On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

"add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith,  Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love,  By name to come called charity, the soul  Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loathe To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess  A Paradise within thee, happier far.—" - Milton (Paradise Lost) I've spent a lot of my leisure time in used bookstores. One of the best was Berger's in Sunnyvale, California, back in the 80s. It was a dusty hole in the wall, owned by Thomas Berger, who spent his days reading classics and theological works, but would stop and ring up sales or handle trades as needed. I saw him use a vacuum cleaner a couple of times too. Like any good used bookstore, it reflected the owner's tastes, and in this case, it was the classics and history at very low prices. That was right up my alley, and my average stay was two hours, often more. My routine was to walk through the aisles and check the new arrivals, which were on the floor in boxes and bags until ...

He traverses familiar,  As one should come to town  And tell you all your dreams were true;  He lived where dreams were sown. - Emily Dickinson  "Do you suppose I give a damn about life now? Why, you bone-head, I haven't got a single damned lying hope or pipe dream left!" "By God, there's no hope! I'll never be a success in the grandstand--or anywhere else! Life is too much for me! I'll be a weak fool looking with pity at the two sides of everything till the day I die!" - Eugene O'Neill (The Iceman Cometh)  I've first saw O'Neill's play, "The Iceman Cometh" in high school. My English & Literature class watched the movie version that starred Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan on PBS. I won't go into all of the deep meaning, as there's cliff notes and Google for that, but what seems relevant today was the importance of dreams, which are part of a reality, even if delusional. The play'...

  "Like all men in this land, he had been a wanderer, an exile on the immortal earth. Like all of us, he had no home. Wherever great wheels carried him was home." - Thomas Wolfe (Of Time And The River) ...the new kid in town... ...a new face, possibly Middle Eastern, which is rare around here...I recognized myself in him him because he was acting like I did a few months ago, he had found a spot, a haven, possibly after some aimless wandering about to avoid being seen by those he knew. The first stage of homelessness is the worst...everything looks big, every problem crushing you and what was your life is now gone...it's a rebirth but it doesn't feel that way because it feels more like death. In the tarot, the death card is actually a symbol of rebirth...which I knew due to being a tarot card reader on the early internet when it called the usenet and mainly consisted of discussion groups and ftp sites. I went by the name of Magus Fool, and...

  "And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep...tired...or it malingers" "I am no prophet-and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid." -T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) ...freeloaders and other terms... One of the biggest arguments against the homeless is that they're a bunch of freeloaders. Secondary argument that's sometimes applied to them is that they "don't pay taxes," and live off society. The argument that they don't pay taxes is generally based on whether they pay state or federal income tax. The fact is around 50% of the population doesn't pay federal income tax or live off of some sort of government assistance...not to mention that virtually all tax cheats are from the non-homeless population. The hom...