Long Journey Home

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

Theodore Adorno
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Hello Ernie
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I moved into this town on September 9, 2001, 2 days before the WTC came down. I often think about that, especially at this time of the year. Up until a few days before it I was surviving in a part time proofreading job at a law firm within a few blocks of the site of the catastrophe. If I had still been in NYC on that day I probably would have seen the planes crash into the buildings because I would have been waiting for the crowd from the ferry to clear so that I could go downstairs to get the subway.

I often wonder what I would have done, stand stock still in shock, or run. People were running in both directions, away in a panic or toward it to see what they could do. Or I might have been already on the subway and stuck underneath it for 12 hours or more.

I had worked for another law firm high up on the North Tower a few times and I remember the supervisor and other workers as being very nice people. They probably did not survive.

But I wasn't there. I had moved from my squalid little residential hotel room to a town in eastern Pennsylvania to set up a life for myself, temporarily. I do not like it here, and I often wish I had never left New York. But then....

I was born into an Upper Middle Class family in a New York City suburb. 4 years later my father died and soon the family plunged slowly and agonizingly into poverty. All the "nice things" my mother had from her former life were sold, piece by piece, to pay rent and to buy food. We moved continuously, each abode worse than the last one. We moved about 25 times until I was old enough to move out and take care of myself. She finally settled into a ground floor apartment that wasn't too bad. I never settled.

Having grown up without a steady home and without even a concept of home, I've never really lived at my address, and there have been many of them. I've had, so called, fixed addresses in 5 different states and the District of Columbia. I lived at some of them for a month or so and in others for years. But none of them were my home. I don't have a home. Where I live now is not my home and I can't imagine myself living here for long.

My professional life has taken me in and out of 5 different radio stations, a bunch of recording studios and upon many stages at theatres all around the Eastern part of the country from Maine to Florida. I'm a vagabond.

I am a vagabond but in my heart, in my wounded but sanguine heart, there is a home for me, my home. A beautiful home, within sight and sound of a body of water, near a cultural center, quiet and peaceful, safe and secure, clean and ample, with good people around me. I have spent my whole life, almost 70 years, hoping that some day I will find it.

But maybe I won't. Maybe I will continue to be a vagabond, with some strange, new place beckoning with promise, expectation of permanence, but offering only disappointment and another transient stopover on my journey. If so then look for me in my writings, because that's where I live.

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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With Clenched Fist

Though hosts encamp around me
Firm in the fight I stand.

James Montgomery
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Hello Marty
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is bad, and so is the day.
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Never give up. This, evidently, is turning out to be one the bleakest years of my life. Not too long ago I was driving the highways of the northeast. I was riding the subways of New York. Now, there is nothing close to me, I walk with halting steps. But I walk the walk of a good man. Never give up.

Not too long ago I was treading the stages of eastern America. Or I was on the air at a major New York radio station, entertaining people, many people. Now I rarely see any one. No one around here knows what I've done, or cares. But I will again have close friends who know my work who respect me and whom I respect. Never give up.

On February First I found out I was living right next to a dope dealer, and that my only friend in this town was sneaking into his apartment for drugs and being dishonest and deceptive with me about it. So I moved to get away from both of them. I had to wait 20 days with all of that going on. But I finally did it. Never give up.

It cost me a whole month's income to move. I'm still getting out from under debts. The cost of moving put me in a financial dump from which I haven't recovered. There will come a day, a month, a year of solvency. Never give up.

Then I found that I moved into an apartment that is even closer to the drugs and that the false friend whom I moved to get away from now is a regular visitor next door which causes me a lot of distress. Now I yearn with all my heart for a home where I can at last have peace, comfort, safety, beauty and nice people around me. Never give up.

My neighbors also have screaming fights with each other beginning in the morning and continuing all day. Their language is foul and they have a little girl with them at the time. Sometime they scream at her. I feel sorry for that little girl. I feel sorry for myself. I long to be with people who are kind, gentle, good to each other and who know how to treat children. Never give up.

My neighborhood is a nasty one for other reasons. It's enough to say I am not happy, comfortable or at peace here. One has to know and hold continually in thought that good is stronger than evil and it will win. NGU

I would like to do more paintings but I have run out of some important colors. I will soon run out of ink for my printer. Now, it's certain that I will run out of coffee and food before this month is over.. I have no more money. My next income isn't until August 1st. I stand with a clenched fist and shake it at the heavens, at the destiny that has brought me to this misery and I utter the shout that I once gave to a particularly bad New England Winter when my car wouldn't start and the snow was relentless:

"Some day I'm going to beat you , you son of a bitch."

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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