Greenfield

 

More details I didn't write about last year, for various reasons...

 

A year ago today (9/29/08) I'd had advance warning that the respite people were going to kick me out the next morning, and I had no place to go. What I had had to go through at the shelter made me completely unwilling to try that again.

 

So I got together with a "friend," and we went to the shelter to pick up the things I'd left behind. We also had a long talk about me either going to stay at her house, or at the house of a friend of hers who had extra space. I was still waiting, in my belief that a federally protected person had to be told where to live by those feds, for them to tell me where they wanted me. But my friend said that a condition of staying at her house would be that we would be looking for a place for me and filling out public housing applications, etc, and if some fed or other wanted to squash our efforts, so be it. But we had to at least try. I agreed to these conditions. It seemed that either way, from her friend or from herself, I would have a place to stay (which I could pay for).

 

But the way it turned out was that the "friend" and her husband did not let me stay with them, and as far as I know, they never even called their friend with the space in his house to ask him.

 

So, tomorrow night a year ago, I slept in Peskeomskut Park in Turners, and stayed in Turners. Greenfield had become that repugnant to me. The second and third nights I slept at the riverbank, and I think on the fourth night I was allowed to sleep in the laundromat, where I was given six or seven nights. In this way my two months of living outdoors in Turners Falls began.

 

Here's to friendship.