A year ago like a bird perched momentarily on a roost I was living in an apartment in Walnut Creek, California and going through the final stages of a divorce. This apartment overlooked a swimming pool—closed most of the time I was there—and a parking lot. In the distance were steep hills and, too close, a tall electric grid tower.  It rained a lot, with a sharp, biting cold.

In June I settled in a small Mexican town on the Pacific coast for the better part of a year.  Still in transit. It was in many ways wonderful. I could run out my door in the morning, walk along the beach, and plunge into the ocean.  But I was in temporary quarters, with hard tile floors that were always sandy, no matter how often I swept and grains of sand creeping into my bed, lumpy mattresses, dangling bare light bulbs. Most of my belongings were in a storage unit back in California. Living in a foreign culture had its challenges. Although I speak Spanish with some fluency, it was not enough to join into the culture. The summer was hot, humid, with mosquitos, thunderstorms, floods, electrical outages, and computer crashes—even with a surge protector. The winter was the coldest on record.  I missed libraries. I felt out of touch with the world. I missed home.

In April, I moved to Albuquerque to be near my daughter Carmen. For many years I had wanted to live closer to her. I’m now in a bland apartment inside a gated complex. Its chief virtues are a bathtub—which I missed after so many months of showers—clean wall-to-wall carpet which is great for doing yoga, thick sound insulation, and tranquillity. But then I miss the warmth of the Mexican town. There it was easier to make friends. People would strike up conversations at the market, in cafes, on the beach. There was a sense of community.

Alburquerque spreads out over the desert with miles and miles of broad streets. As I am not within walking distance of any shopping or cultural center, I drive and drive. The spirit of the land is harsh, masculine with the huge sky and the beauty of the stark Sandia mountains to the east.  The city has a tough skin, and only now have I begun to sense a softer interior and the warmth of individuals.

Soon I’ll move into Carmen’s house while she and her partner Jeff explore Florida. Like me, they are filled with wanderlust. I will feed their cats, move in a few pieces of furniture—a desk, a chair, an air mattress—and prepare to move again when they return.   I long to settle somewhere. To create a nest from which I can venture out.  But where?  Where is home?  I don’t yet know.

For months I have been staying in Melaque, just over a few hills from Cuastecomate. This is a larger town, and it comes alive with long term visitors, most of whom are Canadian, between Christmas and Easter.

I live at the outskirts of the town, on the northern end of the bay where fishermen launch their boats and the waves are calmest for swimming. My small apartment, called a bungalow, faces steep green hills on one side, and is only a few hundred years from the ocean. Each day, long before dawn, cocks will begin crowing, a melodic back and forth chant. At seven a.m. sharp, an awakening bugle sounds from the nearby military academy.

New Years Eve was alive with fire crackers exploding everywhere. Along with this was loud music that would last until the early hours of the morning.

At midnight, I wandered down to the beach, where fires were visible all along the shore, as well as a dazzling display of fireworks in the distance from Barra de Navidad, to the south. A group of Mexicans had gathered in a circle. They held lighted candles, along with narrow fluted champagne glasses as they welcomed the New Year.

I went invoked the New Year in my own way. It involved burning slips of paper on which I had written qualities I wanted to relinquish of, then casting the ashes into the ocean.

At dawn the sun began to infuse my bedroom with a golden glow. I felt unusually happy and calm. Drank coffee and ate a bolillo. Ran down to the ocean for a quick swim. Then back for yoga, meditation, and work on a long abandoned novel. Here on the shore, where the pace of everyday life is much slower than in San Francisco, where the sun warms and the sea refreshes, at last perhaps I can begin to create some kind of form out of the chaos of scribbled notes and drafts written over the years.

I’ve been a month now on the coast, a tiny village called Cuastecoma. I am so close to the ocean that the waves lap the steps of this house at high tide. We are at the mouth of a long, narrow bay with steep hills on either side. It is beautiful to go up on the roof at sunset and just gaze out at the ocean. And I love swimming in the warm ocean.

The house is sparsely furnished, with bare cement floors. At night, the large, cavernous house is dim, as there are only two or three bare electric lights that dangle from the ceiling. But there is the wonderful sound of waves. When the sky is clear, the stars are bright. And when the moon is full, it illumines the entire house, with one side entirely open, shielded only by a screen and iron bars from the elements.

Back in the Sixties I began studying yoga with a guru in San Francisco who rather jealously promoted strict celibacy. Not untypically, he later became involved in a sexual scandal. However, I learned much from him, and to his credit he promoted my poetry and urged me to publish it.

