When the river's high, when the river sighs, when the rain falls, when the branches bow, bend and break; the night quiet, the day cold, warm, but alive.

Alive, alive, alive...

Water is lava as I skip from exposed stone to boulder avoiding winter's cold, early morning fog rising, sunlight glistening dew drops into brilliant red rays glancing into my sight; Silt and mud lava as I use all my momentum movements learnt from playing Portal to conserve energy while climbing rock slips from February's Cyclone Gita, feet bouncing off edges until stability is found on flat surfaces and the next logical leaps and steps can be identified before moving upwards, closer to the origins of the stream that falls through collapsed trees, clay crevices, and underground springs. I play the "no hands" game, using my feet as much as possible without the reliance of hands and arms for balance. This requires certainty about foot placement, and certainty about moving off a position if placement is temporary or questionable - the feet and legs become cooperative workers with eyes.

My world, made up of days scavenging for dry firewood to boil water for the early morning black coffee with a twist of lemon juice, drying clothes and towels washed in the river over tree branches on the other side of the river where sunlight spends most of the day drying and warming stones on the bank side. An occasional visit from a weka, pīwakawakas, a black cat in the night... (random - I only saw the cat once. Nice surprise!)

And I write.

I write because it keeps me believing in myself, like no one else can. My new theme song races through my mind, knowing the lyricist took his own life in 2017 by hanging, knowing this year suicide was on the doorstep again and words manifested themselves through the imagery of nooses. None of them were pretty.

But it is the unknown that becomes known by doing, by conquering, that sets each in motion, legs moving, arms scooping and reaching, fingers and hands clutching a pen to get the words down. I have never felt more content, more in control.
 

Would you trust me if I stood on a footpath rattling a tin asking for your spare change in the hope of being able to pay for a warm shower, maybe a roof over my head for one night, hot water for a cup of coffee? Or would you assume I was just going to spend the money on alcohol, cigarettes, or gambling?

Would you put more trust in a man with a badge, a man with a clerical collar, a man who has a daughter, a teacher in charge of youth, a politician...?

What is a homeless person?

I remember my first flat in Waterview, Auckland well. I enjoyed the company of both Kim and Andrew. I remember the songs I wrote in that room of mine during 1998, the books and authors I was discovering and reading, losing my job, time spent on social welfare, loss of friends, and my eventual decline into paranoid delusions à la Philip K. Dick. (No coincidence that I was getting heavily into the work of Philip K. Dick at the time!) 

But flats since then have mostly been alienating, even when I've had very wonderful and welcoming people to live with. At 41 years of age, it now seems like everyone else has their lives set in place: the job, the friends, the family, the children, the house, the home...

And here I am alone, jobless, friendless, houseless, partnerless, childrenless...

But what does any of it mean?

My second to last session with a counsellor made me realise that the only reason I was in those sessions was to have a conversation with another human being. The problem was that I had once again put myself into what I termed as a one-way relationship - there was little that the counsellor could give back about herself for professional reasons. When I related this to her in our final session, I pointed out that the most therapeutic moments I was having was when she was talking and relating ideas back to me, so then I had thoughts from someone else I could bounce my own ideas off. I love conversing and sharing ideas with people, but I've often struggled to find people of the same persuasion and desires.

So I began the retreat. For good.

December brought the final realisation that after 20 odd years of working, that I simply can't keep a job. I just don't have the temperament for being employed by other people. The last job this year I lost - all the fault of my own - felt like the final nail in the coffin of trying to be employed. And if that's the case, then living in my car is the best solution. If I need some work to top up for food, I can find temporary work and be happy without suffering the illusion of being in permanent employment and trying to become a settled citizen that single women might look to as some kind of stable a partner.

The home that for twenty years I have searched for is even less foreseeable than ever. 

I make my home in a car; a campfire on the river amongst stones, boulders, washed down silt and scavenged materials to contain the flames; I scavenge for dry firewood and pine cones on a 6km walk; drive into town to keep warm when it starts raining and miserable cold is worse than the bite of morning frosts; fill water bottles to wash myself when the river is too high and disturbed to dive into.

The outdoors have welcomed my spirit, have given me gracious calm where there was none before, have demanded that I make this work if I desire to keep the happiness that has found me.

​

She called for her husband to come and have a cup of tea with the man she had met down by the river who lives in his car. The husband wouldn't come out from his workshop.

"Sorry, when he gets focused on his work, you can barely talk to him."

I wondered if he was aspergers.

She later confided to me as we sat in her own personal workshop, me drinking my coffee, she drinking her tea, us chatting about our teaching experiences. "He doesn't trust homeless people".

"Oh, okay." I nodded politely.

Seemed irrational. I still wondered if he was aspergers.

I wondered later:

• Would you trust a politician? Because, as we know they never lie, or lead the public astray...
• Would you trust a police officer? Because they never abuse their position of power...
• Would you trust a father? Because they never rape their own children...
• Would you trust a priest? Because they never molester young children...

What is a homeless person?

