The Summer of Squat                      

In the summer of 1984, I squatted a big house in a historic middle-class neighborhood named Clarksville near downtown Austin that I'd been renting in tandem with two other people and their children I hadn't known prior, really nice folks fortunately, when the lease ran out and everyone else moved.  I didn't have anywhere else to go and in clear retrospect had little prospect for myself and even less income.

The owners had had the house condemned, and I just stayed.  They were allowing me to keep my furniture and some boxes in the detached garage until I could move them.   I took that as covert carte blanche for me to stay as well.  The neighbors barely knew me but apparently well enough to be glad some 'real' vagrant hadn't moved in.  I was gone by day and came back after dark.

The family who owned the house never discovered me.  I don't think they even visited the place, except for one early morning when a teenaged daughter unlocked the front door and entered to show a friend where she'd lived.  I'd slept later than usual and hid ashen in my bedroom closet with my bag as they walked around the house talking, and I wanted to make all my atoms just disappear.

  

Finally,  after an era of dread, she turned the knob to my bedroom door.  It wouldn't open.  She tried again, and again, and then began hurling herself repeatedly against it with great force, about six to eight times.  I was certain she would break it down.  Then she stopped and walked around the house to the bedroom's other door and did the same thing but still couldn't break through the slide locks I'd placed when I had housemates.  I thought, thank goodness for well-constructed old homes.  I also thought, I'm glad I used the long screws.  Mostly I thought, what has my life come to?

My wife and I had separated about two years prior and were still fighting, and I was depressed, lost, and stymied.  My heart felt splintered.  I still knew I was more or less a good person but seriously wondered what would become of me.  My son lived across town.  I was especially worried for him, his mother trying hard, but a bit unstably, though still providing a secure home for him.  I had been seeing him regularly and often but hadn't been living the steady exemplary life I would've preferred for his sake.  I didn't know how to.

What mostly came  out of that Summer of Squat was resolve.  I was forced to draw my own line in the sand, to dare to want different and better, and to cross it.  I was forced not against my will but against the grain of my depression, and against the grain of what had prior been my perceived hopes for myself, because squatting a house would never in a hundred years have been what I could have imagined my life becoming, for any reason or at any time.

  

Life's funny.  We sometimes find ourselves in situations that require our extraction that only we can get ourselves out of.  Yet I wasn't seeing a way out.  My sister lived across town then and apparently felt as trapped as far as how to help me as I felt trapped in my own stasis, though she kindly let me know I had a lifeline if needed, and that helped.  At some point that summer, my parents were coming to visit, mostly to see my sister, I supposed, because their son was squatting a house fergawdsake.  Indeed, they feared I'd always be less than prodigal.

Because of their impending visit, I leveraged my shame and marshaled my depression and used the resulting energy to find a full-time job at a popular locally owned bookstore, Watson & Company Books, not far from where I lived.  I continued to squat the house, and the store owner, an intelligent sensitive woman named Ella Watson, never learned of my situation, even though I dared to occasionally sleep there on the nights before it was my turn to open the store.  I brought an alarm clock to wake up in time and never had a close call.  Why did I spend the night?  It was air-conditioned, and I could shower there before dawn if I restored the bathroom to pristine.

It was an interesting place to work, both intellectually and socially, and was a natural rung on the way to recovering momentum for my life, as I'd previously worked in bookstores, including the National Bookstore at Union Station in Washington, D.C.  Believe me when I tell you that one of the rooms I rented when I lived in the nation's capital was probably about two steps below squatting the nice house I had to myself in the summer of 1984.  I also enjoyed the secret contrast between somewhat knowledgeable bookstore clerk and vagrant squatter, but I did eventually tell the open-minded bookstore assistant manager about my living status and it didn't phase her a bit.

In a process that had begun the moment I began squatting the house, I managed to find and salvage a part of myself I'd lost in the previous few years, or maybe that I'd been wondering about or  searching for my whole life, in the way one follows rumors and whispers about something and pursues it out of curiosity and with increasing interest.

Since my early teens, I'd wanted to write creatively in a way that excited me, on subjects that motivate me, in a free way outside of conventions and norms.   That had been a major life goal, though not a totally conscious one, but certainly one that I'd made paramount enough to influence major choices in life.

I'd begun writing satires and other pieces for my junior and senior high school papers  and wrote weekly humor columns for two years at my college daily paper.  I'd later been a staff copywriter for ad agencies and then freelance writer.  In 1981 I wrote almost the entire first and only two issues of a new Austin music paper, Austin Access, which folded quickly, unfortunately for me because I was developing some freedom of style.