At the same time, wanting some kind of balance, I began corresponding with a rather mad poetess in Manhattan who on me the absolutely necessity of orgasms – the more the better – and urged me to a lovers, each day of the week. Although this seemed extreme, I admired her stance, and it balanced out my guru’s.

You see, I was looking for integration of opposites. I was searching for an ethical code, a way of being true to my nature and of expanding awareness – such a Californian quest in the Sixties, the innocent Sixties when the sky was not smogged, and traffic jams were a thing of the future, and one could get by on comparatively little money and just a few hours of week of work – except that I was supporting my daughter, and I worked a full-time job…..

Onwards with the story. Always trying to bridge opposites, to create a truth for me out of disparate elements, I am now reading Chogyam Trunpa’s THE HEART OF THE BUDDHA along with Tennessee Williams’ Memoirs, in a shabby, worn paperback edition I found in a discarded heap of books at Merritt College.

What I admire about Tennessee is his honesty, which can be bone-painful. He is also greatly entertaining, with his nonstop sexual adventures with handsome young males…not a gay life I search, but he tells it so entertainingly and with such honesty, such truth, admitting his flaws, and yet his charm and brilliant self-awareness shines through

Chögyam Trungpa (February 1939 – April 4, 1987) was a Buddhist meditation master, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and a Trungpa tülku. Widely recognized, both by Tibetan Buddhists and by other spiritual practitioners and established an international organization of Buddhist centers.
…
The synthesis: Chogyam Trunpa, I believe, would have appreciated Tennesee’s honesty. True art, write Tennessee, has to be personal—that is its bedrock. Even if the personal is transmuted into science fiction, historical work, or a medium far removed from the confessional mode.

His honesty provides a peephole or channel into our own natures – and what a relief, these human propensities are shared, are expressed by another being!

And so I continue relishing his confessional adventures, told with such charm, while rereading THE HEART OF BUDDHA, and realizing that in a deep sense they connect.

Both Chogyam Trunpa and Tennessee Williams are larger than life figures.
Mindfulness- one night stands. Unsparing honesty. Truth about human condition.
Noble aspect to their telling. Style is character.

One is the concept of emotion as energy, essentially clear like water. Our thoughts-emotions color the water with different pigments.

The second concept is that of carrying the projector–like a movie projector–inside one’s mind, but eliminating the screen (ie, eliminating the object).

I first clearly experienced emotions as energy–transmutable with different pigments–on a Buddhist retreat years ago in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One cold grey day, having had all I could take of meditation, I fled to the women’s restrooms. A woman called Susan followed, to bring me back to the fold. Filled with rage, I strode towards her and then suddenly something transformed. I felt the energy shift. I hugged her!

She understood, and she hugged me back.

It was pure energy, transmutable.

I left my job in San Francisco and went away for several months. When I returned, she was no longer on her corner, and none of the shopkeepers had seen her. I continue to search for her, but I have not ever seen her again. Maybe she has moved to another block. Maybe she has moved to Reno. Maybe she is in a hospital. Is she still alive?
I wonder at the harshness of prevailing public policies. It would be so easy to make people’s lives a little easier.
A few examples:
Eve spoke of how old-fashioned park benches were built so that one could lie on them full-length. Newer ones are built with a divider in the middle, expressly to prevent this.
There used to be public bathhouses (not erotic clubs but real bathhouses) where for a few coins one could take a bath, dry off with a clean towel, and emerge refreshed.
Amenities that used to exist have vanished..
What about protecting people without homes, rather than hassling them? What about building some free public bathrooms, showers, baths, places to wash clothes, to groom oneself? What about creating shelters where one doesn’t have to leave at dawn? What about less claustrophobic shelters, perhaps in the open air—casual places with unobtrusive protecting guards, where people could just could lie down and sleep safely for a few hours, or sit and collect their thoughts? What about free places to check their belongings?
We punish victims. Years ago Eve might have been in a mental hospital. But these hospitals were closed, and patients were put onto the streets.
What has become of Eve? Where are you now?

