I find that there is very little going on from day to day that can actually keep me focused. My thoughts wander and I start drifting back into memories and moments that I have already lived through. It's hard to keep straight what is real and what isn't. That's why I'm writing this. I'm going to record whatever pops into my head as it happens, so that when I come out of it I'll at least know where I've been and where I am.

This is now, right now, this moment and it's starting again'�

It was not the first time I had been homeless. I can remember a time, back before I dropped out of college, when I was still taking classes and living in a shack on some old lady's property. Every morning the woodpeckers were my alarm clock as they drilled into the outer walls to get at the termites. Living mad and beat like a hermit, painting to blasting music without sleep or hesitation for days and nights on end. Writing my mistakes and trying to find some peace. Things started to get pretty ugly and it hit me, 'Jack, old boy, you're really starting to crack up.'�

Then one night, with all of my demons pulling me down into one of my grim fits, I wrote the land lady a note. I said, 'I can't live here anymore. Thanks.'�
I taped my key to the letter then taped the letter to her door. That was it. I made my escape at midnight and just drove around town with all of my worldly possessions loaded up in my clunker Pontiac Bonneville. Everything I owned, everything dear, was right there with me. My life, inside and out, was right beside me. I lived off of free meals from church groups and college organizations and showered at the homes of my friends.

Those were impressive times. Nights when I would just sit out by the airport and watch the sky traffic coming in to land. Everything was all lights and shrieking jet engines blowing their own kind of cold front across my windshield. It was me, staying up late into the night listening to all of our rock legends ' Bob Dylan killing the clock for me, Jimi Hendrix crying acid tears or Johnny Cash burning alive in his Ring of Fire.

That was how I experienced one of the single most sublime moments of my entire life. It was a quarter to three in the morning and the airport field was lit up neon blue with just the backup landing lights. Air whistled hard under the car and through the cracks of the doorframe. My car stereo blasts that mad soul screaming Hendrix, the electric Star-Spangled Banner shrieking its Rock & Roll nod toward patriotism. Night crews were parking the little charter jets and two-seaters, steering these large white winged beasts out in front of me below the twilight. Looming giants, yet small and unassuming, would go lumbering slow and silent in tow behind tractors with men in dark jumpsuits.

Wrapped tightly in an old woolen blanket that kept my grandfather warm during the Korean War, all of it hits me, the sights and smells. I think about the way television stations used to break at the end of the night. The National Anthem and images of monumental beauty followed by static and that dull roar of silence. That was how I fell asleep. Right then it happened. I whispered, 'This concludes our broadcast day.'� And passively slipped into the liberty of a good night's rest.

Sleep sweet, ye gods, sleep long little children. New day, come soon.

In the wee hours of the morning wrapped up in my Navy blanket I worshipped my rock heroes and let them help me through the sad hours. Because the truth is, when you stare straight into the heart of the matter, the world's already come to an end. The gods of rock already came like a thief in the night. And you've been left behind.

Until I found new roots, every morning was me waking up with car-blanket hair. That sort of rough night spent sleeping straight up with your head propped inside of the seat belt and cocooned inside of blankets and jackets to stay warm. It earns a hell of a midnight Mohawk the likes of which no man has the right to insult.

The power of the poor, my friend. Hell yeah. Shit. No question.

Anyway, that was years ago and now it's starting over. Right now I'm leaving her in that same car. All of the same garbage loaded up on the same seats. And me, sad and tearful, wondering how it could be, driving out to get some gas and land on broken feet.

I'm just driving, no real direction. All of the lights flying by my window feel like they are going out. Like all the light of the stars a thousand years away have suddenly caught up to me and are trying to let me know that they went out long ago. I pass the green sign floodlight reminders, Next Exit Palestine, Next Exit Conroe, Houston Next Right. It feels like night but it's really the early morning. The sun is not up yet, but it's the morning. I find a parking garage and stall the car in a dark corner. Fall quickly asleep with my head on a stack of books.

