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| The Empty Chair, Charles Spencelayh. |
Louis Shalako
Frugality.
I’m
afraid to spend any money.
Going
from the Ontario Disability Support Program onto senior’s retirement benefits
has resulted in a raise calculated at $589.00 per month. That is seven grand a
fucking year, more than I had last year, ladies and gentlemen. All I have to do
is live one more year.
And
I’m afraid to spend any money—
I
need a new pair of shoes. I need a winter coat. I need new pillows, I need new
bedsheets, I need winter socks, the proverbial woollies, although they’re more
likely to be cotton and polyester blend these days. I need a new pair of winter
boots, new underwear, and a new sweater…
My
microwave is a wreck. My pots and pans are shit, the dishes and utensils,
mismatched crap from forty years past. The list is seemingly endless, and I
just can’t bring myself to even start.
I
need a new shower curtain, I need new towels. I do not have a table and chairs
in my dining area. We could throw that on the fucking list as well. I would
like to have a cat, and yet the thought sort of scares me for some reason. But,
if I get a cat, or a dog, well…then I would probably need to get a bigger bed,
don’t you think…??? The master bedroom is empty, just empty. I’ve never used it
for anything. It’s just there, and yet that might make a pretty nice little
office, or I could set up a bench and start building model airplanes or
something crazy like that…if only I could bring myself to begin.
I'm the only guy I know who has an empty room, an empty closet...empty cupboards in the kitchen.
I’ve
always seen this place as temporary, maybe even precarious. Sooner or later, it
has to end, right.
That
all seems pretty logical to me, and I am nothing if not logical.
Perhaps
a little too logical, but then I’ve just come off of thirty fucking years of
pain, poverty, deprivation, depression, and quite a bit of bureaucratic and
criminal harassment, including the police, the courts, the psychiatrists, a few
neighbours and their droogs, and yes,
even the fucking social workers.
There
were times when it seemed everyone and everything were against me—and it all
seemed pretty damned logical at the time.
It
was logical enough.
It’s
a kind of poverty thinking on some level.
It’s
pretty easy to look down on yourself when you’re cutting your own hair, and
washing it with dish soap, and brushing your teeth with baking soda, and making
sure to grab a new toothbrush next time you’re at the good old Sally Ann
(Salvation Army. – ed.) asking for another handout of groceries. When your coat
stinks and the shoes on your feet smell like dead baby goats.
It
is pretty easy to look down on yourself when everyone else in town seems to be looking
down on you too—what the hell did those people ever know, but it really is
insidious over the long term.
It’s
not like I have never looked down on myself, and it was valid enough at the
time, ladies and gentlemen. Every so often, you are right, after all. It’s a
little something we call shame.
Might
want to take a lesson from all of that and maybe try and do better next time.
***
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| What in the hell are you talking about...??? |
People
talk about quality of life and I have no idea of what they are talking about.
For
a gallon of white ceiling paint, and a gallon of a nice, sunny yellow colour,
what they call Brenchley Peach, I could begin repainting my apartment. I’ve
been here almost ten years in this unit, I am a smoker, and the ventilation has
never been very good in these old walk-ups. Baseboard heating means aerial
convection drags the smoke, the bacon grease hovering in the air, the moisture
and humidity from the shower and boiling the kettle, it drags all of that right
up the walls.
What
would it take? A hundred fifty dollars and a few tools to get started, a small
step-ladder. It’s the mental barrier, perhaps lugging all that shit up three
flights has something to do with it.
It’s
not like I couldn’t pay some kid twenty bucks an hour, we could do a room in
one day or less, once you get started…right? Half a day is a more reasonable
estimate.
And
I still can’t quite bring myself to do it. For one thing, it’s a big job, one
that has to be finished, albeit on a room-by room basis. One room at a time,
right, start with the easy ones and work my way up to the bigger challenges…
And
I will probably never do it.
It
really isn’t about the money, although there is something to be said for having
a little cash in the bank.
Where
in the hell would I ever find the guts or even just a shred of optimism.
It
is poverty thinking and it may take a while to overcome.
People
get a little too used to being poor, and they think it will never change.
In
which case, why fight it.
Right?
END
Poor
old Louis has books and stories available from Google Play in ebook and
audiobook format. His books are fairly inexpensive, mostly because he’s never
had the nerve to charge a proper price—go figure.
(Louis has given away hundreds of thousands of ebooks and audiobooks over the last fifteen years, presumably in some forlorn hope of getting someone to love him. – ed.)
“We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor.” Poor People Don’t Plan Long Term. (The Guardian)
Thank you for listening.
