Moving On

It's been awhile since I posted anything. I've been busy dismantling this apartment I called home for the past year. Soon the internet connection will be cut off, and the blogging will be done from parts unknown. The plants have found permanent homes. So has the car. I've had no such luck. So, like certain elements of my life, this post will be all over the place.

The only things still left on the walls are my family pictures, and two posters, and they're coming down today. One, a gauzy black and white print, is of Rosa Parks sitting on the bus. Her bus. She made that bus hers. The serenity of her posture gives no clue to the upheaval that would follow her quiet act of courage. Miss Rosa was not a lawbreaker, but on the day she sat down in that bus seat she broke the law; an unjust law.

The other poster on my wall is a movie poster of Brandon Lee as "The Crow." Both Rosa and Brandon, in my mind are heroes. One on the silver screen-- the other in real life.

Boxes are filled up with everything I own--which ain't much, and they're lined up against the walls, ready to be carried out, again. I've played this scene so many times before. Moving day, moving on. Because I'm kind of at a loss for words right now, I'll share this poem written many years ago, but still real.

HOME (for Papasito)

Don't know
Where I belong anymore:
Miami, New York
Country
Or city.
The only place
That ever felt like home
Was in your arms. ###

A few days ago, I read a story in the local community paper about a newly married couple who own between them three homes. Their dilemna is: where to live together. In which home?
A blog written by a homeless guy in North Carolina-- also married, with three kids-- presents a different set of problems. Where to live---where? And the blog of Wandering Scribe is the saga of a woman in London who lived in her car in the woods for nine months. ATale of Two Cities revisited?

For the Homeless Guy, being in his forties with a bad back, and running for the bus is one of his problems. Although I understand he is now working, that job hasn't ended his poverty. And he is not an aberration. For too many of us, the streets are one paycheck away. I know some of you will fade out on me when I quote these words again. But here they are, spoken nearly fifty years ago:

"It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressing strikers in Memphis, March 18, 1968.

All the more powerful because these words were spoken by a reverend, a man of God. He didn't say it's a crime for adults or white males to be paid starvation wages. He didn't say it's a crime for American born citizens to be paid starvation wages. And he didn't say it's a crime for English speakers to be paid starvation wages. He said people. People working for wages. That's all of us who aren't living off our stocks or real estate, or offshore bank accounts.

Call me crazy, call me loco--whatever. If I'm going to work and be poor anyway, then my work is going to mean something; the work itself must provide sustenance. If I can't be proud of my paycheck, I'm going to be proud of my work. If you hate what you do, no amount of money will ever be enough. If you believe in your work, you will somehow always make it. And isn't it strange, that some of the best work you can do can be called "illegal?" In certain US cities-- Orlando for one, sharing food with homeless people is against the law. Go to www.foodnotbombs.net to find out more about their work.