Now I'm waking up with sleep in my eyes. My watch reads 6:30. I slept for three hours. I'm walking the streets of Houston, stepping lightly below the high screaming planks of an Interstate overpass. I am there now. I walk beneath the doom speeding minivans, Volkswagens and big rig trucks. There is a roar below overpasses, a creak of steel and bolts and concrete moaning in different pitches with the mixed weights of every car. This is what the world sounds like from the devil's subterranean perspective. His world is nothing but footsteps and rolling tires and movement and life putting pressure on his ceiling.

I tell myself, 'This must be what the Stones meant by 'Sympathy for the Devil.''�

And I press on a little further. I walked beside dirt piles and the aftermath of underground parties. Used condoms, used syringes, broken bottles, sleeping hoodlums and bums, and I just step'� and step'� and step.

Overhead the sound of America continues shouting. The whoosh and rumble of tires dragging over elevated pavement. Roaring bastards that are trying to get there in time. Get this load to the factory in time. Get to work on time. Get home before dinner. Home before Lost starts. Before Desperate Housewives starts. Before American Idol. Before the news.

Everyone has to get home.

It has taken all day and most of the night, but right now I am standing at the edge of the Galveston waterfront, dehydrated, sad, vaguely empty in any sense of the word. Big cruise ships blot out the sky waiting for their tidal wave run to Alaska or the Caribbean, waiting to take retirees out of Florida and into another tropical scene. I see a Disney cruise liner waiting to take young newlyweds on a pleasure cruise and plant in their minds the seed of adultery, dissatisfaction, and the desire for another man or woman. Welcome to the Bastard Factory. Everyone wetted down in skin tight bathing suits decorated in flowers and lubricated for the act in sun tan lotion and SPF 15.

These cruise ships are an ugly thought process for me and I turn away. Walking away from that mind storm on a sort of faux dock near the smell of saltwater and fish I find my way nearer to the downtown area. Exhausted and desperate my footing slips and I trip into a sort of ditch and land with a thick splash. I think I might have fallen asleep for a minute. I'm not quite sure. At any rate, the ditch has old water in it. The feeling of algae and incubating insect larvae is all over me, but I cannot get up. This dense fog rolls in and I cannot even see clearly. Everything goes black and I am alone in this stuff. I get the feeling of weird creatures on my back poking me with their spears and laughing, demons trying to drag me down and fan the coals on my depression. I tell myself that this is the bottom, so far down that I am in hell.

Speaking out loud I say, 'Hitting bottom isn't about how much you have to lose. It's when you no longer give a shit about your own life. This is the bottom.'�

No rest for the dreary.

It's important for me to explain now that I am not especially religious. I'd say I love God. I used to fight for him vigorously, but things change and we evolve. I believe he's out there, I even think I'm on his side, but I'm not about to go knocking on doors handing out pamphlets about 'The Grace and Love of Our Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ'� or some bull shit like that. Nevertheless, I hear a voice, whispering and twitching like that water. It started saying something odd ' quietly and slowly louder.

'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters'�'�

What the hell is this? 'He restoreth my soul.'�

I'm saying this? He restoreth my soul. Did I say that out loud? But it must be me because the second I say, 'He restoreth my soul,'� I suddenly and instantly feel something ' the touch of God maybe. Something strange, but I feel alive again, I drag myself out of my stagnant waters and find that soul-searched energy to take one more step. And step. Step again.

I walk away still wrapped up in that fog. But. The feeling of demons on my back is subsiding. I keep saying it. He restoreth my soul. He restoreth my soul. He restoreth my soul. Step. Step. Step. Downtown is out in front of me and suddenly new streets are under my feet and many doors are opened. This part of Galveston looks like French Quarter New Orleans or the Brownstone District of Brooklyn, old buildings with that certain charm of stacked windows and stacked bricks and brown and red and white with moldings around all of their edges. Let the sidewalk take you here, take you up and down these streets and it is not so bad. This is a place for happier people wanting seaside tee shirts and cotton candy, but for a minute it welcomed me in.

