Ms, Grumbles, the world’s most grumbling cat
By David Glenn Cox
Churchill called his depression his black dog, and I adopted the term because it seems a fitting diagnosis. It isn’t so much a curse as an education or a solution to a problem you just don’t understand yet. I once lived in a big fine house and drove a new car and had everything and more. While at the same time I was empty and knew so little about everything. I was a successful business owner and when I went to the bank; they smiled and called me by my name. It filled me with pride.
Then in 2008, my business and marriage collapsed. Like having the skin seared from my face by a blowtorch I discovered that everything I knew was wrong. When my business hit the skids, I began doing freelance writing, trying to keep my head above water. I was taking part in discussion boards when I realized why am I answering other people’s posts instead of just writing my own? Carl Yung would call that a singularity. The Buddha left the palace only to discover suffering. You can’t find yourself in a crowded room. You need that self-confident smile slapped off your face, and the shit kicked out of you before you can become aware.
To discover all the truths that you once believed really weren’t true at all. I became homeless and saw the world anew. I was very angry! How could this happen to Me? To Me! And the people I once knew no longer saw me in the same light. Just as you no longer saw them the same either. But very quickly, you begin to see new things and begin to understand, it’s not about me at all. It’s about everyone but me! I began to write about the others I met along this university of adversity. But I was swimming without a destination and didn’t really know where I was going yet.
I began to travel in the circles of the homeless and meet others trolling its depths. I was in a food pantry once. And the woman at the end of the row had her nails done, and her hair quaffed and talked loudly into her cell phone, but I understood. That she was probably talking to no one. She was putting on a show, trying to hide her embarrassment of waiting in a food pantry. I applied for a job in Portland, which turned out to be a scam. But as I filled out the application, the woman sitting next to me had her stomach churning and calling out because he hadn’t eaten today. And when I discovered the job was just another come on, I wasn’t sad for myself as much as I was for her.
The black dog brings anxieties and worry. What will I eat tomorrow? Will I eat tomorrow? I was in a drugstore trying to decide between a Snickers bar or a can of Pringles, when I noticed them watching me in the big, round mirror. They were so close to my station, but they didn’t have a clue. Unaware, if a homeless person steals, they go to jail and have no money for bail. Hardly worth the chance for a candy bar.
I landed a job at “The Leftist Review” Magazine, writing two articles a month. The pay was meager but was so needed as to be manna falling from the sky. It helped to give me my self-esteem back. I travelled the country looking for work when there was none. All those invisible things like keys and an address which bind you to the earth no longer exist. You float along with the wind and the black dog.
But Mark Twain once said, “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why.” This was why. One day, I was painting a house in Minneapolis when a young guy asked me if I could spare a dollar. All I had was a five, and I gave it to him. I had a job, and he didn’t. The Leftist eventually closed.
I began to apply for writing jobs but soon discovered they were either work for free scams or outright frauds. Writing and not getting paid. People who call to snow you and then disappear after publication. You discover a Journalist was like what I used to be. An employee that does what they are told to do. To please the boss and write what they are told to write. It was depressing.
In 2011, I wrote the land page for the “Stop the Machine” protest in Washington. I worked with the Occupy Movement in Washington and Portland. I wrote updates against a closed Starbucks for their Wi-Fi. I wrote in bus stations and coffee shops anywhere and everywhere. Then I met Marsha and my life turned around. We were so much alike it was frightening sometimes. We both had two failed marriages behind us, but this time was different . She was my soul mate and the love of my life. When she died suddenly, life no longer seemed worth the trouble.
All that I had left was doing this and the black dog. The black dog drains the color from life and turns it all to sepia. Like “Bound for Glory” or “The Grapes of Wrath,” I was a chronicler of these times. My life had meaning even if it was only meaning to me. I had learned the difference. A journalist writes whatever he’s told, and a chronicler writes what he sees. I tell the truth as I see it.
The head of the CBS News Department was fired/quit, forced out. CBS paid out $16 million dollars on a frivolous lawsuit. It was a bribe to buy off the King’s vengeance. The long-time producer of 60 Minutes was fired/quit, forced out. And now, Stephen Colbert has been fired/ quit, forced out. The lights are going out all over the world. The Black dog comes but never stays more than a few days. Reminding me why I do this crazy thing. Surely, I’m mad to do this. To get up in the middle of the night to write like this. With little notice or acclaim. It’s insane!
But I’ve been taught by my time on the road that to say nothing, that would be insane. I’ve compared it to heroin addiction without the buzz. I can’t stop doing it and feel I’ve been appointed to this role. This is the world I’ve grown accustomed to now. I saw a real estate ad for a mansion, a real palace. Ridiculously palatial and I thought to myself, how sickening. I see fancy restaurants and I think to myself how decadent. How I’ve dropped from palatial ignorance to a finer, grander view of the world. A world not about me. A world about everyone but me. This way, I can’ keep the black dog on his leash.
“Go Fund Me,” says I should tell the people what the money is going for. It’s going to keep the black dog away. To pay the bills my Social Security won’t cover and to help tamp down my financial anxieties. I need about three or four hundred dollars per month to stay afloat. I sold my car almost a year ago because it was too expensive to keep. I’d rather do this anyway and walk. Because you can see so much more of the real world when you walk around in it.
“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck
This Carbon Based Life 
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