Here's One For Openers...

Greetings, and welcome to "Swords and Solace"! It's my first post...! I don't know about you, dear readers, but I must say, I'm excited!

It's a cold day out today. But this winter has yielded some even worse ones already.

I live in Kingston, a city in the state of New York. She's got her good points, as well as her bad, just like any other city, town, or community worth framing into words... but one thing's for sure... last night, she was pretty frigid indeed.

Anyone else experience some cold days lately? Days where gloves were a must-have just for stepping out your front door? Where you found yourself making record time from point "A" to point "B", just 'cause you needed to keep *warm*? I know I have. I'm sure most of you reading have suffered much the same situation many, many times over.

Well... let me pose this question, for when the weather comes to be what it's been of late.

Have you ever thought what it'd be like, to have no choice but to brave the outdoors? 

As I've stated here on this site, I'm a self-proclaimed modern-day knight. No, I don't dress up in plate, clunking about with a broadsword at my hip, speaking in ye olde English... and no, pulling a Quixote and rushing into a grouping of windmills is a problem that simply hasn't come up for me yet. *Chuckles*. Instead, I've devoted myself to the supposedly 'dead' concepts of chivalry, trying to set an example, being a 'professional good guy' if you will, in a world that seems to be sorely lacking in them.

Well, I was having a conversation just the other night, with one of the men who's responsible for teaching me much of what I know about this particular path in life. I can't recall how it came up, but he was saying how he believed everyone should take the opportunity, just once, to leave their house-keys in the hands of someone trusted; then proceed to head out into the world for a weekend... with nothing on them but their ID.

Does that sound like an easy task?

It's not. I know, because I've done it. Only my go of it wasn't a choice.

Long story, really. Suffice it to say I fell on hard times a few years back. I was out in the town of Saugerties... I don't remember why, but I was out there. At this point in my life, I was at my wit's end, just about. Frayed at the edges, pretty much living from one crap-tastic moment to the next... and on that day, I had no money, save bus fare I'd intended to use to get back to the place where I'd been staying.

Well. That was a $1.25 I quickly started to wish would turn into a lot more, when I missed the last bus back.

I remember how my feelings began as simple grating annoyance. How could I manage to get back to Kingston?

Well... few hours went by, and suddenly, that simple feeling of grating annoyance had risen into a repeated uttering of the phrase, "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh SHIT..."

Bypassing some twists and turns, let's get to the heart of the tale, here... I had nowhere to go, and no one I could ask for help. I was in trouble, folks.

I remember there being a lot of walking involved. I milled about, up and down the same streets, over and over and over again, trying to kill time however I could. I was still technically enrolled in the local high school, so I figured, if I could hang tough long enough, I'd be able to get some rest before class the next morning.

I made this decision at about half past 11 PM.

The school didn't open until sometime around 7 AM.

Up and about, around and around. Eventually, I'd get tired, and I'd have to park myself on a stoop, or a curb, or some such. People driving by would look at me every now and again, out their car windows, and I'd see everything ranging from vague concern, to the look one might offer their cat after it gets sick all over the bedsheets.

There's no worse feeling than being looked at like you're something less than human. I didn't know it, but I was going to have to get used to that look, soon.

 'Course, all that mattered right then was making it through the night.

Around and around, up and about. I remember how frustrating it was, looking at all the display windows of the shops and the stores, all darkened and lifeless as I passed them by. Their proprietors had gone home for the night; maybe to a family, or maybe just to a quiet dinner alone, but all the same... they'd gone home. They were safe and warm in their humble abodes. Me...? I was seeing the quaint town of Saugerties in a whole new bitter light I hadn't known existed.

The drudging dance amongst the roads seemed to stretch on forever. I can't remember the last time I felt that hopeless, that miserable. I lost track of the number of times I wanted to just collapse, fall asleep in the middle of the road, and never get up again. There were even a few moments where stepping into the path of one of the odd few cars that passed by now and again in the late hours seemed like a pretty perfect plan indeed.

Obviously, I did no such thing. But oh, believe me. The thought was a present one.

I tried hitchhiking. Something which heretofore I'd always been taught was a crazy idea, a surefire way to get hurt, don't try it, no good can come of it, Rutger Hauer, blah blah blah...

