except tobacco), and has an angel of a girlfriend. But he's still got a long way to go to "knock the rust off his chess game", as he puts it.

And then there are the other homeless guys like me. "Download" practically lives at the park, usually the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night. (Heck, on reflection, he might actually live there after all.) He can be quite pedantic about almost any topic. This tendency is exacerbated by his fairly caustic outlook on life, especially after being injured a few weeks ago in a hit and run by someone driving a truck. I guess that might make me pretty abrasive too.

I originally met Charles at the homeless shelter. He's a bit hyperactive and quite loquacious, wise-cracking about anything and everything. He taught me the "beach bum" skill of how to unlock the bathrooms by reaching up under the door with a stick. I've found that the handle of my small broom does the trick nicely.

Ronald is a homeless illegal immigrant from El Salvador who's been living in the U.S. for many years. I sometimes refer to him as a bodhisattva because he's been so generous to me, sharing his food, his knowledge of the homeless life, and even his sleeping location out by the large sand rakes (pulled by tractors) out on the beach.

By far the biggest character (and the loudest) is Carl----or, to us mere mortals, the self-proclaimed "Great Carlini". Always wearing his signature pith helmet, the Great Carlini is a rather imposing fellow dishing out hilarious non-stop banter and a strong game to back up all the bluster. Sometimes, when he makes a good move, he will shout out nonsense words like "Hooshkababah!" And when he delivers the coup de grace he will sometimes start dancing in his seat and waving his arms about as he belts out a strange tune that is something of a theme song for him. He insists on playing for one dollar a game. Since I don't have any money, I ponied up a granola bar after he crushed me in a matter of minutes. At first, he turned up his nose at it, but he did eventually take it since he couldn't get anything else out of me.

One night I stayed up until 2am playing chess in a cafe with a couple of members of the Santa Monica Chess Club----a sweet older woman named Linda who thumped me twice and her somewhat manic younger friend Rob. He's an incredibly generous guy. Not only did he buy me a fruit smoothie that evening, but he got it into his head that we would go biking the next day.

So the next morning, after very little sleep and a zombie (zumbie?) session at the Zen Center, I met Rob at Chess Park. He rented me a bike and we headed off down the coastal bike path on a gorgeous day. It was a wonderful trip, but I didn't realize that he was serious about riding all the way to the Redondo Pier and back, a distance of about 30-35 miles in total.

He bought me a great dinner at El Torito restaurant on the Redondo Pier, but we had to hurry to get the rental bike back before the shop closed. By then, the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up, so I was really struggling on the way back, especially since I was under-dressed in only shorts and a t-shirt. We finally pulled in five minutes late and I was so frozen and exhausted that my legs were all wobbly when I tried to walk. And the next morning I woke up in my alley battling a cold.

So of course we repeated the same trip the following weekend. But this time I dressed warmer and the journey was actually a piece of cake. (I lose so much energy when I'm cold.) And to top it all off, besides brunch at Panera and dinner at Subway, Rob is loaning me his second bike! So now I've been enjoying my new mobility, tooling all over Santa Monica and Venice in a fraction of the time it took me to walk everywhere. Woohoo!

A final note on the chess games. Unlike Washington Square Park in New York City, there are no drug addicts or hustlers playing for money (except for the Great Carlini's nominal fee), so I've been able to play quite a lot with a wide variety of opponents. Naturally, my chess game is improving as I learn interesting tactics and deeper strategies. Unfortunately, my chess practice has remained stagnant.

This is the psychological practice that I mentioned in my entry "Knights on the Square" in which I am attempting to free myself from the ego constriction around the issues of winning and losing. Chess games are a microcosm of the similar ego games regarding notions of winning and losing (success and failure, etc.) in the rest of my life too. I've been hoping that if I could "loosen up" at chess, then perhaps I could generalize the lesson to the the rest of my life as well.

But I still get swept away by the battle, swept away by my ego. Sometimes during the fray I'll have a vague memory that I'm supposed to be practicing something else besides queen's gambits or bishop sacrifices (how profane!), but the moment is inevitably swallowed up in the thrill of battle. So while I am starting to win more games of chess, I continue to lose the much bigger game of liberation. I'm still firmly in the thrall of my desire to win and my fear of losing----those two bad boys who never go anywhere without each other. (And yes, I realize the irony of wanting to win the "game of liberation" too. That may be the one I end up letting go of first.)