I have been homeless for almost 20 years of my life. Homeless? Is the home I left at 18, and returned to occasionally over the following years the same thing as having a house and calling that a "home"? I have lived in houses, I have lived with flatmates, I lived with home addresses, but 'home' was where I left my parents. Home has never been my own place.

Until now.

Six weeks ago, after the last flat I lived in didn't work out, I decided to forego moving into another house that I would struggle to afford rent for, in exchange for living in my car. This way I would save on overheads, such as rent and power. I knew that if I did move into another house, the cost of living would simply force me into finding more work just to pay for those expenses and drain motivation to work on writing, and potentially compromise the work I had one day a week - it's rare to find an employer who is happy to let you go to another job one day a week!

Why, I asked myself, did I always move into houses when they rarely felt comfortable and left me feeling like I didn't belong? 

Because they weren't homes.

​For 20 odd years, houses were just rent factories asking for my money.

I went for a drive today over the top of Thorpe-Orinoco Road which takes one onto Dovedale road and then left to traverse gravel road and further pine covered forestry hill roads until one ends up arriving at Wakefield township. I stopped for a cappuccino and steak sandwich at the Rhubarb Cafe where I also took some observational notes in my notebook.

I was the only person at the cafe on my own. But this is what my life is, and I'm okay with that. After all, it's not like I don't ever go out and meet new people, or even reach out to old friends. But there is only so much reaching out one can do before it becomes too much to keep reaching out and have no one reach back.

So I sat in comfort as people around me talked, met, and ate together. My hand scribbled descriptive words occasionally on the page pretending prose like poetry was perfection. I knew it wasn't though, but at least I was writing. I had planned to walk up to the top of Thorpe-Orinoco Road and sit up there at midnight looking out at the stars, but cloud cover and dribbles of rain put an end to that idea.

On Christmas Day I had no interactions with any human beings (at least in the flesh - not sure if I made any comments online anywhere). I spent the day not celebrating a day of the year that other people deem necessary to buy presents  and eat copious amounts of food on, but celebrating myself. Me. Warwick Stubbs. The person that's made it this far through life: battling depression and suicidal thoughts as a teenager into my early twenties, losing friends, losing jobs, struggling to understand how I can't make music work for me when I have all these songs to give to the world... This person had a moment to himself, a day of relaxation, sunbathing in 24° temperatures, playing guitar without concern for who I might be annoying, ironing some shirts, drinking wine my landlord had left for me, sitting in the garden listening to Welcome Swallows, Tui, and finches flutter their wings and call bird whistles through the heat. I enjoyed every moment of it like I had never enjoyed Christmas before.

The truth is that I had never enjoyed or got anything out of Christmas since my late teens. It has for many years felt an extremely hollow day with fabricated meaning as though people can't seem to find it in themselves to garner any of this good will on 'non-calendar' days of the year.

So a day to myself was one of the most refreshing and rejuvenating things I could have done on this day when other people celebrate being with other people. I celebrated being on my own.

I have had writer's block for over a month. What started prior to beginning work at the Retirement Village when I couldn't get past Chapter 11 of Dim Day, exasperated as I found my sleep cycles pushing me out of daylight hours and into disrupted sleep. What a fine inspiration this would have been for my main character if I had been able to harness that enthusiasm or detail of thought, but instead, I found myself thinking about Welcome Home as dementia and patient behaviour began to inform aspects of that novel (had also started listening to songs associated with that novel).

While I have kept up intermittent exercise, some intermittent notes for Dim Day were written as well, but nothing substantial that moved the novel forward. I resolved to simply take a break and let myself accept that perhaps I needed a break since I am so unused to spending large amounts of time writing. I have a tendency to pick up the guitar, listen to music, organise my music files on the computer, play Fallout Shelter - do anything that isn't writing focused! So, when I decided to actually let go and take a break, my mind went back to Dim Day and I wrote a passage for the final scene last week/end (my weekends are four days as I work three night shifts). The five or six days prior to today were overly saturated in music and yesterday I remembered how it was when I moved into this home and got myself writing - music wasn't the focus, music was in the background: it was still there, but it was only a break from the writing like it is meant to be in my life now; not the distraction, not the overwhelming and intense obsession.

I also began reading Longitude by Dava Sobel last weekend and that helps create peace and quiet. I've had this book on my bookshelf for a few years now, but along with so many other books, had found it difficult to continue on with. Last week I found that moment that made me stay with the words and engage my thoughts with interest.

Last night I decided that since I couldn't get past Chapter 11, I would simply go to the chapters that I knew scenes existed for and begin writing those. And since the final chapter has been in my head for as long as Dim Day has been in existence, I went there this morning and started writing it.

Good!

Now I shall work my way backwards through each scene knowing what it leads into and where it leads from, and although they may be preliminary, at times skeletal and drafty, they at least set a sketch that I can build on top of. Part of the problem with Chapter 11, I think, is that I had a heap of bullet points preceding on from where I was writing, and those bullet points felt intrusive. I was also somewhat unsure about that scene's events in general.

:-)
​