In that summer squat of 1984 though, I began writing what I really wanted to write, spontaneously and at length, as if I were only moving the pen and something else provided the content.  I prayed hard for the work to flow, and it did.  It was exciting, exhilarating.

I walked the streets of Austin with a new understanding.  I was my own equal and peer.  I read my pieces at poetry readings to good response.  I was invited to read at a University venue.  I learned I had some kind of gift.  It was really all the reward I needed for that summer.  It was raw and only a beginning, but it was good and more different than I could have  imagined, which was affirming.

Mostly that summer though, I'd wanted to test myself overall, perhaps with a touch of mild severity to 'make me think about what I'd done' regarding my marriage.  Even if so, I'd wanted to put myself in a position that would try my soul, and I knew this as I was making my decision.  Surely, this would not be too hard for me.  If anyone can do it, I can.  I would be enough.  I would emerge better, more whole, as myself finally.  I knew it would be difficult, but anything else seemed impossible.

I walked everywhere and at my own pace in the summer heat, all over downtown and the university area, hundreds of blocks daily.  I walked through the great downtown Zilker Park and its herb and test gardens, picking a few of its vegetables to eat a few days a week, and inhaled deeply of the comforting mints, balms, and salvias.  It was my therapy.  I picked up a bike somewhere, somehow, without stealing.  I rode it even further.  I swam most mornings  at a big city pool called Deep Eddy, full of cold spring water, and I could shower there.  I became in great physical shape.  My strange lifestyle was agreeing with me, and to a large degree it embodied a lot of my ideals at the time.

I was receiving more than $1000 a month from a trust, and I mailed it to my estranged wife and son, less maybe $80 to $100 for me.  So I usually had enough money to order coffee and a small breakfast at a nearby café called The Omelettry, now Magnolia Café, though sometimes only coffee.  I sat at the counter sometimes for a couple of hours, reading someone else's paper, drinking bottomless cups, and chatting with staff and patrons.  It was that friendly kind of place.  Occasionally, a big incorrect order was returned and offered to whatever regular was at the counter.  I wasn't bashful about it.  I want it.  Feed me.  Yes.  I'm worth it.  Hear my good-natured banter and exhortation.  I am a positive presence.

  

I often had enough money to walk into a store and buy some bread, cheese, and grapes.  It made me feel more like a regular person.  I'd then eat my feast at solo picnics in the park.  A lot of my life was quite enjoyable like that, and I had a friend or two from the poetry readings I'd drink coffee or whiskey with.   Significantly, I certainly had an abundance of time to think and feel, a real luxury most people can't ever afford, no matter how affluent.  Still, though, the solitude and awkwardness of my lifestyle became too wearing and demoralizing.  I started to want out, but didn't know how or when. 

   

What finally motivated and then allowed me to quit squatting had at least as much to do with other people as with me.  First, there was the overriding concern for my son, whom I rarely saw that summer, and there was Ella Watson who'd hired me at the bookstore.  But then there was my sister who invented a fulcrum opportunity to help me by showing up one evening with Jane, the first real love of my life and heartbreak from 14 years earlier, who was moving to Austin and was a friend of my sister's from way back.  I was sitting on the front steps not expecting anything different, content with enjoying a light relieving summer breeze, when they drove up.

It was a fortuitous coincidence of events and a brilliant intuitive stroke on the part of my sister and Jane, who is one of those caring people who'll do anything in their power to help.  I spent a special time with them both and the rest of the evening with Jane, and it was as pivotal a moment in time as it had been unimaginable prior to it.  That time spent with Susan and Jane reconnected me more completely and fulfillingly with the larger more accepting world and helped connect my past with the present and provided a path to the future.  I wouldn't have been able to reemerge as soon or as successfully if not for their acts of kindness.  Emerge I did, and, though I never looked back, I remember almost everything, and fondly.

I remained friends for years with my former housemates, Alan and Robin, themselves friends and not a couple.  Robin and I even leased a home together years later, and it was a loving revelation to share time and space with Robin and her two sons.  Robin  was the rare person who can be both kind and honest at the same time. 

It's hard to imagine a better mother than Robin as well, working two jobs, one starting early as master baker at Sweetish Hill Bakery, next door to Watson & Company Books, and later for hours at her boyfriend's auto body shop working hard alongside the men to strip and paint the cars.  Her boys never wanted for her love and attention either or for appropriate and firm good-humored discipline.  It's also hard to imagine a parent being a better example to their kids.