It's so hard to even remember to try to keep my ego in check when the other egomaniac across the table shouts "Shakababoom!" as he slaughters my poor defenseless knight.


"They write books about guys like me!"
"Why am I the only one allowed to make great moves?!"
"Gimme what I want and nobody gets hurt!"
"You are playing the Great Carlini. You are not expected to do well."
"Don't worry, this won't hurt for long."
"This, to me?! You've got a lot of nerve, chess player!"
"If I play any better, I could scare myself."
"A monk?! Don't tell me he's a monk! And don't tell me he doesn't have any money!"
---The Great Carlini

"My only problem is that I don't have any problems. Maybe I'm Buddhist after all."
"Only a stone should be alone." (Jewish proverb)
"Everybody has problems. In Russia we just buy a bottle of vodka and tell our friends that my wife is a whore or my boss is a pest. But here in America everyone is too busy, so you have to pay a psychiatrist to listen to you."
---Shoma

"My spiritual path is the path of least resistance."
---Wolf

First, the bad news. Sweet Shoma, my witty chess friend was hit by a car. Apparently he's in pretty bad shape cuz he was taken to the intensive care unit at UCLA Medical Center. The news spread through Chess Park like wildfire, saddening everyone. Shoma is an especially jovial fellow, one of the "gentlemen" players amidst all the trash-talkers. "Download" is now promulgating a paranoid conspiracy theory since he was also hit by a car a few weeks ago. I called the hospital, but since I don't know Shoma's last name, I couldn't get any information. I will try to find someone who knows his last name this weekend. And since I have Rob's bike, maybe I will try to go visit him at the hospital.

I attended "Homeless Court" to give Dolphin moral support during his case. Homeless Court is a special program ajudicated once a month at Santa Monica City Hall. (I tried to get my case transferred to this court, but apparently I haven't been homeless long enough.) Dolphin has several "drunken and disorderly" charges that stem from some alcoholic binges in which he ended up passed out naked in the street. This is all according to Dolphin and I'm still not sure about his wild stories. (See "Shelter from the Storm".) I'm inclined to believe him, partly because I experienced similar episodes during some wild and woolly days in my distant past.

The judge sentenced him to three months in a residential rehabilitation program, but outside the court Dolphin said he wouldn't go and would have his lawyer fight the sentence. I'm not sure how that all turned out, but several days later he did get a place to live off the streets (in rehab?) and is happily out of the homeless shelter. Now he says his mother in Indonesia hired some private investigators to track him down so that she could tell him about his brother's impending surgery. So now Dolphin is apparently going to fly to Singapore where the surgery is going to take place. Again, I am not quite sure about all of his dramas, but I guess I should endeavor to take them at face value until proven otherwise.

My own day in court was thankfully anti-climactic. I had to get up before dawn to catch a bus to the LAX Airport Court. But without a watch (again, this comes back to bite me in the butt!), I had to guesstimate the time to wake up. I've gotten pretty good at estimating the time by the stars (e.g., Big Dipper directly overhead is about 5am), but unfortunately it was cloudy that night/morning. So I woke up in my alley at what I thought was about the right time, packed up my gear, then walked ten blocks to the bus stop only to find out that it was only 3:30am!

Anyhow, I made it to court with plenty of time to spare. When my case was called, the District Attorney offered to dismiss the charges before I even had a chance to speak or proffer the nice letter that the St. Josheph's social worker wrote for me requesting community service instead of a fine or jail time. The judge did make me promise not to be in the parks after hours before he dismissed the charges. I thanked everybody and scooted out. End of story.

I've spoken with several of the homeless folks who were arrested that early morning on Valentine's Day. ("Valentine's Day Surprise") A few were released from jail that next day, but most spent about six days in the joint. On a sorta positive note, some of them did get some of their belongings back (bikes, tents), but most of them lost most of their stuff.

I spent a night with them at the Venice Library parking lot (as opposed to the private parking lot across the street where everyone was arrested), but the police showed up again. I grabbed all my gear and was almost over the wall again when I realized that they weren't arresting anybody, just kicking us out. I've since given up on the library area altogether and have gone back to my little Venice alley niche. There's some little creature---probably a mouse or a rat---that sometimes comes scurrying over me and my stuff in the middle of the night. The first night he curiously tried to explore my sleeping bag until I informed him that I was in it. I never quite wake up fast enough to see what species he/she actually is.

