{"id":5162,"date":"2015-11-27T20:39:04","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T01:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deepsicks.com\/?p=5162"},"modified":"2022-06-18T13:41:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T18:41:40","slug":"weltschmerz-doorbuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/2015\/11\/27\/weltschmerz-doorbuster\/","title":{"rendered":"Weltschmerz Doorbuster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I remember you. I took you in when you didn\u2019t want me to. Shelter from the riders on the storm. But it seems now my tourniquets are deadly. Feel too much you don\u2019t want to feel anything, staunch the wound and the poison too, keep all that sickness inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Have I neglected deepsicks? …Naw. I just don\u2019t polish and publish it. Use words as the catalyst to understand the darkness, it’s become paralysis, self-sabotage and prophecy. Gut that snitch, gild that lily. Pull out all them teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s Black Friday morning and I’m wrestling out words DOORBUSTER!<\/em> on my heart and brain. It doesn\u2019t come easily anymore\u2014time plus getting past the antsy artsy part to unlock reflection, knowing its shape, its cracks and chasms, and feeling whole because of it. I know if I read the archives a bit I could beat this shame that I\u2019m no longer a spiritual strandbeest self-regulating machine because I wasn\u2019t. Ever. Nostalgia for an era that didn’t exist. I just wish oh whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deepsicks is still around, oh yes.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It was trekking in the early morning dark rain, scanning under bridges, abandoned overhangs, looking for kids I hoped I wouldn\u2019t find in the point-in-time count for homeless youth because the survey they gave me to administer was shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well hello there!
I’m a good person and I choose to be here!
Where\u2019s your mom and dad?
Why aren\u2019t you dead?
Do you give sex for money?
For muscle?
For drugs?
Or do you only get raped?
Anyway, here\u2019s some socks.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t count anyone then, though I can count on them, every day.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Urban public librarians will all tell you the same. Nothing can prepare you for the day after day neurotics drunks maniacs end-of-the-month out of meds, sacked, cracked Medicare gapped, down and out forgotten unseen ornery but really, they\u2019re just really fuckin hungry trying to manage diabetes with orange juice and Hershey\u2019s and tired so goddamned tired of the criminalization of sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of our street customers you could lift from the New Yorker<\/em>, grizzled warrior poets with quiet dignity, pervasive but polite, never a peep. Others are straight out of TMZ, punching computers, punching one another, sabotaging the toilets and terrorizing anyone who wrongs them. This includes looking at them, looking at their stuff, randomly reserving their computer after them and coughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s about territory and saving face. It\u2019s the PTSD of living on the street, of having no control and endless closed doors, denials of service for lack of ID or the right kind of history. It\u2019s the insanity of the State of Texas\u2019 mental health policies, informed by, get this, Scientology<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey Governor and all you fakes with the flag on your lapels\u2014Jesus on your lips but not in your legislation. Get out the granite tower and come just up the street. Your local public library\u2019s got all the proof you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m on the front line, heart on my sleeve,
head to toe in compassion fatigues,
ready for my next tour.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Last week a regular customer, friendly and young, asks as he often does the overnight low. We look on the monitor together. \u201cOo, 35 degrees\u2026.\u201d He frowns, shrugs and thanks me and I wonder where he sleeps. I don\u2019t ask. Personal questions aren\u2019t professional. I doubt it\u2019s in a shelter, though. They\u2019re dangerous with too many drugs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it\u2019s 32 or below, city emergency management and area congregations activate cold weather shelter\u2014extra space in churches so people don\u2019t freeze. Not that they would, necessarily. If you can handle winter homelessness in Minneapolis, you can do it in Austin, Texas. But the whole city kind of goes crazy when it’s cold. The radio tells us to open our cupboards and let our faucets leak, like Austin\u2019s third world or in 1915.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A few hours later I take a reference call. \u201cWhat\u2019s the overnight low? Please check three different sources.” Weather.com, Weather Underground, AccuWeather, coming right up. 35, 35, 34. “But what’s the temperature hour by hour? Can you read me that, too?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Um, sure, okay. 37, 37, 36, 35, 34, 35, 36.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But what does that mean? Is it going to freeze?” I tell her not according to what I see but assure non-assurances and ad lib how forecasting works. Not making people feel foolish is part of my profession, along with mastering courteous methods of telling patrons I am not a wizard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But should I bring my plants inside?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lady, we\u2019re not bringing in our humans.
Your plants will be fine.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In other news, I am letting the terrorists win. They got Paris and everything. Suspicion, derision, our own paranoid extremism frames every question on the campaign and I don\u2019t even, what?<\/em> a whole year to wait? to vote how ugly we are. How weak. How scared. How racist, classist, misogynist, duplicitous. When will we learn. We are what we earn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will get the country we deserve.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Knowing how angry, how anxious I’m getting, I try to dial back my media diet. I don\u2019t need to know everything that happens, as it happens, as it\u2019s redacted and retracted and contradicted. Was it 150 dead or only 130? Was it a Syrian passport or nefarious plant? What aggravating garbage came out of Texas this week? this day this hour this very minute<\/em> how should I feel terrible, what should I apologize for, what is the cut of my shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My awareness changes nothing but myself, and I feel awful. I know it’s not the true awareness\u2014the calm, the quiet, the mindfulness\u2014I crave. Still, I fear I will miss something. An important discovery, clue, conspiracy, a dumb craft, a poll that abhors me, an internet cat, a dashcam crash, a cool lady cop whip nae nae dance-battling to counteract the kids they keep killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As though I\u2019m not missing all kinds of things.

Holes in emotion and wounds in identity who do I think I am<\/em> feeling anything.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always tried to be a good, informed American. Nuanced without being a pushover without being so damn sure I\u2019m right. But lately nothing I learn, good or bad, is actionable, or changes me for more than five minutes, aside from the weight of Weltschmerz that makes me solid dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not even out of bed I reach for my phone and the first thing I see is bullets in black bodies in North Minneapolis, shot by whites other whites will wonder what happened with. Maybe it\u2019s mental illness\u2014the real kind, not the too lazy to live in a house kind. And maybe they feared for their lives\u2014not the refugee kind fleeing violence and death, but the whites-becoming-minorities feeling threatened and vexed, their own brand of world pain that the world is moving on. Wanting to get back to a thing that never was, our history a fractured fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, normalized hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, G U N S!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

(Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this. All of this, and yet, I don\u2019t need to think hard to know what I am thankful for. Family, friends, health. I’m married, now\u2014trying to nevermind I wrote all this junk instead of a two-months’-late lovey-dovey-kissyface wedding post of pure joy. Oh well. Everything in its right place, at its own pace. This took all day to right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s nice to have a partner. A shoulder to lean and nibble on. Someone to know these places I go, because he’s right there with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We busted out the card table and covered it with a sheet. Put on fancy clothes, gave thanks and ate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember you. I took you in when you didn\u2019t want me to. Shelter from the riders on the storm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-5162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-narratives","tag-deepsicks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8312,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions\/8312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}