In the later 1980s, Alan and his children and my son and I took a ski trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico, sharing good company and memories throughout the drive and new experiences at the lodge and on the slopes, much in the spirit of a family reunion.  Alan, a physics professor, is from New Orleans and I'm from nearby Biloxi, and we once drove together for visits home.

It was heartwarming meeting Alan's dear mom and seeing where he comes from, his family's working-class neighborhood in Jefferson Parish not far from the Huey P. Long Mississippi River bridge, and fairly close to my grandparents' home near the end of the St. Charles streetcar line.

On our return drive to Austin from New Orleans, about eight weary hours into our ten-hour drive home, as Alan and I silently viewed the clear night sky ahead, a long shooting star lit up our world crossing most of the length of the windshield from left to right.  It was a good sign and left an indelible impression.  Somehow, all had undoubtedly gone right with the world.

Jane and I have long since become committed friends of the closest heart kind and is a woman I cherish.  My wonderful sister and I have grown closer than either of us had thought possible, and for me with a greater and greater appreciation of how special and loving she is, and our bond will only continue to grow.

I get to adore my son, a loyal man of integrity with a beneficent heart and a wonderful genius of a personality and humor to match, intelligent and talented, a loving soul whom I'm always increasingly proud of and am impressed by what he's already accomplished and considerably moved by his goals.

Amazingly, I married very, very well by any measurement, a beautiful, intelligent and talented woman, funny as all get-out, an inimitable force of nature, surely beyond my highest hopeful expectations, as indescribably dear as is possible for anyone to be, and with whom I share the most tender of feelings.

The Summer of Squat?  Hardly.  If needed, I'd do it all again, just to do my part to help make sure everything turns out so well.  Summer of Love is more like it.  And a lifetime of gratitude.

[This was written during the run-up to November 2008.
Read text, or listen at this link. 
John McCain Rhymes With Pain]

McCain Rhymes With Pain

John McCain rhymes with pain

4 more years of Bush Republican reign

yes McCain rhymes with pain

4 more years of Bush-Cheney disdain

it's true McCain rhymes with pain

4 more years to drive our soldiers insane

cause McCain rhymes with pain

this time use your brain

cause John McCain rhymes with pain

John McCain stands for wars

countless endless the United States friendless

that's what's in store

if the Republicans win this

show them the door

it's in all of our interests

peace is the reward

all else is senseless

McCain's wars are endless

and John McCain stands for wars

John McCain rhymes with rage

waiting to explode on a worldwide stage

John McCain rhymes with rage

he's bottled up inside stab you with a tire gauge

yes McCain rhymes with rage

too set in his ways to turn any page

and please don't rattle his cage

he has the mind of a man from another age

we're not dealing with a sage

cause John McCain rhymes with rage

John McCain rhymes with pain

how many more years of Bush-Cheney remain?

and McCain rhymes with slain

how many more troops die how many go insane

how about the ill-gotten gain

while their cronies profit more people die in vain

John McCain rhymes with pain

it couldn't be more plain

yes McCain rhymes with pain

John McCain's time has passed

he was a brave G.I.

and his honor will last

no need to ask why

but now life comes at you fast

and it's passed him by

so we thank you John

now make room for the other guy

cause John McCain stands for pain

           Where The Poor Are Not Whipped/Where There's A Will

Prologue:  I'm happy to report a cool mellow peaceful evening after a rainy day.  The woods feel at ease.  Drought is hard on everything.  Rain makes everything feel more normal.  Everything and everyone is relaxed.  The day begats the night, its bats and its starlight.

You know the night is beginning when you hear the deep, modulated tones of a perched hoot owl quickly followed by a departing Great Blue Heron's bellowed primitive squawks.  Short-neck bats are swooping and suddenly diving after insects over the cove, and soon bullfrog and treefrog chants begin and fireflies perform their strobe shows and guessing games the last hour before dark.

The whippoorwill, so determined and musical last night, is performing elsewhere, perhaps up the hill by the ancient little two-story beer joint shack, that leaning anachronism managing to stay upright among the much more newly built gated and other exclusive cul-de-sacs held together by prideful esprit and shared disdain for the lessers.  You know.  The juke joint that the spoils behind the gates complain about like it doesn't belong.

Well into dark, nearby coyotes faithfully answer the call of a distant passing siren once again headed for the highway.  They never seem to tire of their work, neither the coyotes nor the ambulances.  Much later, a small brown rabbit in an open space hops away but stops, not threatened.  It's a confident bunny.