Here in Los Angeles, the homeless shelters are seasonal, operating only during the Winter. So they will be closing on March 15th. I haven't been going to them lately, especially since the weather has gotten better. But even during the rain I prefer to sleep in a seldom-used doorway alcove not far from the Zen Center. But some of my friends are still relying on the cots and meals offered by the shelters.

I've finally read some of John's writing and it is actually quite excellent. His descriptions, settings, characters, and dialogue are all very evocative and I've suggested that he try to get something published somewhere, anywhere. I'm actually kinda relieved----I was a little worried that he might give me reams of "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." (You see, he's got this manic side to him...)

Andre is putting the finishing touches on yet a new wire sculpture after his last one (of a face) got squished like the first one. This new piece looks great. It's a man sitting in meditation posture. (Hmmm....) He's promised that he's gonna go into detox soon cuz of "too much partying" and "too much drama" in his life lately. He was hanging out with some friends in Malibu when a knife fight broke out. And then, just a couple of days ago, he showed up at St. Joseph's with another friend who had been knocked out over a disagreement about a burrito, of all things.

Andrew has been promoted to shift manager at Jack-in-the-Box and is saving up to get an apartment. We spent a rainy late night under an awning talking about life in general and goals in particular.

And finally, some the ducks that shared the parking lot by the Venice library with us have had ducklings. While they don't have to worry about the cops, they'll still need all the luck they can get to survive the seagulls, cats, and traffic. They are cute fuzzy little balls, cheeping away and scurrying after their mothers.

Sunny days, shelters closing, ducklings peeping, and guys running naked in the streets-----I guess Spring has sprung.


"Tonight: buy a new spring outfit if you want."
---my Sagittarius horoscope

"We are not homeless. We are the refugees from the war on the poor ever since the Johnson administration"
---"Chief" Keetoowah

"Never say 'homeless'. Say 'extended camping adventure'!"
---Dell

"I prefer 'residentially-challenged'."
---Brandy

"We've been presidentially-challenged ever since Lincoln left office!"
---another homeless guy, mis-hearing Brandy's comment

"A strip mall? Ain't that where you can get a lap dance?"
"Some people have eyes, but they can't really see."
---homeless Stevie, exhibiting some yin-yang polarities on the wisdom spectrum

"I deserve a simple life."
---Andrew

First, the good news. My chess friend Shoma is doing better. He was moved out of the intensive care unit and into a regular recovery room. The room has a phone so I was finally able to call him. He remembered who I am and sounded in good spirits, reporting that he was "doing okay", though he sounded very tired. It will probably be quite a while yet before he'll be healthy enough to return to Chess Park.

Rob and I went on another long bike ride this past weekend. He picked me up in Santa Monica and we drove down to Sunset Beach just south of Long Beach. We rode his bikes all the way to Crystal Cove just above Laguna. On the way, we took the short ferry to Balboa Island and indulged in some "Balboa Bars"---ice cream bars dipped in chocolate and then dipped in your choice of various toppings. I chose toppings of half Heath candy bar, half Oreo cookie. And man, did I enjoy it. Amidst a fairly austere diet, these delicious extravagances stand out that much more. My dinners of Libby's Vienna Sausages (I'm working on my 200th sausage by now) definitely help me appreciate my Bread and Roses brunches and realize what a blessing a Balboa Bar really is. And, of course, it's all free to this penniless monk, so I always remember to be grateful for the sausages too.

(Several people have asked if I feel guilty for accepting free food for the homeless. The short answer is no. Mainly, I feel that my sweeping and cleaning is more than adequate compensation for the food. Also, there is a long history of beggar monks in all traditions relying on the support of lay people. One could argue that indeed all religion is structured on a similar social agreement or condemn the parasitic aspects of religions in general, but I don't want to get into that here. Ultimately, one of my goals is to free myself from my ego craving. Craving for acceptance is a strong drive in me, so I am working to free myself from the notion that I need to prove myself worthy of anything, even of meals for the homeless. So much of our culture is infused with this striving to prove worthiness. From a Taoist/Buddhist/Yogic perspective, it's all an unnecessary form of slavery.)

Anyhow, back to the bike trip. Rob and I explored the tide pools and caves at Little Treasure Cove and replayed a chess game from a book on games lost by Bobby Fischer. That evening on the return trip, we came across an abandoned bonfire on Huntington beach. So we stopped to warm ourselves and ponder the starry night sky overhead. As we were loading the bikes back into Rob's car, I noticed my name in his license plate: "5ZUM454".

