The Phoenix in the Storm: Tales from The Village According to those who live in The Wash

by Michael Jarvis, Mandi Jarvis (Editor)

These stories are from the heart and as accurate as I can make them. Some of these people I still hang with, some I don't. After this book maybe none. But they make up who I am at this point in my life. And while I have done my best to remain objective, there just isn't any way to do it. My experiences are wrapped in my emotions, for nothing in the world can prepare you for being thrust into homelessness; especially walking right out of jail in an unknown city 10 times larger than the one your grew up in. A person named Bratt Clerk is who I came out here to see; we were friends back East. He was one of the first calls I made. All he did to help was bring my luggage to me in Santa Monica. That’s it, even after I told him what happen to me. I had nothing, I ask if he could buy me some lunch, he said "no." I fed him and his sisters family dinner for two straight weeks before I got arrested. He can’t even buy me a $2 lunch; just dropped off my luggage and drove away. He was and still is a first class asshole. I didn’t even know where I was. Just a city by the sea called Santa Monica. I thought he was my friend. I was wrong. I was in a place where I knew not one person, not one and I was going to have to start rebuilding my life with less than nothing. The shock to your system is unimaginable, from jail to homelessness. Who does that? Just coming to terms with it was probably the hardest part. Then slowly I started to learn to crawl again. My first deal; I traded a seagull feather for a cigarette. Even though I’m alone most of the time and work hard for every penny; I have never felt so alive. My faith in God has never been stronger and it certainly has been sorely tested but it has never wavered. I often ask God questions ‘why is are you letting me go through this?’ ‘What do you want me to learn?’ ‘How long will this trial last?’ I ask these questions as well as others and keep the faith as best I can. And every once in a while he shows me that he is still with me. Like the morning I found the umbrella before the afternoon rains.

While you the reader may enjoy this book I doubt many of my friends out here will, it's not exactly a feel good book. It's not that I'm better than anybody or stuck up; I'm just different. And after 30 some odd years with roommates or family, it really is nice being alone and beholden only to myself. In the "land of misfit toys" I don't fit in. Mainly because I don’t care for constantly breaking the law and I don't always feel like I fit in the world of "normalcy" for where I came from because I'm not a complete square. I belong nowhere. This much I have learned.

120 pages, Hardcover

Published April 6, 2023