I decided to post this, though it’s now been over 300 days since I moved in here! May as well see where I am at this point, from this unhappy post to now. I am paying for this silly blog, so may as well. Though a “vlog” would probably be better.

This is the beginning of something I really do not understand. But am trying to understand withing myself. I will try to write regularly now. Now that I have somewhat come to settle here (still afraid to leave because I won’t want to come back.) Now that so many of my friends have died or are far away. And I am not there….I am here with nothing to do but be here. Not yet: I have not pulled any rabbits out of a hat; although there’s a neighborhood rabbit I’ve managed to name Patches.

This is what I wrote before:

It has been thirty-six days in this house I bought out of my own weakness. There can be no other way to say it. My body in pain. Chronic pain in my lower back and right foot and leg making it hard to drive. Making it hard to go through a day. Hard to drive away as I really wanted to up until the last minute. Sisters hounding me to buy something, I bought this pile… Now they are gone, leaving me here all by myself, only a “busy” brother nearby. Everyday is a day of despair and loneliness.

Nao faz mal. I am here for now. Stuck in an alien land dominated by loud noisy trucks, spewing pollution into the air. Drinking tap water that somehow turns the sponges into stinky untouchable squares to be thrown out way before they are worn out. Drinking. Trying to sleep, rest, and feel better. Painting painting painting–endlessly painting on the house, or gardening gardening gardening–none of it for money like I was doing in California. And no art is happening. There is no desire in me to make art that probably would come out as black blobs of ink smeared and scraped and saturated on the paper–like black blood that’s been clawed at.

Today painted the last room. I am calling it the lemon room. Yellow walls and ceiling and apple green trim. I feel my way to try to like it or at least make it comfortable for a guest to sleep in. I am okay in the small room off the kitchen where I can hear the hum of the new refrigerator (and other strange sounds it makes), and get woken every morning at 3 a.m. by a truck roaring by my window up the alley–some dude who thinks it’s fun to wake up the few residents on this road; If he has to be awake why shouldn’t all of us?!

I do not like it here.

The fence my sisters were so gleeful about is rotting. Falling away into the ground. The ground is full of rocks, which I do not so much mind, for I need them to fill holes under the foundation.

I have not heard from the sisters who sold me this house. I won’t say more. But daily I wake up and pray for help and guidance, to get out of here. To find true home. To not be so unhappy anymore.

It feels like I’ve stepped back in time. To a place that hasn’t caught up with the world, where frankly, the people like it that way–disdaining smog control or sound and air pollution control. Leaving things to rot. Liking the ugly. The rough.

I know now I was spoiled, with the air quality improving in the Bay Area, the old smog belt we were so used to actually going almost away. And we were just on the cusp of seeing gas powered mowers banned right before I left. Now I am here in gas mower hell. Practically the singe worst toxic pollution to humans is celebrated here. And on the shelves of the garden supply huge jugs of glyphosate dissappear like liquid candy.

In the meantime, beauty abounds in mainly long ago planted cherry trees still residing in the town, gracing the endless lawns and jazzing up the old, rotting, paint pealing mess of human structures.