And now, some lame news. I've been kicked out of the Santa Monica Library a couple of times because they don't allow sleeping bags inside. I guess this is an attempt to keep homeless people from bringing in a lot of gear, but since I don't have anywhere to store my stuff (I carry my life on my back everywhere I go) it's a de facto excommunication from the library. I still sneak in from time to time, but one time the security guards confiscated my stuff when I went to the bathroom. It was a disconcerting moment indeed when I came back to find my gear was missing, but they gave it back without too much hassle, just another warning not to bring in my sleeping bag.

So I have switched most of my library use to the Venice Library because they aren't so anal about me bringing in all my gear, though the broom and dustpan still always cause stares. One nice librarian even asked about my practice and checks in with me from time to time.

Over the past few weeks I've checked out and read a few books, indulging my dormant taste for science fiction. First was a quirky little book called The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury with wonderfully twisted artwork by Dave McKean. Next was Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Orson Scott Card's wildly popular Ender's Game which I read decades ago. And then I read Robert Heinlein's early 60s classic Stranger In A Strange Land, which was an amazing harbinger of the whole counterculture movement. This novel struck a deep chord in me, not only because it bravely challenges standard social mores and customs that most of us take for granted, but also because a lot of the beautifully blasphemous ideas are lifted from Eastern philosophical traditions.

But for the moment, I've stopped checking out books because they've become distractions from my real priorities as a monk: chess, biking, and this blog. (Oh yeah, maybe some meditation and sweeping too.....)


"I'm a librarian. Don't make me have to shush your ass."
---bumpersticker on a car outside the Venice Library

"Most of the homeless women are lesbians, prostitutes, or mental cases. Take your choice."
---loud conversation going on behind me here at the Venice Library as I type this

"The journey is the destination."
---our bike ride mantra

"She laid a hand on his face. 'Son,' she said. 'We love you. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if you leave us one day.' She kissed his cheek. 'And if and when you die your bones will lie undisturbed, we'll see to that, you'll lie at ease forever, and I'll come see you every All Hallows' Eve and tuck you in more secure.'"
---an undead mother to her mortal son, in Ray Bradbury's The Homecoming

"The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes...Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened."
---Valentine Michael Smith, in Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land

Lately I've been focusing on cleaning the beaches. Not only is it nice to spend the day out by the ocean, but I find it very satisfying to look back on a clean stretch of sand.....even if the incoming tide will soon be depositing more trash. (The lessons of impermanence and humility are ever-present.) And then there's the bonus of dolphin-spotting too.

When my routine is running smoothly, I wake up in my Venice alley nook at dawn, make my way to the beach, wash up in the public restrooms, meditate out on the sand, do some stretching exercises, practice a little tai-chi, clean the beach for a while, and then head off to Bread and Roses Cafe for brunch. In the afternoon, I head back to the beach to clean some more, then head over to the library to read the newspaper, do a little e-mail and/or write this blog.

When the library closes at 8pm I head to the middle of a road roundabout where I eat my dinner of Libby's Vienna Sausages and snack crackers. I sit facing "Restaurant Hama", a sushi joint that projects the same surfing documentary in an endless loop up against a large wall. I share the roundabout with a stunning black sculpture of a woman's twisting nude torso. After dinner I bid her adieu and I head back to sleep in my alley nook. Weekends I head up to Santa Monica and it's less cleaning and more chess with my friends. (Hey, it's the weekend.)

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, when I relax into the cleaning and sweeping, it becomes its own reward. Of course, if I can indeed relax, then this is true of every other activity too, whether it's walking, eating, socializing, writing a blog, whatever. (I won't include playing chess cuz I'm failing so beautifully at it!) This is the realm of "flow" or "being in the zone" experienced by athletes, musicians, dancers, and everybody else too when we merge effortlessly into what we are doing. From a Taoist standpoint, the practice is to attain this graceful harmony in all activities, in our whole life itself.

Sometimes it helps for me to recognize that my cleaning is just moving "stuff" from one place to another. I take stuff from the beaches and sidewalks and put it in trash cans. Then the garbage crews take the stuff from the trash cans and move it to a garbage dump. Perhaps the same is true of everything else I do too, whether it's walking, breathing, eating, talking, chessing, blogging, even sleeping (chew on that one for a while). I just move stuff around. Very humbling, and yet very freeing too.

