Working Through
May. 22nd, 2014 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenI dreamed this morning of being a prisoner whose term had come to an end.
I was escorted to the entrance, handed my things, told to change back into the clothing they handed me, musty with stale smoke and sweat and years of storage in plastic bags. The few hundred dollars cash that had been in my wallet was still there. They let me use the phone, since my out-of-date and expired cellphone's battery was dead as a doornail, and they wanted me out of there.
My brother didn't answer my call.
The taxi service dropped me off at the storage units where I'd told my brother to put what little stuff I'd left in the shitty apartment I'd had before I'd done time. I didn't know if he'd actually done what I asked as he'd never said that he had. He hadn't much talked to me the whole time I was in. But the key let me into the security gate around the storage units.
I went to my unit, put in the key, and it turned. The door opened, and there was all my stuff. The relief nearly floored me. My brother had paid the rent like I'd asked. In front was my construction work boots, tool belt, nail gun, hard hat, and electric screw driver and batteries. All neatly arranged the way I always did after work. The clothing bureau was to one side, as was the half-full hamper and a dump of boxes from the damned apartment. I changed right in the unit, something I'd done many times, and stuffed the prison clothing with its memories of one night of rage that had blown away four years, into the hamper. I opened the bureau, tossed the dustiest stuff on top into the hamper, and put the next layer on, clean cloth against my skin, and put another change of clothing into my day bag that lay on top of the bureau.
I knew how being homeless worked. The stuff that I needed locked up and safe was in here, everything I took with me would be at risk. I left the work equipment in here, until I found a lead on a union job, it would be safer here, no matter where I stayed. The shelters were the worst for losing stuff, but cheap hotels were no better.
But I had all the things I'd accumulated from Before, and I was ready to face the world outside again.
I was escorted to the entrance, handed my things, told to change back into the clothing they handed me, musty with stale smoke and sweat and years of storage in plastic bags. The few hundred dollars cash that had been in my wallet was still there. They let me use the phone, since my out-of-date and expired cellphone's battery was dead as a doornail, and they wanted me out of there.
My brother didn't answer my call.
The taxi service dropped me off at the storage units where I'd told my brother to put what little stuff I'd left in the shitty apartment I'd had before I'd done time. I didn't know if he'd actually done what I asked as he'd never said that he had. He hadn't much talked to me the whole time I was in. But the key let me into the security gate around the storage units.
I went to my unit, put in the key, and it turned. The door opened, and there was all my stuff. The relief nearly floored me. My brother had paid the rent like I'd asked. In front was my construction work boots, tool belt, nail gun, hard hat, and electric screw driver and batteries. All neatly arranged the way I always did after work. The clothing bureau was to one side, as was the half-full hamper and a dump of boxes from the damned apartment. I changed right in the unit, something I'd done many times, and stuffed the prison clothing with its memories of one night of rage that had blown away four years, into the hamper. I opened the bureau, tossed the dustiest stuff on top into the hamper, and put the next layer on, clean cloth against my skin, and put another change of clothing into my day bag that lay on top of the bureau.
I knew how being homeless worked. The stuff that I needed locked up and safe was in here, everything I took with me would be at risk. I left the work equipment in here, until I found a lead on a union job, it would be safer here, no matter where I stayed. The shelters were the worst for losing stuff, but cheap hotels were no better.
But I had all the things I'd accumulated from Before, and I was ready to face the world outside again.
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-23 04:37 am (UTC)I think, emotionally, it may well equate to how I feel, now about my writing, of all things. *laughs* We'll see how it turns out.
And all the most precise things were the construction equipment. Building things. I think I need to create again, and am uncertain about it? Unsure, insecure is pretty clear....
And, yeah, no home, definitely no home and nothing's quite safe, but this one locked treasure box of all the tools from Before.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-23 05:54 am (UTC)Sometimes significance comes through in the details which lie under the surface. It's obvious to point to things like the release, which comes at the end of paying one's debt, or that you had no access to your tools while you were serving this time, so you were unable to build or construct anew, unable to utilize your skills, unable even to renovate.
