and shaving cream a n d ice cream bars. They usually let you deposit m o n e y without a b a n k card, b u t don't let you withdraw. ,You can deposit money just about anywhere you want. It's getting it back that's the hard part. This is true for just about anything. People like Tony Robhins say that planning ahead is a form of intelligence. Another way of saying "planning ahead" is "always putting in.and never taking out." I don't have any identification, s o , I imagine that getting a n e w bank card might be impossible anyway. This is okay, because there's nothing I need to buy. I sleep.on the corner of Mayweather and Santa Monica underneath,a nice little overhang. I pay the owners of the business - a restaurant called Topanga's - a fee of fifty dollars a m o n t h to sleep there. The owner's n a m e is Matilda (not Topanga), and she's a lovely woman approximately fifty-five years of age. This way, I ' m no t a freeloader, and can look her in the eye every morning with a clear copscience. This is very important to me. Lots of philosophers, like David H u m e o r John Stewart Mill, say your n a m e is all you have, so making it worth something is important. I don't know m y real n a m e because the orphanage doesn't have a birth certificate on record, but I take this idea to m e a n that your morals, your conscience, your thoughts are all you.have, so you should make those things worth something.. I don't he, I don't cheat, I don't steal. These are very important things to me. I work for a living and sleep at Topanga's, and a m friendly to everyone I meet. That was also hyperbole, that last part. , y I have a library card, but prefer not to be responsible for other people's property. I don't do well with responsibility, which is why I prefer to sleep in an alcove. That way, if I don't come h o m e at night, and sleep on a different doorstep, or underneath a different awning, I haven't really wasted that much money. But if J pay for an apartment, and it costs m e a thousand dollars a month, when I decide to stay out one night, I've just wasted over thirty dollars. That's a lot of cans. So I prefer to own books instead of borrow .them. I like to hold them and re-read them and turn down pages of passages that I like. There are two types of books that people don't mind giving away:
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Berkeley Fiction Review
1 romance novels and books that are difficult to read. This last type is usually composed of textbooks, books about ancient history, or books about the universe. It doesn't bother m e that I don't ever read the Pulitzer Prize winners and the bestsellers and stuff. I think garbage cans probably reveal more about people than billboards do, and I like to be in touch with the culture. Romance novels and philosophy texts both use the same technique, a n d I like to use it as well. This technique consists of repeating things, but changing the way they are explained. Philosophers do this so that you can understand better. Romance novelists do this because they are paid by the word. I do it because I like to think of different ways of saying the same thing. This helps my brain digest, remember and reconstruct. T h e book I ' m reading right n o w is called Wilderness Lust. I ' m relatively sure this is supposed to be a parody of "Paradise Lost," but a m unsure what their target audience is supposed to be. It talks about a frontier m a n out on his own, finding w o m e n and seducing them... until he meets his match in a frontier w o m a n w h o is* his equal at shooting, riding, fighting, all that stuff. It's sort o f the same as all the other romance novels, but then again, all philosophers are the same, all religions are the same, all governments are the same, all life is the same.. .1 don't know why romance novels should be any'different. It's more realistic if they do repeat material - then you can be sure that it's accurate. Stuff doesn't get passed down and repeated unless it has some truth to it. Except for astrology. I do have goals, though. I got a history book out of a school dumpster a couple months ago, and started-reading it on my days off, and at night. It talks about wars"and droughts and plagues and famines, and then it talks about peace and floods and medicine and harvests. A n d then it would do it all over again. A n d I felt like I was reading a romance novel or a philosophy textbook, except it was the Earth who was saying the same thing again and again and just changing the way that She said it. A n d I thought this was interesting. Sometimes I don't know the difference between crazy and interesting, but I think it's always best to assume things are interesting. I don't want to be a pessimist. Travis Sentell
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