We are not on this earth to simply conquer others!
People always act and speak from what is on the inside of them, what is in their thoughts and from their own desires.
And we are not here to bend or to break others to do our will!
When I lived in Berkeley and even went to school there, I saw all kinds of people, thinking and doing things their own way, and whatever they thought, they kept as their own thoughts, and everyone thought their own way, and café life and anywhere else that people associated at, they all seemed to be their own persons, whatever their thoughts or personalities or personal philosophies were… everyone mostly all seemed to be getting along? The Haight-Ashbury seemed to be the same way? But anywhere else in the Bay Area where those from the outskirts of ‘normal’ areas and suburbs were inside the city doing the day, part of the businesses and corporations downtown, their way of thinking and doing things was the way things and their employees all had to think just like they did, or if they deviated in anyway to be their own persons or to have their own thoughts and personal lives, then it was the employer’s way or the proverbial highway!
A person could work for Western International Media from Sunset Boulevard out of Los Angeles California and on Pacific Avenue in a building that used to be one of the wild houses from the old wild and roaring days of San Francisco when the types of May West were there, and your manager, who is from the ‘burbs’ outside of the city proper, and she shows up in you office and at your desk telling you that she does not approve of your lifestyle and other critiques, even making you feel threatened to lose your own position there if you cannot conform to the way that she thinks and does things from where she is from outside of the city proper, and all the time while you are trying to convince her that you have no “lifestyle” but are simply a “couch potato” hanging out at home most of the time! And all the while it seems that she is making good on her almost unspoken threat by letting staff members go and replacing them more and more with her friends and family members from where she lives and commutes in from outside of the city proper… in one of the more conservative areas of California where the folks mostly all seem to vote and think like Conservatives and Republicans?
And then one day your position and another position is consolidated and you are out pounding the pavements of downtown San Francisco looking for a new “career” position!
And all the while people that are not as educated as you are or as socially-minded or as travelled are asking you in your interviews things like, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Questions which to me, though seemingly easy to answer to some people, befuddle me… because in five years I am hoping to’ve done some positive things in the world that really matter and really make a difference in society and in the world at large!
Corporations are fine and one can have “career” positions there, but there is a world outside of those downtown ‘icons’ of wealth and of commerce where ‘real people’ are suffering and have needs that those with time to volunteer and a good income and spend some of their earnings to make a positive difference in the world; but corporate managers might consolidate yours and another position to end your “career”, when they find out that you are not “one hundred percent” sold out to only the corporation and care about social issues and the world at large as well! Or in this particular instance did that fact that your manager, “Mickey Taylor” from ‘Timbuktu’ also worried and fretted that you might also be Gay, though she has met some of your girlfriends coming to have lunch with you doing your time of employment at Western International Media (at the San Francisco branch office but the main office is in Los Angeles and at the same address as the fake address of the mansion that Nora Desmond lived in… in the old film classic, “Sunset Boulevard”)? I was thirty-something then, and I am almost forty-seven, which makes me “middle-aged” now!
I then was so many poor socially mattered things after that and to fill the next few years, including a trained Suicide Prevention and AIDS/HIV counsellor and other social concerns in the inner-city, and a another round of being a Missionary and Religious Social Work there and in Seattle with the working poor and the homeless and the kids living on the street of Capital Hill and the downtown homeless that we fed in the city parks, in the nearly constant rain, always suffering with allergies and constant bouts of Pneumonia and ‘Hepatitis A’ that I got infected with in casual interaction from working with the poor on the streets of Seattle, and my doctors warned me again and again about how ill I “really” was! But there was so much to do and so many people in need that I had to breakdown to absolute weakness and so near death that I could do no more! I only took heed to the medical professionals there because I could hardly move another inch!
So then I returned to San Francisco weak and ill to recover and so many people seemed quite sure that my illness and weakness and pallour of skin was really drug abuse related!
