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SUDDENLY HOMELESS!

I once started to write a song - "HOMELESSNESS IS HAPPINESS", to the tune of another known song. I guess I was trying to FIND happiness within my homelessmess, but that did not immediately happen, maybe in retrospect, during moments remembered, realizing, at times, I never could have IMAGINED even, before I became homeless. It is AMAZING, how one finds happiness during the most UNEXPECTED TIMES, when you'd never consider it POSSIBLE!

SUDDENLY HOMELESS! I was, once I'd lost my CAR, my last little bit of SHELTER! I was considered homeless even THEN, by most standards, since I'd fled my furnished room of fourteen years. Yet, in the CAR, I still had my own shelter, some privacy, a door I could open and close, which to ME, was (is) the borderline between being inside and outside. When I lost the car to DWI in April 1996, that was when I was LITERALLY homeless, when that door was GONE, no inside of my OWN TO GO INTO AND OUT OF anymore; it was just the OUTSIDE now, no going back, my own and EVERYBODY'S outside! Whatever doors I went in and out of after THAT, were PUBLIC doors, no longer MINE! It was the end of PRIVACY; now I was PUBLIC PROPERTY - my business everybody ELSE'S!

SUDDENLY HOMELESS! It was day and night, but it's easier if it suddenly happens during the DAYTIME, especially if the weather is nice, preferably late April to maybe early October. If it happens at NIGHT, and suddenly it WILL be night for you, you must look for a place to SLEEP, and it's no camping out fun either, like family outings during the summer or being away at camp, with many others around who care about you. At least then, you were not alone, and there was always the feeling of security around you, and you knew there was always HOME TO GO TO! SUDDENLY CAMPING OUT LIKE THIS, is something ELSE, that first night of your first experience in HOMELESSNESS. It is the beginning of something you will have to get used to for; well, maybe the rest of your LIFE, at WORST, certainly for a very long, long time! But, your instinct is SURVIVAL, so you make the best of it, like now being a part of the JUNGLE, submitting to the law thereof, sort of PRETENDING that you are camping in the ways mentioned above - with family, friends, whatever. It is amazing what you can DO, when forced to - even to let IMAGINATION take over!

When my NIECE Amy heard I'd been homeless for a number of years, I got a note from her through my PO box address (1999) - "I've been hearing from Dad

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