***** I have reached, and implemented, a final decision regarding my housing.
Never in any way did I attempt to drag out this process and it was to my total shock and amazement that day after day, week after week, month after month the housing system never was in a position to finalize the offer they originally told me of back in November. Consequently, my decision to refuse the housing to stay in what I considered best lived solidarity with the least of these my sisters and brothers, I expected to be long executed and past in early December.
Only last week was the housing system in a position to do so at which point I stated my major outstanding question, could I liberally use this one bedroom apartment to help in particular my friend who has Ms? And by Wednesday of last week the answer came back, we regret to say, no that is not possible.
Well, that precipitated another couple of days of hemming and hawing on the part of my nervous system but within a couple of days I had, crystal clear, of course I will turn down the property so that every penny I have can continue to go to Palestine and other causes related to the abused poorest among us. Yes, my nervous system was clear, I have physical desires for a permanent place of my own, but those desires are just infinitely far down the list of my desires compared to my desires for A life of less horror and suffering for my children in Palestine and elsewhere.
But on Saturday I think it was in reviewing my second cause, beside Palestine, fighting against the war on the American poor, I was reviewing articles on gentrification and it hit me pretty hard that 1. Unless I accepted the property it could be fairly rapidly that I would be driven out of the city with the rest of the poor either through increased prices, criminalisation of the poor, and therefore imprisonment. If I thought this was the best way to serve I would do it in a heartbeat. But I think it is not the best way for me to serve, at least not at this point in time. The future could be different. 2. A second thought occurred to me for the first time, that this was not a lifetime decision, but a one year by one year venture. And finally, the clincher, 3. This would shift my vantage point and point of attack and that for a year that could be very useful to giving me new perspectives on my work and allowing me as a propertied resident of the city to work with various social, city, and civic organizations in ways that I am NOT allowed to as a homeless person. And after a year of getting my foot in the door as a propertied citizen, I been could return to homelessness but my foot is still in the door. Lol. This last one is a bit clandestine, which I rarely rarely allow myself, but in this case I am.
Yesterday I got the cashiers checks and secured the apartment, I'll take much of this week to transition out of the homeless shelter, but last night I slept on the floor of the apartment and now am doing laundry in the beautiful large laundry facility of this extremely nice building. A building, by the way, I'm happy to report, I am one of the only white faces. I wouldn't have it any other way.
This is in northeast DC in a rapidly gentrifying area, Brookland. I had not realized it was rapidly gentrifying but only this morning out for coffee it hit me in the face. Hugely, rapidly, gentrifying. Today's vicious colonialism.
Already my decision regarding the apartment is opening up a new perspective for me that there are a host of potential advantages to my being here this year, from accelerating my learning curve, to giving me a practical pragmatic foothold, in making some of my focus this particular community, maybe even this largely African American senior subsidized housing facility. Today, for example, for that reason, I may attend a meeting that I see for a community garden.
Or, I may skip that meeting for a1 o'clock meeting down at DC City Hall on Housing and gentrification.
I don't remember exactly but I think my apartment building, 635 Edgewood Street, 20017, apartment 525, it's about a two and a half three mile ride from the edge of the city itself, Union Station, on what appears to be a ridiculously safe, I rode it at 9 o'clock last night, bike path put in place exactly so that the previously lower middle class African American, undesirable, part of the city could be gentrified, colonized, taken over, by young white, elite, highly educated, over-privileged, urban professionals.
It will be interesting to see if I become just another white colonial over-privileged gentrifying cancer cell in the body of dc humanity, inhumanity, or if I become a healthy cell, an agent for a more humane process.
No, I expect to have virtually no impact, but it still will be true that I will be either a healthy cell, or, the only other option, a cancer cell. Of course, the only choice I see that has joy to it is to be of the type, healthy. But I live in the imperial city of hunger games, Dc, which is one massive temptation to become cancerous, self centered, self-serving, selfiish, detached, blissfully oblivious, to the needy that we trample through our selfishness. We don't intentionally trample the neediest. We choose selfishness and the result is the we trample the neediest, to depression, desperation, and death.
You know what occurred to me yesterday for the first time in my life? Probably 16/17 years ago as I was leaving the realm of being intensive malignant colonial elitist cancer as an executive in high tech, in my intensive study I spent a lot of time studying Teresa of Calcutta because her books more than any other are filled with the word joy, literally, which I suspected, joy, was the true north of being a healthy human being. Everyday since, has proven that that was a correct perception. And further I was studying, and life every breath teaches me is correct, that joy is the fruit of loving, and only the fruit of loving.
Well, it was in reading a book written by Teresa of Calcutta that for the first time in my life I saw a word associated with a piece of Scripture that had always been sacred to me, ultimately sacred, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The word that I saw in the scripture for the very first time, in a book by Teresa, was the word all. Do unto others all, all, all, that you would have them do unto you. This was a lightning bolt to me. duh!!!! Do unto others all, all, all, all, all, all.....
So that was the translation of that scripture that I read in Teresa of Calcutta's book.
The revelation for me yesterday, after the last 17 years of studying and practicing militant Loving, what hit me for the very first time, lol, was that the definition of Loving is, do unto others all, all, ALL... that you would have them do unto you. Is there a more perfect, is there a definition as perfect, of Loving, than, do unto others all that you would have them do unto you?
Actually, I think there is. The quintessential definition of Loving requires inserting a gene slice from another part of Jesus DNA teaching, namely, least of these.
The perfect definition of Loving, as opposed to lusting which is near always what we mean by Loving, the perfect definition of Loving is: do unto the least of these all that you would have them do unto you. Hello! Am I the last one to make this connection??????
