That I lead a Charmed Life...

That, for no reason I can think of, Heaven seems anxious to please me and to gratify my particular needs and wants--within a quarter of a day of my having become aware of and formulated them--is borne out with inarguable circumstantial proof (I daresay) by the events of my life yesterday:

It was an apartment inspection day, with a scheduled visitation by the cockroach (sometime bedbug) exterminator in the morning, and of general overseeing by our lovely lady apartment manager, Ms. Gomes; so I rose early, augmented my lawful dose of amphetamines with iced Café du Monde, and, after a curtailed session at the computer (checking email, scanning the news), I set to, picking up, sweeping, scrubbing the floor.  The visitations over, I lay back down for a late morning nap that lasted until about one O'Clock in the afternoon; what time, getting up again, I got back online to pursue the chimera of "gay male misogyny," and was about to blog my piquant and intransigeant reflections on that interesting subject--when, suddenly (around 2:00 p.m.), my keyboard died. Seriously, died.  Obviously it was the keyboard which had failed, not the computer, but once I had shut the computer down, I could get back online only in limited mode because, with the reduced functionality of the keyboard, I couldn't type my Chief User's password.  And there it was:  I was facing the horrible prospect of being computer-less till the first of next month--a week--until I would have money to buy another keyboard.  With that realization lying upon me like a pall, I lay back down, not so much to sleep as to avoid consciousness, until it was time (5:00 p.m.) to rise to get ready for the 7:00 free supper at the River of Life (the Honolulu equivalent of the Salvation Army).

It was then, standing in line with many another of God's Unfortunates, waiting to get into the River of Life dining hall, that I had a consciously virtuous thought (which may, or may not, have had some bearing on the day's subsequent bestowing of Providential Grace):  "I don't know whether the kind folks who provide the meal whereof I am about to partake are mere Christians (whose beliefs I hold in contempt) or not, but I accept the charity they offer me with humility and gratitude." Curiously, on my way out, having supped, I bumped fists with the man whom I call the Major-Domo of the River of Life (He seems to run the place), even as I murmured my usual thanks--a gesture which I am too old to find natural, and never ordinarily practice--and it was an astonishingly affecting instant/moment, spontaneous and graceful, on both our parts, which left me afterwards, as I walked the two short blocks to the bus stop to catch the Number One bus home, feeling as if I'd just been kissed by someone I like.  

At the bus stop were Mike and Jennifer, a homeless couple nearly the same age as me, as clearly devoted to one another as they are married to a homeless lifestyle, but distingués in ironic, aristocratic (or bourgeois) speech and manner from the vulgar, simple wretches whom they seem to embrace as their social equals.  With Jennifer I have amusing, out-of-time, just-an-edge-onto-Eternity little conversations, as one does with one's aristocratic (or bourgeois) friends, while with Mike I am sympathetic and good-humored even when he blusters at me.  And I said, to both of them, "Where do you guys live?"

They both replied, "Nowhere."

"Then where do you sleep?"

"Outside."

"Hmm," quoth I,  " I just read that, in the days before Missionaries, ordinary Hawaiians--na Kanaka--slept outside."  And before I could shut myself up I was telling them the true story of how I arrived here seven years ago with no direction home, and, after six months' purgatory in the Homeless Men's Shelter, by no virtue or merit of my own, I found myself virtually the lifetime leaseholder of this lovely little apartmentino on the edge of the university.  And then (the bus being late) I told Jennifer a brief version of the true, unedifying story of how I financed my college education, concluding, "If I had walked into a bank and pointed a gun at some poor teller and demanded their money, I'd be in prison.  Instead, I let the fools send me their credit cards."  Then the bus finally came, and I rode home, closing my eyes and trying to forget the great loss (the dead keyboard) at the center of my being.  

Home at last, I went round to the park lot to check my mail (pizza coupons), and found a tall, middle-aged oriental  (South Korean, I subsequently discovered) man standing to one side overlooking the parked motor scooters, and for some reason engaged him in conversation--talking about the beauty, utility and comparative prices of motor scooters (in which normally I have about as much interest as I do in Kim Kardashian's fat, nasty ass).  Then the conversation veered, and we discovered that we are fellow tenants (James and I) here in the Weinberg Hale, and that we both have computers, and that James in fact has two computers--"You wouldn't by any chance have an extra keyboard?"

And here I am.

P.S.  Unsurprisingly (though I hadn't considered it), with my new keyboard, the Accent Grave that I had so sorely been missing for so long has been restored:  Voilà!