6

‘Okay, so the other day this black lady comes up to me. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’m just saying, she was black. And tall and old. Not old-old, but definitely older than me: old enough to be my mom, maybe even my grandma. So anyway, she sees that I’m carrying all this shit, plus I had the dog so I guess she kinda felt sorry for me and then she kinda like asked me if I was okay. But sometimes you get tired of people looking at you like you need pity and shit like that. Yeah, I’m homeless! But so what? Maybe that’s what I shoulda said, but the words don’t always come out when you want them to.

Homeless is just because we’re house challenged. We don’t have a roof over our heads, but we make it work. Thank God I’m in the food industry and we have food. And I feel like I’ve learned a lot from living like this because you never starve, you’re always clothed, you ground score everything, I mean basically. We help each other, you know. I go to people’s parks a lot and I see a lot of it there. No one’s better or different than the other person. We’re all of one heart. We all care for each other. We have off days and on days just like everybody else does. I don’t drink or anything like that, and I don’t do drugs or anything like that anymore, and that’s my choice. It’s a perspective and a focus that I have to respect myself. And living like this, you can’t live like this if you’re high all the time. You can’t. Or you’d lose focus and you’d be tired all the time. I have my car, and my dog and my stuff, and I have a job so I’m okay. And I’ve been married, I lived in Portland, lived in Oakland and Berkeley and had a really good childhood and stuff. My father made a lot of money back in the day for living in the Bronx. What people make today, my father made back then. Those kind of figures, you know. So I come from good stock. My dad was a saver, while I’m not. I’m a free spirit, you know, an artist.

I come from a family of artists and piano playing and music and stuff like that. We had a piano growing up in our house, in my grandmother’s house when I was a kid. Ukuleles and mandolins and singing and dancing. You know, that’s where I come from. That kinda of background. So that’s how come the Grateful Dead really gave me that free spirit of danceability. I took modern dance. I had a recital at Carnegie Hall. I’m not saying that I’m a poor little rich girl or anything, but I come from good stock. And sure, I have a higher sight for myself, of course! But then I would wanna take everybody into my home, you know, and let them just have a good night’s sleep, you know. Cos I know what it’s like. And I haven’t slept in a bed for three years, you know. But that’s a journey in life, you know, it’s like a journalist going to another country. Like on a mission, like a missionary. And it’s not that I don’t sleep. I have a pillow and a comforter, you know. Down comforter. I had a sleeping bag. I gave that away. It’s so good to give.

Giving! I’ve learned so much about just giving. Giving is such a good feeling. Buying someone a cup of coffee, or paying someone’s toll, or someone doing that for me, you know. That act of kindness is A-MAY-ZING. Amazing! Be kind. It’s very amazing. Sometimes we just don’t take the time to know people as people and maybe someone’s heart is broken in some way or another, you know.

So. Just to back-pedal back to that woman I was talking about earlier. Well, maybe her heart was broken, you know, and I shouldn’t have been so like, ‘I don’t wanna talk to you.’ You just never know. Be kind. Be kind. That’s my new motto.

So like the other day, I found all these books just dumped onto the sidewalk. So I picked them up and I gave some to friends, who like to read, you know. But I kept one for myself cos there was one about Africa and I’ve always had this theory that Africans were the first to come to the Americas and that maybe some of my foremothers were African. So that’s why I kept the book with Africa in its title, and I like the name on the inside page. Morayo Da Silva. I don’t know how you pronounce it, but I kinda like More-RAY-oh cos it sounds like a ray of sunlight, genderless and grounded, just like my chosen name. Born Sarah, now Sage. And I’m still imagining my African ancestors coming up through Europe, across the Bering Strait, then down to the West Coast into the land of my other ancestors – the Cherokee tribe of the southeast and the Apache from the southwest. I also imagine that one day I’ll dump my crazy ass boyfriend, let him take the dog, and then I’ll go back to college and finish my degree, you know. That way I’ll make something better for myself. I’ll travel to Brazil. Maybe to Africa, cos when you think about it, really, with what I’m suffering now, my life isn’t that much better than what Africans are living through, you know. I mean my life is okay and stuff, but I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s tough out here, and sometimes when I read about Africa, I don’t see America being any better. It’s really a crying shame. A crying shame.