<iframe src= "https://codepen.io/camilo-ramirez-the-lessful/project/live/XNyjpm" width="100%" height="600" style="border:0;"></iframe> I wanted to take a moment to check in with the rest of you. I have been MIA for the last two months surviving perhaps the second most catastrophic experience of my life. I knew this year was going to be a wild one from the moment it started. At midnight on New Years, I found myself lost in a crowd moshing with Deli Girl, high from the pure chaos of it all. I just knew I was in for a banger in 2020. A few weeks later through a very specific set of circumstances I was alone in a city- without any contacts- without my phone, without my wallet, without my winter coat- with the knowledge that virtually everything I ever owned and cared for, along with my life's work (whatever wasn’t backed up on the cloud) was suddenly and forcefully gone. I was destitute. I had nowhere to go. I bounced around ERs, checked myself into truly terrifying psych ward rooms to keep out of the cold blue conditions. Our societal safety nets are so bad I came to learn, that admitting myself as suicidal (with good reason) was pretty much the only way I could keep myself from being out in the low 20s because the emergency rooms did not have any spare beds. Just let that sink in for a moment. This was the darkest winter I’ve ever known. I knew then that the suicide things wasn’t going to pan out after all. This is as bad as it was going to get. If this wasn’t the thing to push me over the edge, than there was nothing really left for me to do. There is no escape. I’m a prisoner in life. I had been facing up to the idea of my own suicide, as I felt things begin to truly slip towards a dark event horizon that I could not steer away from. Alan Watts speaks of this question; whether to commit suicide or not, as the one true philosophical question. So I lived- I went 2 weeks without having or spending a single dollar. I never felt poor. I felt deprived. But I lived such a charmed life up to this point. Nothing is truly lost. But nothing lasts. I ended up having to face one of my worst fears. The psych wards woudln’t take me, so I lived in a homeless shelter for 3 weeks. I wore the same clothes, an imprint; a shadow of my former life. I would have to wake up at 6 AM every day. We would eat breakfast, at which point we were kicked out for the rest of the day until 7PM. Not a whole lot of things open at 7am. I would walk many miles everyday at the height of winter. I had to eat meat for the first time in 8 years. I had bedbugs. It was impossible not to get sick. I shared an entire open floor of a former warehouse with 160 beds. After a certain point I gave up trying to reach people in my life who could potentially help me. I started to recognize the poor devils on the streets more and more often. I made friends. With just the 75 dollars that a few friends through FB sent me, I was able to buy a phone and a new plan. I had been pretty much locked out of all of my online accounts because of two step verification. With just a phone and an emergency food stamp card (the only purchasing power I knew during that time), I was able to figuratively claw my way out. On the 3rd week, I was able to make the journey out to a vipasana meditation center where I would volunteer, serve, live and practice for the indefinite future. I was lucky enough to be an old student- it meant that I always had this as an option in life. I was able to eat healthy again. It was dialectically opposed to what I had just experienced. But I would have to wake up at 6am every day there too. Meditate for at least 3 hours a day following very strict rules about what I can and cannot do. This was just another prison. But I'm a keen observer. There is no escape. At least in this prison- our sole goal was to stop trying to escape. A month has passed since I left the shelter, and I’ve spent the weekend staring at it from a tall window on the 5th floor of a warehouse building across the street from it. I’m staying for the moment in this immaculate sun soaked loft, that I don’t think I could afford even if I had a real job. And not just any job. I can see directly into the alleyway to the entrance where we would have to line up every night to gain entrance after a wary day out in the cold. I don’t know how I ended up here. Was it fate or chance.  God does not play with dice. Life is far too blunt in its metaphors to not take the hint. I’m here because nothing is lost. The experience in the shelter will never leave me and yet nothing lasts. *I’m here now, and this too shall pass.* I’m rebuilding myself from the ground up. I’ve been doing it from the moment I was thrusted upon this situation. Slowly, one move at a time. Just a few days ago, I finally stripped off those same clothes I wore for more than two months. I now just have one outfit again. And I don’t feel deprived in the slightest way. I’m attacking life with a mentality of militant minimalism. Absolute quality over quantity. *Rolling gear only.* I chose to recreate my entire digital ecosystem with an IPad Pro and a Raspberry 4. I might finally get into code via hacking. I’ve been discovering a new love affair with non destructive penetration and forced entry, reconnaissance and intelligence. ![]()  This apartment I’m somehow staying in, is an AirBnb owned by a startup in SF, and it will soon sit empty when the flows of people dry up and domestic travel is severed in the following weeks. I’m still technically homeless. I don’t feel any different from those poor devils on the street bellow me. I have no savings, no safety net, and now more than ever virtually no chance of getting a good job anytime soon. Today I started reading news of multiple community leaders demanding to house the homeless populations by reappropriating empty hotel rooms and offices. I guess I was ahead of the curve. I was already thinking up ways to squat a place like this. At the very least, I was putting together a plan to acquire an ultra light SHTF gear. I would rather take my chances in the sticks than ride out the coming weeks in a shelter. It’s simply not doable. This pandemic is making the cracks glaringly obvious. The way we choose to ignore the homeless problem, the underpaid [[precarious]] workers of the gig economies; the service workers relying on tips with no savings and skyrocketing rent prices; the freelancers, the artists. The already running-at-capacity health-care system that is about to buckle when we collectively sneeze. I believe we are ranked number 37th on the world. Italy, is in the top five. Let that sink in for a minute. This is why I chose to write tonight, I wanted to share my experience and seemly pertinent perspective on the precariousness of it all. I’m hopeful that like a forest fire, growth will come from this. Specially, if it means that the poor devils downstairs get the opportunity to have a bed to themselves in a clean room, with their own bathroom for a few weeks when things disintegrate. It can make all the difference. But what I’m implying is that we need a fire first. We need to burn it down through our collective will. This is our time. We are facing an unprecedented amount of freed up time in the absence of work. > The disappearance of forced labor coincided with an explosion of creativity in all fields- in written, spoken languages, in behavior in tactics, techniques of struggle, songs, posters, etc... It demonstrated the quantity of energy lost in the time spent trying to survive, the days condemned to the socially necessary work, in shopping, in what has become the principle of passivity. ---