Yesterday, I got food for a woman who was hungry. It was cheap fast food, but I helped her with a meal, and I hope some dignity.  Afterward, I experiences an odd sense of self-pity.

You see, I’m not really in a position where I can afford to buy someone else a meal. I’ve done it a couple times in the past, when my personal situation was a little bit better. But my situation right now makes me question my food choices for myself based on budget. Can I afford to eat out? What do I have to eat at home? Do I need to stop at the store to get something? How much ramen and rice do I have?

Yesterday I needed to get something for myself, and didn’t feel like waiting the 90 minutes or so it would take to get home and make something. While I couldn”t really afford it, I decided to stop in McDonald’s for a couple hamburgers and fries. Less than $4. I’d drink water.  (Cost and personal choice.) There was a woman outside begging for change, even a quarter. I couldn’t afford to help her. I was even going to pay for my own meal with my debit card.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her as I ate. And I watched people just walking by either barely acknowledging her presence, or seeming resentful.

There is a story, I’m not sure from where, about a king looking for a successor. My recall of the precise story is poor, but I found another that is similar. The point of the story is one in which those with the least help those who appear to have little. I suppose another variation would be the pay it forward concept. As I ate, these thoughts ate at me. While I don’t have much, I thought I had enough at least to help this woman out with one meal. So after I finished eating, I brought her in and paid for her meal from my debit card. Less than $7.

I didn’t help her to make myself feel better. In the grand scheme of things, I knew what I could offer would only be a small and fleeting gesture. But I hope it eased her day somewhat.

Afterward, I was given to reflection about my own situation – the limits of help I could offer and the help I need, but don’t know where to find. I haven’t been able to pay rent since January. My roommate/landlord has been very patient with me, but can’t continue to do so indefinitely. Today, I had to call creditors and tell them I couldn’t make my payments on time this month, including student loans. At least on the student loans, they were able to verbally authorize deferments that keep my credit rating from being affected. Barring a rapid uptick in business, I’m going to get dinged by two other creditors though.

This morning, a man offering me a bus pass seemed like a great windfall. The rates go up next month, and I have to think about if I can afford to make the trip to the office three times a week when I’m not getting appointments. At this rate, I’m beginning to question how long I’ll have money even for groceries. I ask myself if I can put off a haircut just a little bit longer.

When I finished grad school in December, I didn’t think it would take this long to build my business. I had a solid core of clients that I thought I could expand upon. Instead, that core shrank as some were squeezed by the economy, one client moved and has been squeezed by the economy, and several clients didn’t follow me after graduation as I thought they would.

So now I’m starting to feel a state of panic. This morning as I was getting ready to head out to the office, my hands shook from the tension. Even now, if they’re not occupied, I can feel the tension in them beneath the surface.

I don’t need a lot of help to be steady on my feet. I just need a few clients. In the past several months, I’ve been building a network of professional contacts. I’ve completed a website for my practice that I’m pleased with. Recently, I found a nice office out of which I could work, for which I would be charged up front. It also seems like the social networks from which I could draw potential clients has been expanding. All in all, it seems like I’m building a strong foundation for a practice. The only thing missing are clients.

I face the very real possibility that I may have to turn to friends to borrow a couch to sleep on, as my roommate/landlord will not be able to much longer go without having rent from me. Each week, I wonder if I’ll have enough appointments to pay for food and transportation. All I need are a few clients.

UPDATE: 11-9-09

I left the office I mentioned as of the beginning of October. I went in a couple of times to discover one or another intern there when I was supposed to be scheduled, which was more than a little frustrating & unnerving. The hours available to me kept getting more & more restricted, leaving no room for growth.

On the plus side, I was able to work out a deal with my roommate on rent, and get a little help from family.  I was also able to scrape together money for a state licensing exam in February. Hopefully, I’ll spend enough time preparing and won’t waste the money… Stressed because I still haven’t got my feet under me, so concentrating on studying is really hard. Creditors are still waiting, and not especially patiently.

Some months ago, I had an opportunity to have dinner with a homeless man. His story was one of having his own modest business, a house, two cars, and then losing it along with pretty much everything else when his marriage fell apart. His drifting brought him to San Francisco. As a veteran, he has access to resources at the VA, and he told me about his perception of some other veterans in similarly difficult situations who were having more trouble coping. He spoke of veterans whose mental or physical health circumstances took away options. He told me of his own struggle to come to terms with what he had lost, as well as being grateful for his health and the fact that it gave him the opportunity to recover.

