thinking private thoughts in public places...

The shelter workers want to give my bed away. They say that I don't ever sleep. They say I'm up all night every night working on my computer. True to that I do need to be exhausted in order to lay on that bunk bed. There is a Mexican guy on the top bunk and I don't even know his name. Sometimes he sleeps with his work boots on. So he steps in some shit comes to the shelter and jumps on the top bunk above mine. Sleepy? I think not!

Going to sleep in a dormitory with 60 other guys isn't easy. What are the properties of privacy? I think each human brain requires a certain amount of free space in order to think clearly. I had an apartment in Belltown and a woman there that lived in my closet.  She was a crack-addict  nicknamed "New York".

NY was an alight girl for a crack prostitute and she was a looker so I let her hang out. In my closet, she made a little cubby apartment. She hung photos. She arranged her items in the closet as if it were her home. When she would come over she would head straight for her closet as if it were her apartment. She had carved out of a physical space, a mental space. A mental space behind a door. A door she could close. And in that small space. In that moment of privacy. She could experience, a private thought.

At the Blaine Shelter, all night, I hang out in the TV room. At a desk with a bright 30 Watt lamp. It's the farthest point away from other thinking, snoring brains. There, farthest away from the 60 dormitory bunk beds, like New York in the closet I can almost hear myself think.

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