from piles of rubbish

I arrived in San Diego broke. Well, not entirely, but pert near. The hotel in Indio was rather expensive. All American hotels are. Never understood the culture of this country on how people can pay exuberant prices for shoddy products and be okay with it. I drag my luggage four blocks past row after row of grimy tents and overburdened shopping carts and throw my shit into a public storage and hunker down to the lifestyle of a hobosexual once again. Done it before, can do it again.

Downtown San Diego is a festering cesspool. Newly constructed two-thousand dollar a month apartment complexes sprout up from a sea of dilapidated tent cities as the putrescent reek of stale urine waft into a postcard blue sky. Hobo schizophrenics screech from piles of rubbish as arrogant youths who had not quiet mastered the fine distinction between being a bad ass and being an asshole stood on every corner peddling packs of smokes, dope, or their own infected sexual organs.

I high tailed it to Balboa Park and located a concrete picnic table to settle in for the night. My plan, as it was, is to get into St. Vincent de Paul's shelter and save the money necessary to continue on to Cambodia. How hard can that be, right? Was a piece of cake in the past. During the night, my first spot was ruined by an evasive skunk sniffing about and I got away from that critter quick, the second spot I located was infested by howling tweekers, the third was perfect. Quiet and peaceful under a blanket of stars. Night was long and cold and full of doubt. Cold, cold nights with only a thin towel for warmth. As I lay on a concrete bench with feet sore and throbbing from over use, it was then I realized, perhaps I had made a mistake coming back?