This is me accounting for anything, everything that pops into my head. So what's in there now? Right now it's a wild party six months after my wife and I split. I jump forward through the mind storm. Here I am with the proverbial gang of friends. Another jump and now I'm having my first kiss. Jump again.

Right now it's an old hometown and a friend I call The Troubadour. He got his nickname for being a struggling folk musician. The two of us are out on a rooftop. In the middle of the city downing cigarettes like shots and watching a big bank clock count down the hours. We're on the cool tin roof of some local business, a donut shop ' I think.

He says, 'I have a friend who is stuck living with his parents. They're abusive, controlling, all the usual you know what. Told him your story, how you just got out of that little shack and started driving. How you had faith that you would be fine and you were.'�

Yeah, I tell him, I can remember this one day. Walking alone in Tyler, eyes down. I'd been on my own for about three weeks. It was damn cold and I just kept my face down to shield it from the wind. There was a time in my life when I was in a constant state of prayer. But I had since drifted from that. Maybe, in some way, homelessness was an attempt to find God again, to challenge the Almighty, to test him. Maybe if I took a leap of faith he would reward me in some big way. Mostly, I just wanted to experiment with my life. It was all about this belief of mine that it is not a leap of faith if you take the time to build your own safety net at the bottom.

Anyway, there I am walking. I time jump and there I am. Walking alone, I'm sort of thinking this prayer, not your usual 'Dear Lord'�Amen'� sort of crap. Just talking to whoever would listen. I say, 'You know what? I'm hungry, soup kitchens and college student ministry luncheons are one thing. But. I want lasagna. I want garlic bread and a salad.'�

My stomach growls and something grips my spine as I jump back to the rooftop.

Now I'm back with the Troubadour, I say, 'And you'll never believe it, man. Strike me down if there wasn't a twenty dollar bill sitting right at my feet. Barely flapping in the wind it just sat there, just moving enough to catch my eye ' like it was saying, 'Take me.'

'So I did. I took it and headed over to the Olive Garden in my hobo clothes, stinking in my flannel shirt and Army jacket. I made that twenty bucks go as far as it could. I ate well and took leftovers back to my car. Everything was taken care of.'�

He smiles knowingly and I add, 'Driving that night I remembered something. Jesus said, 'Do not worry about your life'� Consider the ravens, they have no storerooms or barns, and yet they are taken care of. And how much more important you are than birds.' For the rest of that month those last words became my mantra.'�

How much more important you are than birds.

How much more important you are than birds.

How much more important I am than birds.

'I was full of confidence, to live, believe and know that if I take a leap of faith off of any high mountain or rooftop I could know that some hand, some guardian would catch me.'�

I say, 'You know what, brother? I drove around for over a month and never needed to fill up on gas. It just lasted and lasted ' the Jesus Tank. I never needed food, I never needed anything. The point is that we work jobs for comfort and control, not for survival.'�

'Amen to that,'� he nods pointing at me with his cigarette, 'I think it is just about impossible to starve to death in this country. We're just so indoctrinated with want that we have come to think of it as a need. But you know what I really get out of your story? Amazement, sheer amazement, at the thought of how many things had to happen in order to get that twenty right at your feet. I think about all the work, all the steps, the drives, the conversation, whatever incident caused someone to open their wallet and drop a bill and some distraction to keep them walking without noticing. Then you come along. In need, even in prayer, and it's handed right to you. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are all much more connected than we realize.'�

And I add, 'One man's loss is another man's salvation.'�

How much more important we are than birds.

I feel the fog roll in and take another jump through several long months. Right now I'm walking the streets of a Denton, TX. A party town north of Dallas.


Thesis for my current thought essay: a good compliment can save your life.

It did mine.

I am walking Carroll Street. Alone and mad in that familiar haze that's a typical side effect of mixing depression with drink. Months ago by now. Just walking. Alone. There is some sort of horrific fog all around me, just pouring right out of me and into the open air. It blocks my vision and seems to keep everything bad sealed up inside and stuck right out on my skin. Damp and cold it just soaks right through me. There is something in that fog with me, some weird swarm of horrific demons diving and prodding and laughing and tearing away pieces of me in the night.