I come to reflect on this dinner because of some recent news on homelessness related to our financial crisis.

The New York Times has an article about the surge in homelessness because of the economy: “Cities Deal With a Surge in Shantytowns” I haven’t yet had a chance to read the article, but had it highlighted for me by a blog post by Hilzoy in the Washington Monthly blog Political Animal. These aren’t the first references to new homelessness I’ve read or heard about in our current economic crisis. Within the last month or so, I’ve read about a tent community in Sacramento via McClatchy, which came to attention when it was featured on Oprah.

At the President’s press conference on Tuesday, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd awkwardly asked a question about why President Obama hasn’t asked the American public to make some specific sacrifices. On Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall writes about the “Social Contract Under Strain”. These two things bring something into relief for me. Since the ’80’s, it seems the burdens of American society have been shifted more and more onto the shoulders of those least economically able to bear them. Those at the top of the scale have been told that they have less and less responsibility within the social contract, other than doing whatever they can to make themselves richer. Former Vice-President, former President George H.W. Bush once derided Reagan’s economic policies as trickle-down economics, yet over thirty years, they’ve become the norm anyway. For thirty years, it’s been popular to believe that government is not the solution, but is instead the problem. We’ve been pulled further and further from the belief that we had any responsibility to a social contract aside from vague appeals to patriotism.

Tax revolts have led us to invest less and less in education such that in California and across the country, thousands of teachers are getting laid off (over 20,000 in southern California districts alone, if I recall correctly). College tuition rates even in state universities and community colleges are going up as school funding declines. When was the last time we made a concerted effort to invest in infrastructure including roads and bridges? We’ve allowed antitrust laws and financial regulations to fall aside so that AT&T, Verizon, Comcast have inordinate leverage over our means of communication and our financial institutions have brought our economy to its knees. It is long past time to fight over tax cuts or tax hikes. It’s time to talk about using tax policy to support our social contract, and act on the priorities agreed on by the American people as expressed through their votes in our elections. It’s time to have a real discussion of who has been shouldering our tax burdens, who has been gaming the system, and how to establish a more equitable balance.

I’ve been encouraged by how President Obama has been handling the crises he’s inherited. I’m confident our country is moving in a better direction. But there are still too many politicians and segments of the public who want to engage in hyperbole rather than serious policy discussion. Some who worship at the alter of moderation and bipartisanship insist on a 60 vote threshold for every proposal that goes through the senate, while conservative extremists have grown more extreme as moderate conservatives have lost ground in the Republican party. On the Democratic side, I hope the so-called moderates don’t derail the process toward long-overdue structural changes. On the Republican side, I hope there will be some to rise who believe in the virtues of government and responsible governance in actualizing our greatest hopes in our social contract.

And here I’ll end my rant. Thanks for your indulgence.

Last night, David Letterman had an excellent interview with Barack Obama. The interview ran long (about 26 minutes solid, without counting commercials) such that Dave had to cut his time with LeBron James short. In my opinion, this is the kind of interview that will play well with undecided voters who might feel a little hesitant toward Obama. Letterman play’s himself off as a dumb guy, but he can give a great interview when it suits him. It highlights a great contrast to traditional media who feel they either have to play gotcha or offer only substanceless softballs.

Part 1 – 8:06

Highlights

• Lipstick on a pig
• Used to be on the cover of Time and Newsweek
• McCain concession that election is about change
• On picking Biden – someone who can help him govern, but different perspective than Obama
• Why would people want 4 more years of same failed policy

More below the fold

(more…)

Another reason to love cats. Check out the full story at The Hamilton Spectator

Ferocious feline trees bear

The Associated Press
WEST MILFORD, N.J. (Jun 10, 2006)

A black bear picked the wrong New Jersey yard for a jaunt this week, running into a territorial tabby who ran the furry beast up a tree — twice.

I’ve been on a music kick lately, and thought I’d share some of what I’ve come across. Here’s the short version – check out Pandora if you’re interested in an exploratory musical journey.