One day a lifeguard came over to thank me for cleaning up and I took the opportunity to ask him about the large sand rakes that tractors drag all over the beach. I was wondering if my minimal cleaning was totally redundant in the face of the range and speed of these machines. But he told me that the sand rakes aren't allowed to drag the water line because the seaweed and kelp that washes ashore must not be disturbed because this is where sandflies live, which, in turn, are the diet of the plovers and killdeer (birds). This is pretty ironic since the tide line is where most of the trash naturally washes up.

Prompted by my comment in a recent entry ("Mad Monk") that "I am getting nicely roasted by the sun", a friend threatened to mail me a hat and some sunscreen lotion. That very day I found a sun visor washed up on the beach. It's even light blue, sorta like the rest of my outfit. Hmmm....

One morning on the beach I ran into Lou, a slightly unhinged homeless guy who is grappling with deep religious issues. (Uh....I guess that makes two of us.) He goes to church every day and lately has been studying the Koran. He asked me many probing questions about Eastern traditions, especially Buddhism. Then he helped me clean up the beach for a while.

One windy evening I taught meditation to five young folks from the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. One of them is the caseworker from St. Joseph's Center who I already mentioned gave me some bus tokens and the supportive letter for my court case. Another volunteers at Bread and Roses Cafe. After the meditation, we cleaned up the beach for a while and then they bought me some delicious pupusas.

It is quite common to see crews filming on the beach. I've seen everything from student film projects to television news crews to time lapse photography to a big budget movie scene (some Adam Sandler film). One TV news crew decided to interview me for their piece on life in Venice. I mentioned something about appreciating Venice's bohemian vibe and they filmed me cleaning up the beach. At first I was hesitant because I was concerned that someone I know might see it and word might get back to my family, triggering the inevitable maternal freak out. But then they told me that their TV station was in Georgia..."...the one in the former Soviet Union."

Being interviewed on television is a dangerously tasty little carrot for my hungry ego. For similar reasons, teaching meditation also represents another potential pitfall for my practice as my ego can feed on these activities in unhealthy ways. (The Sufis are especially vociferous about the risks of "teaching ego". Someone once told me one of their particularly blunt sayings which leaves no room for ambiguity: "If you want to teach or are asked to teach, don't.") As a monk, my first inclination is to decline these temptations, but as a Taoist, I am reminded to seek the balance in all things, not shun them out of hand. So on these occasions I try to monitor my ego as best I can, offer my help in the spirit of service, and hope that my head doesn't get too inflated.

While cleaning up the beach one afternoon, I found a note amongst the flotsam and jetsam. "I would like new friends. $Money Friendship. Always I am home. Robert." And it contained a phone number, written twice. I was touched by this lonely appeal (not by the offer of money, of course, since I don't use the stuff now) and I called him from the phones at St. Joseph's Center. Robert turned out to be a somewhat unbalanced 63-year-old man who is indeed lonely. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite what he was looking for in a friend. So if any of you know any 20 to 23-year-old red-headed women living in the Venice area interested in a May to December romance, please let me know.

On the occasional warm sunny weekends, flocks of people will descend on the beaches, providing all sorts of nubile distractions with a different sort of beach "bum" to test this poor monk's practice.....and libido.


"Zen Massage"
---sign a block away from Venice Beach

"I am a great humble person."
---Lou

"Yes, it's called 'Kiai Urusai, Ran Hayai'."
---my new response whenever someone asks me if I know any martial arts (translation: "Scream Loud, Run Fast")

"There's something special about taking a crap outside at 4am."
---TMI from a homeless fellow who saw me cleaning up

"So what do people do in California?"
---socially-challenged fellow making small talk at Bread and Roses Cafe

More comments overheard at Bread and Roses Cafe:
"People sure do get thrown off by this same-sex marriage stuff. I don't care if you marry a kangaroo as long as you're happy."

"Yeah, nice guys finish last, but they usually get slapped around first."

"The key to growing old? Just keep waking up. And the day you don't wake up you don't need to worry about it any more."

The buzz spread quickly through the homeless community and rumors were already flying by the time I heard about it: someone had been murdered on the beach. I checked with the Los Angeles Times online "Homicide Report" to get the facts: a 25-year-old white homeless man had been beaten to death, then partially buried in the sand at Venice Beach. According to the reader comments on the report, his name was Nate and he came from Toledo, Ohio.

After a few days, the buzz died down amongst the homeless, but the police have vowed to crack down on all illegal activities. They've increased their presence, especially along the boardwalk, and have been making more arrests for vagrancy and illegal camping. And apparently cars, vans and campers are no longer allowed to be parked in the same spot for more than three days.

