Easy Come, Easy Go

The disability check came today. The disability check went today. There is about $60 left for gas, cigs and stuff we forgot for the rest of the month. That's with only a partial payment on my computer and a zero payment to the landlady. If it were not for Food Stamps, we would be hungry. It's not fun telling the landlady we have nothing to give for rent this month, which is partly why I will shift that chore to Melinda. She has lived her longer than I. We have been as much as six months behind on the rent and caught it up. She has a history of working with us when we are short on money. Although it's unlikely, living with the knowledge that she could simply tell us to leave is demoralizing...dehumanizing. Even though I logically 'know better', I'm still bound emotionally, to some degree, to the primal notion that a man is "less" if he cannot provide for his family, even if the "providing" is only a government check. For many of the people who are making payments on a house, it is not substantially different. They can simply be told to leave also. The systems is designed so. It is not accident that being too poor to have the necessities of the culture around you grinds you down, makes you less, psychologically. It's why sometimes a man might fly an airplane into a building...

Earlier in the day I was "up". Having money to put gas in the car just so you can go to town and get a few things, including a cigarette is uplifting even though we know it is fleeting. It's so hot here lately that sleep during the day is impossible, even with two air conditioners and two fans running 24/7. I will try to devise a way, with blankets or something, to contain a much smaller area in which we can have the computers, TV and the a/c and fan during the day, leaving the "womb" only for feeding and eliminating.

I learned of the death of two people who certainly never knew I existed, but whom I admired to a degree. Jack Kevorkian, who some derisively called "Dr. Death" died. He was 83. Matt Dillon also died. Oh, not the young actor named Matt Dillon, the Matt Dillon, US Marshall of Dodge City, Kansas. An epitome of manhood for some men of a certain age. Oh yes, of course, it was the actor James Arness who died. He was 88. But I knew nothing of James Arness. I knew Matt Dillon. Amazing really, the he and Peter Graves were actually brothers. You could see it in their faces, in their voices, but they seemed so very different. Most of the time the age of the person is given, presumably so that the reader can experience whatever reaction they are supposed to. If they were in their 80s, as these guys were, well, it's bad, no one likes to hear of a death, but they lived a long time. They had good lives. It is less bad that they died than that a young girl of 16. *sigh* They are "at peace". So are a qatrillion other humans who will never be born or exist at all.

We distract ourselves, luckily for most it is fairly easy to do, from the hard parts of life with the less hard parts and the occasional good part. I had food, played online, wrote some. Now I will sleep while it is cool. Wondering when my final eviction notice will come...I suspect long before I reach my 80s.

TRB