When I got my Toshiba M400 tablet pc in April, I spent some time transferring applications and continue to do some minor tweaking. One of the apps that didn’t want to transfer properly without interfering with other programs was Musicmatch Jukebox. On my Portege 3500, I listened to Musicmatch radio most of the time I was online or occasionally listened to music I owned.

Though I did try to get Musicmatch working in the first week or two of setting up my new M400, I ultimately decided simply to work with Windows Media Player. I wasn’t able then and haven’t yet found an internet radio service for Windows Media Player comparable to the diversity offered by Musicmatch. However, with an internal CD player on my M400, I found it much more convenient to expand the music library on my computer. The processor and CD speed also made the process fast. I could listen to tracks on a CD even while saving the entire CD to my music library, and the process of saving tracks would typically take about five minutes. With the expansion of the music library on my computer, I could listen a lot longer without repeat tracks or getting bored with my music.

Still, after a month and a half, I found myself craving new and different music, so the search for online stations resumed. The first thing I found were some stations for relaxation music using a simple google search. This was largely for my massage practice so that I wouldn’t have to spend hours sorting through my expanded music library to customize a playlist. I settled on Ambient Meditation Audio Streams. It offers a variety of music in the audio stream, but unlike some other “relaxation” offerings I’ve heard, it doesn’t change pace or tone in jumping from classical relaxation, nature sounds, world music, or something else new age. In addition, in the course of listening to the music stream up to four hours at a time, I have never heard any kind of commercial.

Meditation music is not what I listen to when I’m studying or simply browsing the web. For that, I wanted to find something to fit a variety of tastes for alternative rock, classic rock, 80’s and 90’s hits, some pop rock, and perhaps a little swing, jazz, reggae and world music thrown in the mix. In this, Musicmatch excelled by offering a variety for free that was also easy to navigate. Yahoo Messenger offered a similar variety, which is unsurprising given Yahoo’s purchase of Musicmatch last year (if my memory is correct). While Yahoo offered the feature of being able to share what you might be listening to, the free service limited how often it could be restarted each month, and I’m not prepared to pay for it yet.

Though I’m still experimenting with it, I think I may have found my musical salvation. Pandora, created by the Music Genome Project, is an intriguing music sharing and recommendation service. I must say it wasn’t easy for me to find. It wasn’t in the top pages for my google searches. I think I ultimately found it on an ask.com search.

So what makes Pandora special? It let’s users build customized playlists by having them enter artists or songs they like. The service then will play artists and songs that it considers similar. As songs play, you may say that you like or dislike a song to refine your preferences for a given station, and you may also add songs to a favorites list. The thing I most like in my first impression of Pandora is that its original intent and primary function appears to be suggesting music that users may not have heard before. I can listen to my own music library when I want to be safe in listening to something familiar.

Another thing I like about Pandora is that it offers several ways to share music with friends. Users can search for shared station, email favorite stations to friends, and even have Pandora generate the code to paste into your blog so your favorite stations or songs are shown on your blog page. You can see it in action under the music tab at the right. Ty it out by entering a favorite song or artist in the create station box. Don’t want to experiment on your own yet? Feel free to strap on training wheels and sample my initial efforts. So far, “Swing, Jazz, & Reggae” and “Alternative Rock” have given me the best results. By the way. the initial station title is the name of the song or artist you entered. It is very easy to change the name either to what you hope for or what it turns out to be (if it’s different than you initially planned – which is part of the fun!).

Late last night watching PBS (KTEH, channel 10 on Comcast in the San Francisco Bay area), I came across Animusic. It was one of their fundraising drives featuring music set to computer animation. For now, I just want to say that it was fascinating and suggest that anyone who is a music fan should check it out.

According to Yahoo’s TV guide, it should be replaying tonight on KTEH at 8:30, or again on KTEH Jun 06 12:30am, KTEH Jun 06 01:00am, KTEH Jun 08 07:00pm, KRCB Jun 10 11:00pm, KTEH Jun 11 09:30pm, or KTEH Jun 11 11:30pm. I’m planning on recording the show myself. I may even see if I can splurge enough to invest in the DVD PBS is offering.