The implements through which you create were also placed on hiatus. So your tools and skills are returned to you at the very moment when you have no means of doing anything with them: no materials, no land, no people willing to contract work to you, the stigma of being 'criminal' (if not in a close and personal sense, perhaps in a broader cultural sense? Have you thrown off any ties to tradition lately?)
And while you had no need to earn your living while you served time, now it becomes imperative, or you risk danger in being exposed to the elements.
Does it seem to you that this is a dream about an existential dilemma?
no subject
Date: 2014-05-23 07:09 pm (UTC)It's interesting because my emotional take on the risk and exposure wasn't quite the fear that regular people have. It was actually familiar, almost comforting to know where I stood and to have the freedom to risk what other people would never think to risk or want to risk. The homelessness was not just familiar but oddly comforting. I knew the ways to walk, not so much to keep myself safe, but to keep myself if that has any meaning to you. There are homeless people who are that way by choice and character, who find the binding and restrictions of having to maintain and be responsible for a place to be too much or something they simply don't want. They're very few, and they usually have no or few family ties, but they do exist.
I think the cornerstone of the emotional background was that I'd thrown myself away for a while, but I was coming back into being who and what I really wanted to be, and that included being able to determine what jobs I was going to take from now on. Saying it that way I now know how to tie it to my real life and the four years is significant that way. Interesting. Nothing like the safe brother who didn't even dare risk coming to get me from prison, but could safely pay the bills.
I often kick and throw off the ties of tradition and control. I am criminal in the eyes of the more judgemental, and there's a lot I've done that lots of people could condemn me for. It's just a part of who and what I've always been, and I carry that within me, perhaps more to the surface now as I'm getting more aware of myself.
But doing my time really does have some aspect of a guilt I've finally released, I think. And the only one holding me to it was myself.
Existential Dilemma is a good way of putting it. I don't really know what I'm *for*, and being free of work for quite some time, it's impossible to define myself by what I do anymore, and I'm coming to grips with that, especially since I do so much and for so many and in so many ways, now that I don't have one thing that I Am or any one thing that is my life's work. It's just my life that is the Work, I guess? That all of my art, my writing, my fiber work, my being a mother, my special need and take on violence, and my spiritual life are all... works that I have to be responsible for doing as I would do it, not as someone else might.
I do love what you point out, especially about the work... that I now HAVE to work. Thank you for that, and that imperative is very real, though the goal's less monetary than... well, the importance of just doing the work.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-23 08:40 pm (UTC)ETA: I hear you about the skew-y sense of criminality from judgmental people. Sometimes, I find it difficult not to react contrarily in an automatic fashion — out of a sense of needing to oppose and obstruct them. In fact, most times, I find this tendency so difficult, I shut down discussion.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-24 04:39 am (UTC)And amen to your ETA... yes, I know that.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-25 01:35 am (UTC)In our 20’s, we worry about what people think of us.
In our 40’s, we don't care what people think.
In our 60’s, we realize they haven’t been thinking of us at all.
Which reminds me of the end of "Catch Me If You Can," where Tom Hanks character points out to Frank that simply "nobody's chasing you." I figure after a certain age, we've either come to terms with the contradictions or we've changed as much as we're going to as far as trying to reconcile them...which is also why I find myself reminding myself a lot that people just get set in their ways as they get older, including seeing it in myself, and that's the way it is.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-25 01:44 am (UTC)I love how you put it, too.
I think we get more comfortable with who we are the more we know, or do what we can to fix the things we really want to and then get on with it. I think that not only do people get more fixed in their ways, but that with experience, they deal with things with less angst and self-consciousness. I've been pretty firmly of the opinion that no one's really looking for a while now, so it's fun to see it reflected so clearly in what you're saying.