Gustavo approaches adolescence

It's the twelth anniversary of my being attacked at the park, having my carotid artery (the ventral branch, actually) severed by a box-cutter wielding assailant and being admitted to the hospital under the alias Gustavo Perez. The alias assignment is standard procedure for the hospital when the patient has been the victim of a serious attack; anyone hoping to follow up and complete what was started cannot locate the patient at the hospital. I found it amusing at the time that they chose a name that sounded like an eastern European Spaniard though I've since discovered that Gustavo is actually the Latinate form of the name Gustaf. Regardless, March 5, 2013, Gustavo Perez came into existence. Russian friends have told me that when you survive something that should have killed you, you get another birthday. I choose to celebrate today as Gustavo Perez. Not that I have any sort of serious celebration plans. I'll probably spend a significant amount of the day playing with Gemma, a terminally cute 3 month old puppy who still spazzes and loses bladder control while she rolls around on her back wanting me to rub her tummy. Then she rolls around in her urine and wonders why I won't pick her up at that point.

The bottom line is that I will get reminded that just being alive is worth celebrating.
 

Gustavo becomes a teenager next year, though it bears noting that I went through puberty and my voice changed when I was 12 and I was one of the first in my class to have my voice change (even though I was one of the youngest having skipped a grade). As such, I feel somewhat justified in the perspective that Gustavo has reached adolescence, though I must concede that some of my growth was in some ways stunted by the pandemic. More on that later.

Gustavo still serves dinner at Central Park in Pasadena every Tuesday night. Made coq au vin last night which was really, really good, but Gustavo forgot that it was the first week of the month; many regulars receive government a$$i$tance and some of them pool their resources and spend it on (as one of the more jaded though otherwise circumspect regulars "Marty" puts it:) 'hookers, motels and cocaine" for a week. The numbers can drop so dramatically that some groups in the past simply skipped the first week of the month, We've never considered doing that, though many years we've skipped the last two weeks of the year in response to the protocols the city of Pasadena enacts to minimize the visual presence of people living outside so as not to dissuade tourists wandering about in the nearby "old town" Pasadena district from spending a lot of money. Some of it is holiday related, but most of it is about the folks coming into town because of the Rose Bowl game to be played only a few miles away, not to mention the Rose Parade as many people camp overnight on Colorado Blvd. (2-3 blocks to the north of the park) so as to preserve their spot along the 6.6 mile parade route. To make a long story short, I don't mind having a few days' worth of leftovers this week.

"Rob" was in town for a number of months and returned to Miami last week. Having been part of the story since it started (he told me last week he was actually at the hospital that week meeting with a friend in the cafeteria when I arrived there that night), he probably knows Gustavo better than anyone else on the planet and since he also wants to help people living outside get a roof over their heads, he spent time watching every week and then began to offer constructive criticisms beginning with the observation: "I miss happy Barry."

On a scale of 1-10 introvert/extrovert scale, I'm probably a 12. I had always considered myself an introvert due to my being able to sit in front of a computer monitor and crank out code for fifteen hours straight but a pre-marital counselor made an astute observation that whenever he asked me about work, I always responded with a story about one of my coworkers. It was the lack of development in my social skills combined with the defensive mechanisms I'd developed to deal with my huge sense of alienation that had also cut me off from a lot more social contact. I energize by being around people and the pandemic turned me into a recluse. Pre-pandemic, my blog posts typically centered around people I'd had the chance to know better over time. Since the pandemic, the content has been a lot more self-introspective as I'd not only cut off a lot of the routine I'd had involving music and dance, but I'd also created a physical barrier with the dinner regulars responding to the health edicts put in place by the city of Pasadena; I was informed by Pasadena Park Police that it became illegal to serve dinner in Central Park without a health permit and that the health department was not going to authorize any permits. I began packaging meals and just handing out boxes but eventually found a way to circumvent things by setting up a portable table on the sidewalk (which is *not* in the park) and plating meals there - but I'd been hiding behind the table and hadn't had many meaningful conversations except for those with people who deliberately hung out afterwards while we were putting things away.

"Rob" eventually came right out with it and told me that it was obvious that I was depressed and just going through the motions and that I needed to get out from behind the table and get back out there and begin to engage those willing to talk and start to learn more about these people. He even began to recruit regulars who'd since begun living indoors, having explained the goal of getting me out from behind that table and encouraged them to volunteer to handle food distribution.