When I got back up to Santa Monica this weekend, a homeless woman told me that the police raided the beaches with the aid of helicopters to round up the homeless. And apparently they even swept through the Third Street Promenade one night, clearing out the homeless that normally sleep there. I went there last night, and indeed, I saw only a fraction of the homeless folks that are normally there.

Of course, this whole chilling episode does give me pause to reflect on my own security. All in all, I still feel relatively safe. After all, I'm more likely to get hit by a car while biking these busy streets or gag on my 300th Vienna sausage. (Bless the lil' beasties!) Although, last night a disturbing incident served to shake me from my reverie.

I've been feeling fairly secure in my little alley cubbyhole---it's in some dark shadows (away from the alley and house lights), so I can sleep pretty much out of sight. But last night at about 1am I was woken up by a guy repeatedly shouting "Get out!" and "Put that down!" Apparently, a thief had broken into a garage very near to me and had been discovered by the owner. The thief escaped down the alley with the owner threatening to call the police.

I immediately got up and started hurriedly packing up all my gear, since I was sure that if the police showed up, then they would surely discover me in my little nook. Instead, the owner and a friend started searching the alley for the thief. Amazingly, they walked right past my niche and didn't see me crouching in the shadows. They got in his car to search some more and I made my escape. I ended up sleeping in a parking lot by the post office with about ten other homeless people.

This recent murder prompted me to check up on the case of Terry Wendover, the homeless woman I briefly knew who was killed in Poughkeepsie, New York back in July 2007. (Blog entry: "Street Death") I was relieved to find out that a suspect has finally been arrested for her murder. Now I just hope they've got the right guy. And maybe he's also responsible for the death of Iris Rogers, another homeless woman who was murdered a month before Terry.

On a related note, there's currently a twisted court trial going on here in Los Angeles involving two old ladies (mid to late 70s) who are charged with befriending homeless men, having them get life insurance policies with the women as beneficiaries, and then killing them by running them over with a car. This appears to be one of the more extreme results of the fact that many people see the homeless as less than human.

I guess this is as good a time as any to address comments from a few people who have drawn parallels between my walkabout and Chris McCandless' ill-fated experiences in the wilderness of Alaska, as chronicled in the recent movie "Into the Wild". I haven't seen the movie, but I read Jon Krakauer's original "Outside" magazine article on McCandless. I actually arrived in Alaska right when he died, in the late summer of 1992.

It is true that both of us were/are attempting to free ourselves from standard social conditioning and expectations. But while McCandless rejected society, I am attempting to embrace it in all of its fractured glory----the beauty and the cruelty, the hilarity and the bleakness, the life and even the death. (Ultimately, these dualistic distinctions are merely the projections of my own mind.) I bow down to it all. Or at least that's the theory. I've still got a long way to go. The practice is in narrowing the gap between my limitations and the ideal. And sometimes the practice is accepting my limitations as the ideal. After all, I bow down to my limitations too.

And, just to be clear, if I went into the wilderness, I doubt I would last even the four months that McCandless survived. Ain't no Vienna sausages in the wild.

 

"I want everyone to know my son was NOT a homeless man, he has a very loving family who had not heard from him in several weeks. He had a job in another state, an address, a home. What these people chose to do is unimaginable, and We want justice to be served. We love and miss our son"
---Nate's mother, commenting on the Homicide Report

"The perps are in custody. Thanks to video surveillance and some concerned citizens. It's time to clean up Venice beach front. There are many drugged out youth that pose a very real risk to our citizens. No more. Things have to and will change in Venice"
---Brad, commenting on the Homicide Report

"Don't worry about me, I've got plenty of angels watching over me."
---Toni, a homeless woman sleeping by herself in Chess Park

"2007 was the first year in 37 years that we didn't have any murders."
---"Chief" Keetoowah

"I bow down to drunkards, thieves, adulterers, prostitutes, and liars. I bow down to them all."
---Tibetan yogi Drukpa Kunley, the "Divine Madman" in one of the "crazy wisdom" traditions (This is not an exact quote, since I am trying to remember what I read several years ago.)

Some quotes from Arthur C. Clarke, who died a few days ago:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible."
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

Faye (a librarian): "I will love him even as they kick him out." (regarding a guy causing problems at the Venice library)
Me: "Way to take the high road."
Faye: "There is only the high road."