My old friends treated me as a proverbial leper as a result of my poor health and drug abuse looking colour, and like Job in the Bible it took little time to lose my old friends from my youth and become alone, weak and ill, under medical care and seeing a therapist for the resulting loneliness and depression.
And I founded a non-profit that I could run on the Internet seeking to make known the needs of the orphanages in the Eastern European countries and how to support them and how to send funds from wherever my contacts via the Internet were, to the physical mailing addresses of those organizations in their nations and countries! It was quite rewarding! But after a couple of years of having little, physical interpersonal interaction and still struggling to recover my full strength, I was invite to go to Wisconsin to work in the countryside ‘village’ an hour away from ‘real’ civilization to teach their children there their Catechism to be Confirmed, and to live in a little country house in their community and be looked after health-wise, if possible to recover? One day they took away the children’s study Bible’s that they loved and were reading, told me to stop blessing our meals and praying, and they stole my money, they also wanted my identity, and they drugged me tried to sell me into slavery! But I would not stop preaching, so they fed me D-Con and Antifreeze until my skull made cracking noises and I spewed blood from my bowels and vomited the same, and bled from here and there and was dying in pain! But one day I prayed to God like Samson for supernatural strength, escaped and was taken to ER and told I was in serious trouble! I was hidden by new friends, healed, sent to where I am now seven years ago this September!
I do not play games about things anymore! I have seen how dangerous things can be! And I am a different person now than I ever was before! People meet me and call me “eccentric” and cannot understand why? Well, wouldn’t you be different and more serious about the world, society and everyday life if you were schooled in my experiences along the way as well aye?
Now my prayer though is that I can find the means or funds to return to the San Francisco Bay Area, or my family home in Devonshire, England (though I have no direct living family living now and am quite alone in the world, we originated there, and I want to belong somewhere!) When I am well I fit in SF and Berkeley more than here, and the weather is easier on me there and more moderate as well! And I miss walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in the evenings and looking at the nighttime lights and views! I miss the Ocean, Ocean Beach, Seal Rock, the Old Bathhouse Ruins, and the splashing waves, the Camera Obscura, the Penny Arcade or The Nickelodeon (remember “The Princess Diaries” and the mechanical clown? That was The Nickelodeon!).
I watch the film “Vertigo” and others to look at the old places that were my proverbial ‘stomping ground’ in my youth and get teary eyed and am always heartsick for home!
I have some friends here and none of them get all there is to get about me as we are so different and even our personal philosophies are different. Even the way that we view spirituality and the Christian Faith is differently ‘flavoured’ in our lives, experiences and insights! People do not understand why I miss Northern California my home since it is filled with liberal thinking and “sinners”? But friend, all the world is filled with “sinners”! Some are cruel and vile and buy and sell people! And others are simply easier to get along with “sinners” who are nice and friendly and will smile and ask how your day is going? San Francisco and the Bay Area has good people and bad people and mellow people and artists, as well as some dangerous people, same as most anywhere else… but it as moderate weather, good memories, lovely art, architecture, cable cars, street cars, “The Underground” (and another subway system as well), and the SF Symphony and Play Houses (theatres) and views and surrounding mountains, and cathedrals and synagogues and quaint things and charming things and cafés and so many, many things! Bookstores and libraries and friendly people as well as everything else! And it is all only a step or a few, or a little, convenient trip away! Unlike here where nothing is close by or on the nearby corners, a few steps, or a little trip away!
Everything here is so inconvenient, and the summers are so crippling hot and the winters are entrapping and miserable! I cannot manage the hot summers nor can I do anything worthwhile during the winters here!
I own an air-conditioner here, praise God for it! And I live in a lovely redbrick colonial house that’s quite old. But back ‘home’ the fog rolls in from the Ocean there and ‘air-conditions’ the whole city! I miss home! I miss educated friends! I miss The San Francisco Bay Area!
JoeChristian@surf1.ws