Our first "new" volunteer is someone I'll call "Marty". I discovered that he (among others) talked about me other days of the week to anyone who'd listen  He used to be kinda hard to be around because he was quite volatile. He'd get angry, say something he'd regret and disappear for a number of weeks.  If you learned about his history it'd be easy to understand why he was the way he was. A number of events led to "Marty" turning the corner and getting housing. Marty now mans a separate table offering hot water/tea/coffee (and when we run out of food, cup of soup) and he tells everyone that having a purpose is so meaningful. He speaks fluent Spanish and gives us another voice to reach Spanish speaking regulars and can also provide insight into how to get housing.

As I see it, adolescence is leading towards going beyond providing a weekly oasis to give people a chance to build community and help each other - and starting to help folks who've gotten housing take the next steps towards reintegrating into the community of people who live indoors and letting happy Barry thrive.

Gustavo Turned Eleven

 at the beginning of this month. Eleven is not any sort of milestone number, so I gave some thought to posting but the reality is that epiphanies don't occur on schedule. I've not seen my attacker since the trial, and truth be told, I expect her to remain incarcerated/committed to a mental hospital for the rest of her natural life. The district attorney who prosecuted my case told me that her release was unlikely because of the potential liability if she were to attack someone else after being released. But the bigger reason is what I know of the process based on the experience of a best friend who happens to be a psychiatrist. The reality is that most patients in that situation do not receive therapy and are just medicated. They are often diagnosed based on how they respond to medication. So I am sad knowing how mental health is typically treated and knowing that my attacker will be trapped inside the universe of facts in her own mind.

When it comes to dealing with loss/trauma/grief my mentor shared with me what *his* mentor typically tells others who are dealing with grief: "I pray that God will give you an answer that you can accept.". This is of course based on an understanding of the five stages of grief:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, with acceptance being what's required to be able to move forward. As I sought my  'answer', I examined what I knew of her life and behavior, and being able to perceive that my attacker was herself a victim of trauma suffered at the hands of a male authority figure who represented themselves as a man of faith, what it meant to be insane because her 'universe' of facts was dominated by her trauma (read Chesterton's Orthodoxy specifically the chapter titled The Maniac, I've blogged on this in another post)) and her behavior had been the result of displaced anger. As such, I'll plagiarize Tolkien quoting Frodo Baggins as he orders the release of Saruman unharmed even after Saruman has tried to kill him by stabbing him:  

"(s)He is fallen, and his (her) cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him(her), in the hope that (s)he may find it.’

What I didn't realize at the time was that this led to my being able to forgive myself and come to grips with a lot of pain I've dealt with in life and identifying/dismantling coping mechanisms I'd developed as a response. I've come a long way in eleven years, still have a ways to go I imagine.

Gustavo Turns Ten Today

This marks the tenth anniversary of when I was attacked by someone wielding a box cutter who managed to sever the anterior branch of my carotid artery, My attacker was caught and convicted of attempted murder but was also declared insane so she was incarcerated at Patton State Hospital in San Bernadino. It turned out that she'd already been convicted of seventeen misdemeanors prior to her attacking me, including her attacking two men with a knife just a few months before, and she'd been released on unsupervised probation when she attacked me. 

I've gone into how I achieved what I consider closure by trying to understand what it means to be insane. I'll summarize it again, using an essay taken from Gilbert Keith Chesterton's Orthodoxy called The Maniac. People paraphrase Chesterton at their own peril, but simply put, it's not about a person's ability to reason. It's about the size and shape of their universe of facts. And nowadays, facts are no longer about truth. They are as much about the things we experience individually that prompt us to believe that certain things are true, or worse, are indoctrinated to believe are true.

While this understanding helped me reach what I consider a healthy perspective in terms of how I view the person who tried to kill me, I find that this understanding seems to apply to most of what's going on in the world nowadays. And the reality is that most people have no idea of how insane they've become. And they'd rather to continue to believe untruth rather than acknowledge that they've been manipulated by events or by those who want them to believe as they do. 