It's a confident and also clever rabbit that doubles back under the working noses of dogs chasing it, such that the dogs retrace their gallop and follow the rabbit in elongated circles, as deer do to coyotes on their scent.  It's a serious game with unforgiving consequences that make it more likely they stay alive, thrive, survive.

Today I saw deer strolling a regular neighborhood, grazing lawns and slowly roaming the blocks, and a baby one dart safely across a street to rejoin family.  They feel safe there.  The grass is greener and delicious and makes a superior bed.  The deer natural fear of coyotes is balanced by the coyote natural shyness to people.  Nature loves stasis as much as change, and  progress stays close to the fence.

After 20 years here, it's still hard to believe we're in the city.  What must the birds and other animals think?  Why, these people came out of nowhere, and by the time we realized what was going on it was too late to do anything about it.  They are somewhat compliant and easily outwitted though, but we still must outwait and outbreed them.  We might even become best friends, but only if we remember how wild they are.

Epilogue:  Yes, there too are cats, but they are asleep and had asked for the night off from these stories, something about their intergalactic union and a work slow-down.  Cats are the real threat - to loneliness.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sukE9pGayRc

Photo at top is stock.

                                Playing Possum Toddler Comitatus

Robin Cat is part-Russian blue, part gallant and debonair bedtime luxuriant, and part martial artist attack specialist.  He also has a penchant for setting down his found treasures in the recycling bin on the porch.

Around this full-moon midnight, Robin Cat set down Playing Possum Toddler, who is new to this serious game, and whose awake ears pivot to track voices and whose eyes briefly dare open to size up the situation.  She may not like what she sees, but she goes with her strength anyway, lying still otherwise.

Seen in the bin, one might consider this event to be Playing Possum Toddler's  'blue period'.  We were just hoping she wasn't injured.

After consulting with each other about what to do about 'this one', the bin was slowly carried off the porch to the yard, turned gently onto its side facing a nearby fence she could fit through, and a small bowl filled with moist duck food pellets was placed between the bin and the fence.  Four or five tiny steps will go a long way toward nourishing her strength and soothing her nervous system.  She will find something she had come for after all.

Previously, full-sized Daytime Possum had devoured this type of duck food, returning for seconds to no avail the next two dusks, leaving unrequited.  We would like to see Playing Possum Toddler again too, though maybe when older and less at the mercy of the indigenous hunger games.  At last sight, she was in the bin standing up with her hopes rising, along with ours.

                                                   Skunk Dreams.

     Tonight's critter encounter is Traveling Skunk. This is a first for us after 20 years in these woods, and I have to admit I'm totally amused.  I've waited a long time for this!  I don't find Skunk smell that offensive.  It smells like a certain strong herb that some people like to smoke, but much more penetrating and sour, and way past most people's abilities to tolerate.

     Tsavo is the one who needs tolerance though, because he's the one who got sprayed, not at extremely close range, but close enough to thoroughly coat him such that when he walks by,  the air instantly turns from odorless to the full Skunk.  He's wearing it well though, pretending that nothing is out of the ordinary.

     Tsavo walks with a lot of dignity, so it's funny to see him walk by smelling like that, sort of like if he were wearing a tuxedo and walking by with three feet of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.  I think it hurts his pride just a bit.  He can't get away from the smell either.  Still, I'm totally sure he'd rather keep the Skunk smell than be scrubbed with tomato juice or bathed.

     At least Traveling Skunk wasn't inside my cabin like Backdoor Possum was a few nights ago, in the corner of my kitchen.  Luckily, she was pretty easy to shoo back outside.  Maybe this nature train could slow down a bit for a while, before we get visits from Bobcat, Coyote, and Feral Hog.  They can be a whole other level of problem.

     I'm keeping my back door closed now, by the way, day and night.  The front door is the cats' responsibility, but if a critter gets by them they can always hide in the closet, leaving the problem for me, the bouncer.

     Addendum:  The Skunk episode has just taken a bit more of a serious turn.  Tsavo just went into my clothes closet.   I'm still amused, but not quite so totally.

                                          Turtle Cove Turtle Nesting

Soon the cove's turtles will be digging difficult holes in hard-packed dirt for their eggs, using only whatever nature's given them.  The holes are one to two inches in diameter and two to three inches deep.  They dig skillfully, then squat at a heads-up angle over the holes, and, when finished laying, release water which they mix with the dirt to bury the eggs.  They're masters at camouflage, because once finished you really can't tell where they've been digging.

