Read Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun for Free Online Page B

bins are kept, I can’t see the books. Whatever Francisco had thrown away is now buried beneath other people’s trash – pizza and cereal boxes, glass bottles and soda cans and plastics. So much plastic! I briefly consider emptying the bin on the floor and sorting through it. Madness. By now the books would only be more ruined. So I tell myself that maybe this isn’t as disastrous as it seems. Maybe most of those books should have been thrown out anyway. Morayo has so many books, too many books, more than she has room for. SoI leave the basement and the following day, the bins have been emptied.

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 topeople’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