I was walking down to the barn tonight, in the dark as usual. I've no use for flashlights- they only ruin one's night vision. And out in the distance, I heard the sound- lu-bump-lu-bump-lu-bump- of a freight train in the distance. Suddenly, all the memories of transcience came back to me, clammy and chill in the night air. They were as clear as if once again, I were waiting for that train, expectantly.

I've joked and made light of having been homeless, well the truth is this: living on the streets is hell. The constant anxiety, never certain of whether you'll eat today or not, whether it'll be something more than a few slices of day old white bread, sleeping always with one's ears open, alert to the sound of anyone approaching, the ecstasy of a hot meal in a union gospel mission, even though it's the same damned thing every night: macaroni cooked with cheap hamburger and tomato paste. The grease isn't drained off and floats on the surface. It doesn't matter; the fact that it's food does. Countless other haggard faces, rarely seeing the same one two nights in a row. Always tired and run down from having slept on damp, lumpy ground, vigilant against being discovered. The contempt on the faces around you, and which you feel for them, dressed in nice clothes, driving their nice cars to a store two blocks from their house. They're so lazy and complacent, why should they care if someone else is struggling, and hate him for it?
Riding bicycles 7-8 miles to work as a temp in a steel factory. The ground is hilly and steep, so you're sort of tired by the time you get there. Even so, it's amazing how these people with regular jobs laugh and talk when they should be working. At the end of the day, you still have to ride all the way back home, catch dinner at the Salvation army if you're not too late, and then sleep in the stickiness of the tent. And always, there is the pervading, cold sweat of desperation.

I think being homeless is where I learned to read people; to pick up on the myriad clues every human betrays. The tilt of a head, the gait, a movement, and most of all, the eyes. The eyes, they tell so much. Even now, I still read people. The ones I dislike most are the phonies. If someone dislikes you and is honest about it, that's fine. But shallow fakey ladies who giggle too much and act friendly when they don't mean it turn me off. But mostly, to be honest, I read men, because women aren't often a physical threat whereas men can be. Several times I've taken an instant dislike to a man for no other reason than his scent: he smelled aggressive. Then there are the ones who smile while their eyes say something else, and those with eyes glowing with religious fanatacism, and the ones who don't seem quite right in the head. So many memories- they lie dull and heavy on my mind.