Two or three months later, if a critter hadn't sniffed out the nest and raided the eggs, you usually find the hole opened up and soft broken-open eggshells close by around it.  Even without finding any trace of their path, you know that the most direct route to the creek or cove is the one these tiny turtles have taken.  You'll soon begin to see tiny turtle heads appear above the surface of the water and know the time of the turtle is upon you. A young one will very often swim in tandem with an adult, and you can find the young ones balancing on a stick or branch sticking out of the water so they can sun themselves or just dry out a bit.  They'll quickly drop into the water if someone gets too close or loud.

The nest hole pictured above is one abandoned before the eggs were laid, likely because some two- or four-legged had come too close.  I've been the cause of that several times.  One thing I found interesting is that if you come upon a turtle digging a nest or laying its eggs, it won't move even if you walk right by it.  When you come back later, the nest effort has usually been abandoned.  Also, as I myself have seen, turtles will walk 50 to 100 yards from the cove or creek to lay eggs, the better to evade the nest-raiding critters.  This just makes the baby turtles you see in the water that much more impressive, having instinctively found their way home.  Think of the faith that requires.

Once a turtle dug its nest within ten feet of the front of my cabin.  It was squatting over it when I walked by and went inside.  I watched it through a window for a few hours off and on, keeping my dogs indoors, and after noticing it was gone went outside and saw that the hole was as usual expertly covered over.  I assumed it had laid eggs.  I watched the spot for three months, maybe longer, and nothing had transpired.  I dug it up and the hole was empty; no eggs, shells, or trace of anything but dirt.  My theory is that once discovered, turtle decided to make it a decoy nest.  I'd be glad to learn one way or another what really might have happened otherwise.

The voice of the turtle may be silent, but I'm sure it's eloquent.

                                The Renaming of Daytime Possum

Daytime Possum showed up in daylight again, though it had lately made an evening foray onto the deck where it had previously clawed its way inside a white garbage bag where it was chewing its way through the contents when discovered.  Today it went straight for the source, showing up in the kitchen, and not at all playing possum.

The cats and I were on the deck.  Tsavo was taking a nap, Tiger was surveying his nature kingdom, and I went to the garden to read.  Fifteen or twenty minutes went by, and I went inside, where it was a bit dark with the lights off, and saw Tiger walking out from behind the kitchen counter.  He seemed especially content and cocky, and I thought he'd preemptively eaten Tsavo's dinner, as the bowl was empty.  Then I saw an unusual shadow on the floor in the corner by the stove.  I turned the light on, and it was Daytime Possum, cornered and not content at all.

I usually leave the front door open so the cats can come in and out, but today I'd opened the back door too, for the free flow of fresh cool air.  That door opens directly on the kitchen.  That door also is located in what Feng Shui books call the prosperity corner of my home, and that door is how Daytime Possum came to be in the kitchen.  Long story short, someone ate Tsavo's food, Tiger finally cornered his nemesis Daytime Possum somewhere and then walked away triumphantly, and amused-concerned me was left to fret upon the opportunity to enact another successful possum encounter outcome.

Upon a previous such opportunity, when a possum was under our bed one night, I'd re-opened the back sliding glass door, where the possum had entered, built a makeshift walled maze out of turned-sideways chairs, boxes, and other furniture that led from the bed to the open door, and then prodded the possum gently out from the bed with a broom.  Amazingly, it went all the way through the maze, bouncing off the walls like a pinball, and exited onto the deck.  The glass door was closed, possum stared at us through the glass with its big white possum face, and that, my friends, was that.

Today was a similar relief, but it involved me standing on the kitchen counter, a seven-foot sycamore branch walking stick, and a very stubborn possum that was every bit as reluctant to give up a good free food source as any one of us would be.  Even after I'd persevered in prodding it into the middle of the kitchen, with possum all the while hissing maniacally and opening its jaws to bare its sharp and gnashing teeth,  it still kept heading away from the back door toward the living room.  Finally it felt prodded enough to give up and exit the way it had come in.  For all the frightening rows of teeth and harrowing hiss, possums are pretty good-natured, ergo playing possum is still their best defense.  What better 'good sport' could nature provide?

Later that night, when I told my wife about the newest possum encounter, she laughed with special insight, because shortly after all the poking and prodding and its reluctant exit, she'd seen possum shambling by our other cabin a bit quicker than usual and apparently agitated, perhaps even disgruntled, as compared with its usual lackadaisical amiable amble.  Still though, it's likely Daytime Possum had been the beneficiary of Tsavo's tasty canned salmon, duck, and chicken.  Even if not, it did escape any real harm and escaped causing any as well.  For those reasons, Daytime Possum from henceforth will be known around these parts as Prosperity Possum, and there's a lot to go around, to be honest about it.