I invited Eve out to dinner to find out more about her, as she mirrored some of my own deepest fears. If circumstances in my life were to change, I too, might be without a home.
She suggested Wendy’s on Market Street. “Have whatever you like,” I said. But she would only order the 99-cent special. As we ate baked potatoes with plastic forks, she talked about how difficult it was to sleep. “In the winter, four or five of us sleep at the bottom of the BART steps next to the gate, where it’s warmest. But we can’t lie down there until they close the gates at one a.m. Big John, Little John, Chris, and Tony—they look out for me when they’re around. Then the BART gates open up again at four am on weekdays, and we have to leave. I’m always cold and tired. Last night I slept in the doorway of Mrs. Fields Cookies on Market Street, which closes at seven p.m. I’m afraid to go to sleep at night. Drinking helps me sleep … I’ve been robbed, beaten, and raped.”
Plastic bubble wrap, when she could scavenge it from garbage bins, served as covering. Cardboard beneath her failed to keep her dry when rained.
What about homeless shelters? I asked.
She didn’t like them. She was embarrassed to go there when she was unwashed and dirty. She felt hemmed in. She didn’t like being crowded in with strange women and girls. And her things were likely to get stolen there.
“Occasionally I go to a shelter to sleep, but I disrupt people when I drink, and I can’t get a blanket. Most of them are younger. Their strong perfumes bother me, and there’s not enough oxygen. The girls broke the new air conditioner at the shelter on Polk and Geary.
“The Outreach people brought me a sleeping bag in Pigeon Park on Mission, but four days later it was stolen from a doorway when I went for cigarettes.”
“I would love a studio apartment of my own. When I had one, I used to read ten books a month, sew, knit, write short stories – daily events—the facts of life, American style.”
She took another bite of her baked potato. Despite living on the streets, her nails were clean and filed. With her ruddy complexion and clothed as she was, she looked like a woman from the country. I noticed how blue her eyes were. Her upper front teeth were missing.
“I have been threatened, hit over the head, robbed, and raped,” she repeated. “Often I can’t sleep because I’m afraid. I’m always tired and cold.”
She was perhaps sixty-seven, and she been born in Nevada. After her father abandoned the family, she was sent to an orphanage as a small child, although her mother kept her brothers and sisters. She spent her last two high school years in a San Francisco convent, and she had liked the nuns. This had been one of the happiest periods of her life.
She attended Heald’s Business College in Sacramento, and in the ‘40’s she held a series of office jobs. “I worked for Blue Cross, for Capwell’s, and as a long distance telephone operator.” In 1951 she married an older man named Morris. “I was a virgin bride … The last time I saw him was in 1954. ‘You can have me back anytime you want, toots’”, he said.
But she didn’t want him back.
In the ‘60’s and ‘70’s she continued to hold jobs. “I was a doctor’s receptionist. I worked for Leeds shoes in Oakland. I was a cocktail waitress.” She moved around between Santa Rosa, Modesto, Oakland, and San Francisco, as well as Nevada. She referred to being a housekeeper off and on for sixteen years. Possibly this was a reference to the men she lived with, after Morris.
She had been in and out of mental hospitals more times than she could remember, and she had lived on the streets for many years. She was vague about what caused her breakdowns. In the late ‘50’s and ‘60s’ she’d had electroshock treatments.
How many years had she been on the streets? She was vague about this,
“It’s miserable being homeless. I have no friends. Four days ago I almost killed myself. I wanted to go off the bridge, but I took the wrong bus to Fort Mason.”
She drank to block out the cold and misery and pain.
“Drinking is a haven … They make me drink. My SSI check goes to the Bank of America, but Reno and the bars get it. I drink to help out the others …. when I drink I help all those people whose sexual equipment has been cleaned out … they railroad me to the bars.”
She delicately folded her paper napkin, then excused herself to go to the restroom. When she returned, her face was flushed, her breath smelled of alcohol, and her stories became more bizarre. But were these stories simply psychotic ramblings, or did they contain glimmers of truth? Just what did she pick up of other people’s vibrations?
Over the next few months I continued to meet with her, and I tried to piece together her life.
Apparently trivial memories are sometimes the most potent.
She spoke of a blue flowered blanket from Kress’s that she bought in Marysville. The blanket got lost while she was traveling. “I’ve got nothing to show for all my years of work.”
She talked about a long-ago friend named Mary. They used to go out to dance halls together. She remembered their pleated skirts and a pink sweater that Mary gave her.
She spoke of a man named Fred. “He was my only friend. Fred was always a gentleman. He was Filipino. Two years ago he got sick and they put him into the hospital. I flew in from New York to see him, and I stayed at the Columbia Hotel. The night he flew back to the Philippines, my purse got stolen with his address. After he left, I was devastated.”