Nothing like the Rutger Hauer film happened, though. Namely 'cause no one was stupid enough to pick up the haggard looking kid at the side of the road at one o'clock in the friggin' morning.

I stopped behind one of the buildings in town. I'd been there for some twenty or thirty minutes, when some tenants from that building came home late. I was batting a thousand, mhm, yes indeed... they asked me what the hell I was doing lounging around on this bench in the back-lot when I obviously had no business being there. I gave a fake name, made up some stupid story, I forget what it was now, and once they backed off, I made a break for it, trying to bail before they called the cops about the funny looking vagrant near their property.

Yeah. That was fun.

After that, I finally touched down at the local baseball field. There was a dugout. I burrowed myself down in there, amongst the shadows, with my coat wrapped up against me like a second skin. It was brutal. So cold. So early in the morning, the cold was a merciless thing, snaking around me and grabbing whatever skin it could find. All I wanted to do was to wake up, and find the whole thing had been a nightmare. Barring that, I wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

Neither grace was shown to me, though. So, I managed to get an odd few hours sleep. Horrible, restless... but sleep nonetheless.

Eventually, I had to get up. There was a grounds crew or something, I guess, going over the place in the early-morning. (It was five AM or so by this point.)

Again, I made like a hobo-ninja, literally having to plaster myself into the shadow a tree at one point, then finally making it back to the street...

Then, I started walking. Again.

Eventually, I made it to the point where I could get onto school grounds without too many questions. I remember ducking into the auditorium and collapsing in a heap, right on one of the seats. I was so tired... I could feel it down to my bones... and I was so grateful, too, for the warmth of the building.

And here's the kicker, readers...

This was a quiet country town I was stuck in... and y'know? This was in the *springtime*.

It was cold enough then... and feeling as lonely, and embittered, and as hopeless as I did then... that made it all the more frigid, to be sure...

But to do it now, this time of the year...? When the winds snap up at you like elemental whips, looking for any scrap of skin that they can find? Where there are patches of ice scattered randomly, like toys left about by mother nature's sadistic child, waiting for someone to get careless and upend? Where the snow can seep into your boots, and chill your toes down to the core? Imagine no shelter, no safe place to rest... no doors are open, and the only looks people have to offer you are anything but kind? And to feel the things that I remember feeling... the hurt, the anguish, that isolated feeling that clings to your skin and won't let you go. You start to feel so very alone, and so very small. You're out here in the big bad world, and there's absolutely nothing to keep you safe.

Worse still... to do that every day...

There are people, here, now, in this very city, that have no real place to head to. It's one dreary trek from one soup kitchen to the next, one "charitable" organization to the other. When the winter dies down, they combat other extremes of temperature... the approaching heat will do its best to melt them down to a memory at best, and they'll pant and suffer, likely wearing layers upon layers, because they don't want to part with any of the few possessions that they have.

Every day, all year 'round, the whole world over... there are people facing hardships like this. One of 'em may find salvation, but there's always one more poor soul to fill their spot within the cracks, that too few people care about.

It's easy to get caught up in the comforts of our everyday life. Each of us could always have better, and we could always find worse, of that I can assure you. When all our luxuries disappear, it's a hell of a shock...

Some people, for whatever reason, they lose those luxuries. They may never get them back again.

So, I return to my instructor's belief, that I offered you at the start of this post... the whole "venture out there with nothing to your claim but your ID for a weekend" thing...

*Does* that sound like an easy task...?

If you feel like it's an experience worth undertaking, then I have the deepest respect for you. I salute you.

If it's something you think of, and counter with, "Oh, hell no, I wouldn't do that, not in a million years!"

Well. Please know, I understand. I bear you no ill will. Really, I would certainly never do that *again* if I had any choice!

But when the suggestion came up, and you said your "Hell no!"... was it because you didn't see the point?

Or because that thought scares you?

That fear, it's something I know. It brings on quite a chill all its own.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully, this was an eye-opener... or at the very least, an interesting anecdote on some level or another. I appreciate your time, any and all who came this far. Hopefully, you'll check out this blog again the future.

Stay warm, and best wishes.