Vagabond Finds Home in Brooklyn

Vagabond Finds Home in Brooklyn

My hunt for a room, a couch, or a hole in New York City to live in has now come to a close, and I must say that this was not the easiest place to find a regular place to dwell on a vagabond’s dime. I had reached the point in my search where I was just going to take my living here on the wing and sleep on the run. I devised an ever re-workable plan to couchsurf, trade, and work for my accommodation from one side of the city to the other. But then a real tough ass woman at Global College took the bull by the horns and strong-armed me into a dormitory room. I could not complain as I watched myself thrust to the top of an arm’s length waiting list and welcomed into a dormitory that was said to be “all full.”
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- September 16, 2008
Travelogue — Travel Photos
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It is now apparent to me, once and for all, that Global College minds their keep. I do not know how a program of 100 students can so often manage to pin the Long Island University monster upon its back. But they do.

Now I am in a comfortable room with an entire wall of windows, a good bed, a desk that already has 21 books crowded upon it, and, yes, there is even a dresser. I cannot remember the last time I unpacked my rucksack and used a dresser. I must say that my intro to New York City went from being slightly precarious to purely luxurious in the span of an afternoon. I am feeling much like a settled and civilized Bedouin. The thought that stuff can be placed in various places around a room rather than solely living inside of a bag has struck me as a very novel idea. I am unsure of what to do with myself.

My desk, my workshop, my world.

I found myself thrust into a living arrangement in which I can concentrate on my little projects. I can sit, write, and read all day long if I so wished, I am in a city that offers myriad opportunities for written fodder, and my basic needs have been covered by the open hand of financial aid and student loans. The university library is also spit ball’s flight from my window, there is free WIFI in my room (as soon I figure out how to hook it up), and a cafeteria right below my feet. Bryan-the-Dinosaur – who was also a previously homeless Global College student at the beginning of this semester – moved into the same room as I. He previously studied for two years in Japan and a semester in China. We are a good match: I live in the written-word-world all day long and he plays computer games. I do not think that anyone on this earth could not like the Dinosaur. He is a good guy. Oftentimes entire sections of days go by in which we sit in close proximity to each other with very little acknowledgment of our mutual existence. He is on his side of the room in his own world and I am in mine. Sometimes we come back to reality and eat dinner together and he tells me about the computer game world and I tell him about the written word world. It is a rather beautiful arrangement.

But I must wonder who is paying for all of this? I know for sure that I’m not. Perhaps it is my old friend financial aid along with a bank or two. I even have a financial aid sponsored meal plan to round out my life of luxury.

I have spent $3.25 in three days of living in Brooklyn, New York. I am sitting on the possibility that, with working on various pursuits, I may be able to take out of the USA more bean money than I came into it with. This potential means that the gates ahead could be splayed wide open.

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Space Noises in a Brooklyn Abandoned Lot
• Reflections on Eastern Europe
• New Travel Strategy Works