The $89,000 in my Checking Account . . .

I am sitting here, alone in my sparse bedroom, looking at the balance in my checking account.

It’s $89,000.

It’s not mine. More than $55,000 belongs to the Federal Government. The rest, about $35,000, goes to the State of California. Capital Gains, unmet by the discount for moving away and leasing my house for four years.

I needed the money, to survive. A part of my San Francisco life had come to an end, but not quite as long as I held onto the house. Now, it’s gone. I purchased the loft in 1995. About $250,000. Sold it for $995,000. Powerful investment, you say?

Not so much. I looked up how hard it would be to move to Ireland this morning. A bit hard, unless I had a job. Perhaps I could go onto an Irish Dating Site and meet someone, be whisked away to a grey-with-cool-mold and ivy covered castle perched on a cliff above the sea . . . Too Heathcliff.

Two things hurt my feelings this morning.

I loved my 30 years in San Francisco. And, while the move was a good idea at the moment, the selling is not so bad.  I didn’t end up in broke Oklahoma or Kansas [these places have become third world with Republicans in charge . . . ]

Republicans. Their new leader has not paid taxes since God threw the unworthy into the sea. He will lower taxes for those richer than Satan himself, all hot and groping with stringy fingers. He didn’t win the most votes. But, this doesn’t do me or the people I care about, any good.

This hurts. I would rather give the money to help people get educated . . . those steel workers, coal miners who only know how to dig the dirty stuff out of the ground. I’d send them to school to learn something  21st century . . . as fossil fuels are not going to last forever. And how much steel can you push in one day, as opposed to installing solar panels?  Or learning a new language? Or opening your own business?

I would rather give the money to set up wellness clinics, keep people healthy, as we are all about the loose the affordability of healthcare. Over the past 18 months, I didn’t have to pay for a mammogram, annual checkup, colonoscopy, about $3000 per year extra . . . but gone when Affordable becomes “Pay for it, you sucker.” If Social Security had been ‘private’ in 2008, we would all be poorer than peons in Mexico.

I would rather set up a quiet place, on a cliff overlooking the sea . . . which I would have, if $89,000 were to be mine. I would purchase. I would pay taxes. I would support a community and, best of all, give back.

Now, all I have to give is a link to places that have been set up to help people cope with the end-of-democracy as we know it . . .

I’m laughing. And will be until 2018, when – gerrymandering and voter suppression aside – we might have a chance to get America back from a disaster worse than what the Bush Depression left us with in 2008.

I’m laughing and want to shake Obama’s hand for pulling us out, in spite of Republican opposition from the first night of his inauguration. Obama didn’t go far enough, but I want to thank him anyway.

I am laughing as I shredded all my credit cards. I owe not a penny. I urge you to do the same, as the regulations set up to protect consumers from bank fraud and worse, this regulations will disappear faster than Affordable Healthcare.

Now, it will take some time to find the right pen – a fountain pen loaded with charcoal ink that stays on your hands for about a week after you’ve spilled it on the back of the checkbook.

Then off to the mailbox. Which one? The one down by the sea, not far from a little house that I could have put a down payment on, and finished my novel in the little office with a view.

Oh stop, I can write here. In my little room. Stay tuned.

One cannot go home again. Or, even try.

Back on Gilbert . . . fixing my home after being gone since just before Christmas, 2011.

That’s what the paint can listed as the date of my last paint job. 2011? I thought it had been a couple of years, since I left The City for San Clemente, to help my daughter through a rough patch.

Turned out, it was my rough patch. I leased my house to two dim-witted graduate business majors at Stanford who trashed things so I had to re-paint in August 2012.

Then, lost my job. One that I had thought would last at least one year. All right, keep going. Just keep swimming.

I did. And here I am, 2016. Another business that didn’t work [I am great at marketing for other people. Not so much myself.]

It’s Tuesday morning on Gilbert Street. 6 July 2016. The trash truck is here. Somewhere two sirens are wailing across Brannan. I miss these sounds.

I miss The City. If someone had transported me here while I was sleeping, I wouldn’t know where I was. Candlestick Park is gone. So are the 49ers. Not much is left of my neighborhood. Expo Center is gone . . . where will the Antiquarian Book Faire be held this year? The costumed revelers on New Years? All disappeared.

A homeless encampment is being built as fast and sprawling as new construction towers reach for the sky. The Expo Center has been replaced by a massive box of condos that looks like a Lego set assembled by an Occupational Character Recognition robot. Wait. No San Francisco robot – the place for Flower Power, Herb Caen, Willy Mayes, and leagues of famous and infamous characters, living next to each other – would build an ode to boredom. There would be a triangle or twist somewhere.

Eighth Street and Bryant holds a Mercedes Dealership. There’s a median in the middle of Eighth Street, that holds one homeless person, who gets up long before the Mercedes employees show up, wash the windows and open the doors.

I walked by the dealer last night. A couple, in their early thirties, were finishing up a purchase of a S-Class Maybach. The salesman reached out and shook the man’s hand.

The woman nodded, turned her head toward the middle of the road, anticipating what it would feel like to drive off, surrounded by supple leather.

She looked through the man setting up his garbage bag tent, just a few feet away.

I do not think she saw him.