mornings are the hardest
Mornings are the hardest because I wake up in pain, sad — and hungry. Then I remember what little food I have. Then I feel sadder.
Today I may be able to receive food at a nearby charity pantry. I thought I would describe what that's like.
First there are my own barriers to getting to the place where I can get help during the two hours that it's open. Sometimes the main obstacle is being free at the right time. The way I'm feeling lately I'm always free, home and in pain. The barrier then becomes being up to seeing human faces asking me questions. I have to go through that just to leave my building and also at the charity pantry.
A line starts to form before the food pantry opens. Waiting alone in a line with strangers, never particularly fun, is potentially less enjoyable when it's a group of the poor and hungry during a public health crisis.
When the window opens, each person waiting is asked demographic questions, that may include first name, number of persons in our household, how many are children, and how many are disabled. That's all that is asked. Yet I feel bad the whole time. I wish the questions asked were: How do you feel today? Do you know about other options for help available to you? Do you need access to medical care? You know, helping questions. Instead the questions are likely useful for the organization's finances, tax breaks or grant seeking. Sigh. Of course that's what matters. Money is the first thing on everyone's mind in capitalism, the cause of hunger.
I'm unsure whether to lie and say that there is more than just me in my household. I desperately need food. When I first went I feared being turned away as an apparently able bodied, middle aged, single, childless, white man who drives a car and has an iphone. (I don't know if you recall the Fox News frenzies over “poor” people who have refrigerators and air conditioning and tv and telephones! To receive aid in the United States one ought to be a walking corpse. This side topic deserves a future follow up on how/why I don't receive help from the State of Florida.) I usually say that there are 2 in my household and 1 is disabled. As I write this it occurs to me this allows for 2 me's! That seems right. There is a me that could work and earn money; and there is a me that cannot.
I think I need to stop. Writing may be making me less likely to get to the food pantry today. I dislike it, but it's a moment of pain for a lot of food. Usually. The supplies are unreliable. I'll take and eat anything but the easiest and best solution would be free money or grocery credit. [Yea I'm aware of “food stamps” (EBT, I think it's called) and that topic belongs in my State of Florida post if I get to that. Short answer: Remember when President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it”? My ultraconservative state doesn't make it easy to receive help.]
I'll finish with links to videos I hope to talk about in the future: Atomic Shrimp, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_yAxKaLsA
& Harari discussing the need for organisms to rest, vs. the tireless computers that now guide our lives, https://youtu.be/BLP6K8xm0Kc?si=REVEkWV1cZR6dpCo&t=369
By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon