Friday, December 6, 2013

So, Now I'm Poor.

When I lost my mother in 2007 I didn't know that I was soon on my way to homelessness. By 2012 I was on the street. I was 59 and "overqualified" for many jobs because of an Associates degree. Imagine, a 2 year college degree kept me out of work for most of my life. Thank God for Ma, but when she passed away, there was still no work and no one to give me what she so willingly did. I call myself poor now but I have at least gotten help by going back to school online. It increases my debt on the other hand but at least I have enough to eat. But, you know I shouldn't be saying that because the money I receive to go is supposed to go toward school work. I do have to eat to do my work though, don't you think? Really inflates your ego to hear you are overqualified to work in the burger places and what all, doesn't it? I can't work because I know of Abraham Maslow and his pyramid of needs or because I have heard of Plato's Phaedo and Phaedrus? Maybe because I am familiar with American and British Literature. We don't need no Shakespeare in here, boy, no William Faulkner nor Eudora Welty either. When I went to work at a labor pool there were some young workers there who felt exactly that way. Don't need no college, what they need is work. I thought I was but was the color of my skin wrong? Maybe I should not have been so uppity as to speak of Gurus and meditation. Gee, did I or do I just wear that? I do wear something, a japa mala, around my neck and I tell anyone who asks exactly what it is, that it is used to repeat the mantra. I tell them sometimes about the rudraksha beads that are part of it. I tell them rudraksha means tears of Shiva and that these beads represent the tears Shiva shed when Sati gave up her life because of her father's insult at not inviting her husband, the Lord, to an important meeting of many rishis. Not everybody gets that story, they just get to know it is a kind of holy necklace that yogis wear that also helps them in repeating their mantras, the prayers of the yogis. So, I guess I do wear the fact that I am a follower of yoga and maybe that means to them a college educated dimwit, too lazy to be working at the same construction sites as them. What some of the rich believe is that poor people sing and dance all day. Remember what they used to say about black people? Have we forgotten it or weren't we educated in that regard? Black people didn't WANT TO WORK and enjoyed lazing about singing and dancing all day long. One of the Indian Swamis who came to the west, the famous Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada advertised that as exactly what the Hare Krishna religion was all about, singing and dancing and feasting. I read later in a book by Ram Tirth, that Americans already thought of the yogis as lazy Orientals. Mix that in with some college and what have you got, a good reason for business to say no to you when you apply for work. I shouldn't really put it that way though. D. R. Butler (Ram) says I create my own misery and by describing it in that way, as though there is a prejudice, as if the world is full of nothing but injustice I reinforcing a very old samskara of mine. I just offered it because I had read this article at AlterNet about some comments by rich people about poor people. Yeah, so now I'm poor.

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