Huh

Early next month will mark the tenth anniversary of an event that's shaped how my life has changed ever since. We still serve dinner every Tuesday night though since the pandemic we don't technically serve dinner at the park as we now set up a portable table on the sidewalk bordering the park. This creates an obstacle of sorts for pedestrians/bicyclists but it's not what I'd consider a major inconvenience. The people typically walk around us by walking on the grass in the park. Usually there's open spots on the street so I can park my car and then just unload the car and set up. However, last night, all the parking spots on the street were taken, prompting me to double park and turn on my emergency lights while I unloaded the car. Just after I'd finished unloading the car. A car which had kinda taken up enough space for two cars to park pulled out. I then backed my car into the back half of that space, expecting another volunteer to take the parking space ahead of me. However he elected to park a little further down the street. Then the car parked adjacent to where I'd set up the table also pulled out and left, leaving two parking spots closest to the table empty. I didn't much about this until we'd begun serving and I suddenly became aware of a figure moving towards me and less than ten feet away. It turned out to be a pedestrian who apparently elected to take the shortest/clearest route around us by going behind me within arm's length. This happened more than once. But the first pedestrian seems to unnerved me more than I would have expected. 

Gustavo Perez turns nine today.

For those of you joining the story in progress, I've been feeding the homeless for over ten years now, having survived a near fatal attack at the park in 2013. This precipitated this blog as I've discussed my recovery. A summary of the details of the attack that can get you caught up fairly quickly can be found at:  http://samstabbed.blogspot.com/2019/03/gustavo-perez-turns-six-today.html You are free to read other posts in this blogs as you see fit. 

Today is the ninth anniversary of that attack. My posts have become relatively infrequent, but I will probably continue to post every anniversary.

This past year I spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of comfort. The modern definition according to Oxford is as follows:

1. 1.

   a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint.

   "room for four people to travel in comfort"
2. 2.

   the easing or alleviation of a person's feelings of grief or distress.

   "a few words of comfort"

The meaning of the word has evolved. It's become synonymous with the word leisure. C.S. Lewis addresses this evolution with the following quote:

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” 

However, comfort, "cum fort" meant to be with strength. To be comforted is to capable of dealing with whatever comes our way. I've worked on embracing this truth, and it prompted me to look back at a choice I made twenty years ago when I chose to pursue comfort/leisure as a coping mechanism for dealing with untruths I'd come to believe about myself. 

I'm pretty close to being eligible for Social Security and I've begun to contemplate what retirement means to me. The reality is that I probably need to keep working in some way for the rest of my life. While I'm OK with this, this probably limits a lot of my choices when it comes to things like housing - and dating. So be it. 

But I Was Good!!!!

About four months before the attack, I moved back into South Pasadena, and I lived near an intersection where two lanes split into four, with the two left lanes become a highway entrance and the two right lanes allow one to turn north. The right lane is dedicated to heading north, and the left lane splits into three lanes.  (For those of you familiar with South Pasadena, I'm referring to where Grevelia dead ends into Fair Oaks Ave. at the 110 entrance.) 

A couple of months before my attack, I was heading west on Grevelia in the left lane intending to turn right and go north up Fair Oaks. As I did so, a car from the right lane swerved across my path, forcing me to hit the brakes. The car then continued left, entered the right highway lane and then got onto the highway. I hit the horn for about five seconds. This drew the attention of a policeman who pulled me over. I explained what happened, and his response caught me completely by surprise: "People drive like shit around here. Hit the horn once and move on." The officer then let me go and as I drove off, one thought dominated: "But I was good!"; I had observed vehicle code, and I was the one who'd been pulled over and admonished by the police!  

But as I drove on, I began to consider the source of my outrage. At one level, yes, I was upset at getting pulled over even though I'd committed no violation of any sort, but my deepest sense of outrage came from the idea that this other driver had violated *my* personal standard of courtesy - and had done so deliberately! The reality was that this driver had no idea who I was, and would have done the same thing to anyone else. I had personalized the event and was drawing offense due to the personalization. This realization prompted me to begin to explore how I'd been personalizing lots of people's actions and how that affected my overall outlook in such a negative way. 

And then I got stabbed at the park about eight weeks later and nearly died. It's clear to me now that had I not gotten pulled over, I might still be personalizing what had happened. Instead, as the police began relaying to me information about my assailant, it became clear to me that my assailant had issues and was clearly carrying around a lot of pain and anger which had been displaced on me, and my overriding response has been one of empathy.

Wow

I napped after dinner and was not able to go back to sleep. Circumstances prompted me to review my posts for this blog starting with the most recent and going back to 2013.

I've come a long fucking way.