Climbing a Tree

Bark returns the grip of your hands.
The press of your calves and thighs,
the pull of your arms,
straining through moist heat
let you know you touch a living thing.
The tips of leaves bite – ever so lightly -
your shoulder where it joins bicep and tricep.
It almost tickles.
The joint of a branch becomes a jagged vice
against the sides of your foot
as your weight presses down, resisting your ascent.
Your hand hooks another branch.
Leaves crackle, joining your laughter
when your bicep and latissimus dorsi compress
against the burn of lactic acid,
hauling upward.

Meditating
Meditating on a cliff overlooking ocean surf
Crashing against worn rock
Grains of sand, baby-powder soft, press the sides of my thighs
and calves – air passes between the sand and my knees
My feet rest half-submerged in the giving surface
Water-touched air dances in a breeze over the naked flesh of my body
Face and forehead, chest and shoulders, exposed arms and legs

Delicate chimes join a distant flute whistling an ethereal theme
The air motion stirs the leaves of trees fifty yards at my back
The music is subtle
Yet seeps through me, saturating my soul
Picking me up
Carrying my consciousness off the warmth of the sand into a different comfort.

I am caught by the flute’s music on the warm wind:
Brought down to caress the sturdy rock of the cliff face below my body
Skimming the froth of waves cresting and crashing.
Soaring up, back the way I came
tickled in my ascent by sparse and dry grasses
and beautiful, stiff, green ocean weeds.
Reverberations of stirred wings counterbeat
the soft flutes as I pass over a rising tern
Over the top outcropping of the cliff face, and heated sand above
A brief shudder in passing through my body.
Rushing over, kicking up sand in my wind’s wake
I’m thrown to play among the boughs
and massive trunks of the forest
Up and around – circling, circling
I follow a gray squirrel joyfully
around half a dozen trees
to the speeding whistle of flutes in my mind
Straight up one last tree
Flipping over backwards upon gaining its heights
and diving at the fragrant, dark soil lining the forest floor.

The music quites to a whisper
I pass over turned earth in reverential silence.
I walk into my body to settle home,
This origin of sensual.

Once upon a time, I experimented with my artistic voice. While I still express myself creatively in a variety of ways, I don’t think I’ve exercised my purely artistic voice since I was an undergraduate. What follows is a poem I wrote in that period of shaping my voice.

For little background, it was inspired by watching the movie Altered States starring William Hurt. I believe it was in the 1950’s and 60’s that experiments were conducted with LSD as well as other drugs and sensory deprivation chambers to research altered states of consciousness. I don’t remember the history as well as I once did, but I think the last major experiments with sensory deprivation ended in the very early 1970’s.

So what does this poem have to do with the move or experiments over thirty years old? To be honest, not much. The movie provided inspiration for a jumping-off point. I haven’t participated in sensory deprivation experiments. Alcohol is the only consciousness altering substance I’ve put in my body, and never in quantities sufficient to get more than a slight buzz.

Sensory Deprivation is a mental experiment exploring the juxtaposition of the removal of sensual experience and the heightened emotional and physical sensations that might lead up to it. Did my experimental journey take you anyplace?

Sensory Deprivation

I.
The first thing they do
is claim guardianship of all your clothes.
To your mind
Hands and fingers not your own
Crawl over your nerve endings
Peeling across your chest in tearing tugging shirt tails from pants
Ultimately removing shirt from your shoulders
Hands of a lover
Opening belt clasp, button and zipper behind
Dragging hesitating on the backs of your legs
In drawing heavy denim fabric off sensitized ankles soles toes
Undergarments – twitch twinge
At the unfamiliar clinical hands embracing
Caressing, demanding sexual arousal
Your mind collapses, shuts off invaded.
But the dressing closet remains starkly empty
As you place the last piece atop the mound of your folded garments.
Your stomach churns twists knots below your diaphragm
And your face grows flush, warm
Dragging the leaden weight of your legs,
Tentatively pushing the door to the three-by three closet outward,
You place your clothes in the outstretched hands
Of the white-coated intern assigned to secure them.
Your glazed eyes note movement of the other’s lips, and you nod
But the void echoes in your ears.
The heavy white bathrobe provided on the hook in the closet
Cannot hide your naked flesh
No matter how you wrap it about yourself or draw its belt tight
With the muscles of your arms straining.
II.
Outside the tank
You notice disembodied voices, in hearing again, attempt reassurance
As disembodied hands – light brushes of wind, insect legs felt then not -
Attach patches guiding wires to data in your brain and heart.
A final word from the voices,
And you pivot on the ball of your foot, calf straining.
The two-feet wide circular hole returns your blank stare
And you inhale your last unstructured breath for four hours
When the two sets of hands
Take even the robe from your shoulders
And a third, pressing the small of your back
Guides you to enter feet first the hole in the surgically cold stainless steel.
It doesn’t matter, your head spinning dizzy in shock.

III.
Your feet descend slightly off horizontal.
Your shoulder blades come to rest on a form-fitted hospital mattress.
You fit snug in the hole, the union of mattress and body reaching
Down your spine from the back of your head
Supporting your neck
Following the muscles of your back
And the groove of your spine
Cradling your buttocks, and the backs of your thighs
Wrapping around below your knees, circling your calves
Closing off over the tops of your feet
To the support of your heels curving down from the top in gliding transition.
Several inches above your head, you catch a glimpse of motion
Regal, learned hands and arms -
You sense they belong to a man you saw standing behind the interns
Who attached the patches
But they could just as well belong to the woman you observed next to him.
The thoughts in your mind thrash that you cannot determine with certainty.
With fingertips leading, the hands and arms snake down
To position the wires from the patches in their guide clamps
To secure a heavy padded strap around your upper chest
and arms below your shoulder
To pivot your head precisely
and affix the air-mask over your mouth and nose
To engage the clamp encircling your head
and double check its adjustment.
Satisfied, the arms withdraw.

IV.
The dim illumination reaching you fades
As a submarine hatch closes over your hole.
A soft hiss and thunk
And you know you’re alone.
In an hermetically-sealed void.

V.
You feel your heart rate grow rapid:
The steady increase of power applied to a sewing-machine needle.
You feel it skip when the clamps press
Against your thighs, light pressure an alien comfort
Constricting about your forearms and waist, immobilizing.
You notice again the strap securing your chest
And the clamp around your head.
Your heart once again slower, but now insistent in your ears and throat
The steady beat powerful of a hammer on nail after nail.
Your thoughts a transfixed raccoon, its eyes twin moons in your car lights
Trapped.
Assured immobility – without hope of escape.

The hours of preparation,
Of being told specifically what to expect,
Your mind still withheld acceptance upon experience.

VI.
You imagine your heart stop completely
When you feel the slimy, chill touch of the gelled saline upon your soles.
Until it races again, fast and hard
The rhythmic, hyperactive throbbing of a jackhammer
As you focus your thoughts on the sensation you still have – while they remain.
Your feet have grown numb enshrouded in the gel.
The clamps and strap about your body press against your naked flesh.
cold hardened plastic.
Chill sweat makes the mattress sticky against your back.
The air is a feather-touch breeze tickling naked skin
as it is forced out by the rising saline solution.
Though absent connection, you feel the clinical steel of the chamber walls
press impose upon your chest.
The air you receive from the mask tastes stale, brittle.

VII.
Your heartbeat slows as the gel engulfs your head.
The seconds and minutes pass into nothingness
And sensation follows,
As the liquid is warmed
Merging flesh
With the gel itself
And plastic
And steel
As even the pressure of clamps and strap pass into oblivion.

Awareness of your body removed.
Your mind, your self, ultimately tumbles -
Foundationless.

Today’s New York Times had a couple of interesting companion articles yesterday about poetry online:

Fibonacci Poems Multiply on the Web After Blog’s Invitation,
And It Goes Like This: 0-1-1-2-3-5-8

From the first article

Blogs
spread
gossip
and rumor
But how about a
Rare, geeky form of poetry?

That’s exactly what happened after Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children’s book author in Los Angeles, wrote a post on his GottaBook blog (gottabook.blogspot.com) two weeks ago inviting readers to write “Fibs,” six-line poems that used a mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence to dictate the number of syllables in each line.

Though I’m not much into composing haiku poetry myself, their disciplined brevity can be quite beautiful. I may try my hand at the variation “Fibs” offer. In the meantime, over the next few weeks, I’ll share with you a few free verse poems I wrote a number of years ago.