My car is my go-bag

Centa Theresa asks about my living situation. There is no easy answer. Certainly not a short one. It’s been a long, weird journey, I was unhomed in Sept. 2018, after a 21-year relationship failed, and I housesat for a while in Sonoma Co. I was also staying part time with my cousin in Nicasio, in West Marin as I had landed a care provider job in Forest Knolls. But on July 4, 2019, a truck drove into their house in Nicasio and destroyed most of the front of it. The house was uninhabitable. They were moved out by the insurance company to hotels, and later to a house above Dominican in San Rafael. I sometimes stayed in the shell of the Nicasio house, taking care of the poor traumatized kitties, when I wasn’t staying with a friend in Sonoma County. I was care providing in Forest Knolls two days a week, and teaching poetry in Berkeley, and at Juvenile Hall in Terra Linda, so I stayed in Nicasio to shorten the commute. Then the wildfires struck, I evacuated from Sonoma County to that Nicasio house twice, during the wildfires of 2018, and 2019, as there was nowhere else to go. Right before the pandemic, I was also teaching a residency in San Jose 3 days a week, so I stayed with a student’s family there, and at Fred Dodsworth’s home in Berkeley, when I was also teaching in Berkeley. I also stayed at a friend’s mobile home in Forest Knolls when I worked for Sam, my care person. Then, Covid struck. My elderly friend in Forest Knolls, whom I was also caring for, died, so I lost that connection, and I had no place to stay. There’s much more to the story, and yes, I’ve slept in my car a few times, I carry a bedroll in the car, my car is my go-bag, but you get the picture. I use my various short-term jobs as my only anchor as to where home is, a floating horizon adrift in a sea of uncertainty.