The lights are high and moonlight blue in all of the city windows. The street is roaring to my left as I walk south. I am wearing a brown suit and my hair is shaved down after a weird fit of emotion and sadness and recklessness.

This is now, right now. I'm there. Walking with my head down I feel something evil on my back. Jabbing me to get closer to the road and slowly it begins to sound like a good idea. I think, 'Man, it really would be easy. Most of these vehicles are really hauling ass, one step to the left and it would all be over...'�

Just step and bang. The End.

This is all going on in my head when I hear that voice. A young girl, maybe a year younger than me. Beautiful. Dark eyes, dark hair. She says, 'I don't know why, but I just felt like I should tell you that you look really nice in that suit.'�

Shake it off, stay grounded. This is now, this computer. This word processor. What I am typing is the present, the real world. Stay focused. This right here is the moment.

I tell the Troubadour, 'Thinking back I know it wasn't a big deal, but what she said really got that muck out of my head. Like a gunshot it cleared the fog away and made me smile. Pretty girls don't usually say things like that to me and it was timed perfectly. Darkness, grim visions, and then BANG!

'I felt alive again.'�

He lights me another cigarette and I say, 'Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't said anything. If that girl told herself, 'I don't know him. It would be weird of me to say something like that to a stranger...''�

And all the blah, blah, blah. All the fear that holds us back.

'Jesus, Lord,'� I groan, 'they might have been scraping pieces of me off of the pavement and scraps of my brown suit out from under someone's SUV. I can see it now, me all gory and wasted on some vague road in Denton, TX. I guess that's the case in point, though, a good compliment can save your life.'�

'What is it about them?'� asks the Troubadour, 'These things always come from that proverbial left field. Ha. Left field. We use baseball analogies to describe the indescribable. Sex is labeled by first base, second base, etc. etc. etc. Or in this case, left field is Oblivion. Your last remark emerged like Chaos from the hollow darkness. That dismal no-place. Left Field.'�

'Or put simply,'� I reply, ''What?''�

He laughs and says, 'That kind of compliment is always about something unexpected. Something random, rarely for the right things and it tastes best from someone you barely know.'�

I go into this long rant saying, 'It's always, 'Wow, that's a nice dress.' Or, 'I heard about you, you're that writer everyone's been talking about. You're really good.' And best of all, 'You look really nice in that suit.'

'We all have the same instinctual reaction, 'Thank you, but why?' That was what I said to her that night. It was a stupid remark, I know that. The 'why' part I mean. At any rate, I meant the 'thank you,' but I have to wonder how and why it made me feel so good. Why do compliments make us feel so good? Perhaps the only way to add reason to my not-so-rhyme is that words are more than words.'�

'In the end,'� I add after a long pause, 'when you stare straight into the heart of the matter, you have to know that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can always heal me. I only have a single regret that I'll carry with me to the end of all things. It isn't lost friends or lost love, it isn't lies or pain. It is just that I let that girl keep walking. Too shocked and too happy to ask her to wait. To ask her to stay with me. I stood by the road, under the silver city lights and the orange-out gleam of the street side I just watched her walk away. Dammit. To have that moment back. If she's out there, I hope she finds me again. Chances are I owe her my life, in a moment of weakness it took a random compliment from a random stranger to pull me back onto the right track.'�

'It's always those things you don't plan for that matter the most,'� the Troubadour adds with a strange tension in his voice.

'I think about everything that has happened to me,'� I reply, 'Strokes of luck or coincidence or maybe they're more. Maybe they're tiny nods of approval from fate or God, whatever you want to call it. In the end, I know that we're all okay for as long as we're meant to be and I know that it's not the people that try to fix you who save you in the end. It's the people who never have any idea of their impact. They never know how much they help.'�

The Troubadour smiles, takes a drag on his cigarette and says, 'Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can always heal you.'�

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