I thought about this passage from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations,

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work - as a human being.

What do I have to complain of if I am going to do what I was born for? The things I was brought into the world to do?

Or is this what I was created for?

To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

I closed my eyes. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wrestle with the question too long before my bladder started moo-ing. I crawled out of my sleeping bag onto the damp ground and began a duck walk towards a spot under the bridge tall enough for me to stand upright.

I peed onto some bushes. I wondered if plants can determine a person’s character by their pee. Maybe they were partial towards some of us and impartial towards others. I wondered about all the times in my life I had peed on plants and how different of a person I might have been each time. There must have been times when the trees laughed at me, or maybe other times, they felt there was a lesson I needed to learn, or maybe they got annoyed with me because of how stubborn I could be. I wondered if they guided humans. Was I a better man now than I was before? Would the trees and plants be willing to help me now?

I wondered how these plants might communicate with each other. If this bush under this bridge in Redwood City could communicate to the olive tree I climbed in the hospice in Vegas. I wondered if they were all connected. I remembered sitting under a tree in Grass Valley, jumping off a tree into the ocean at a place called the End of the World, trees that saw me lay next to a lover and trees that saw me cry… or the tree I fell out of when I was pretending to be Tarzan at 8 years old, falling 15 feet, the first time in my life where the wind was knocked out of me, and I was left gasping for breath.

I stood thinking about these ideas for a while when the sun peeked out over the glass buildings and it’s rays slid under the bridge and landed on my skin like honey. Oftentimes, when I feel the sun, I visualize chemicals flooding underneath the surface of my skin. I don’t know if it’s just blood moving, but in my head, I imagined these chemicals finding their way to some of the missing gaps inside of my body.

Warmer and freer than I had been moments before, I made the duck walk 30 or so feet back to my spot under the bridge. I was in awe. It was the first time in months that I looked at inanimate objects with any form of joy, let alone trust. I hadn’t fully gotten rid of the idea that material objects might still be controlled by unknown forces in a blockchain governing the laws of our universe. But whereas my belief in these forces had manifested itself over and over again in paranoid ways for months - the inverted belief was actually nice. These items might be working with me and for me. Not against me. I think it’s even better than no belief at all.

The morning of April 3, 2025, this was the inventory of my life:

• A blue REI mummy sleeping bag (taken from Savers)

• A silver Thermos (taken from Savers)

• A sleeping bag case to keep my sleeping bag compact (taken from Sports Basement)

• Portable Jetpower fuel (taken from Sports Basement)

• Jet Oil portable backpacking stove (taken from Sports Basement)

• Some matches (taken from Sports Basement)

• A small silver pot (taken from Goodwill)

• Some tortillas (taken from Safeway)

• Taro Root (taken from Safeway)

• One and half liter, half drank Crystal Geyser water bottle (taken from Safeway)

• A pair of socks (taken from Macys)

• Black Nike Cortez shoes (I don’t remember I got them or how long ago)

• Grey Marine Layer hoodie (purchased at the Good Wolf)

• Green Lulu Lemon pants (purchase at Lulu Lemon)

• 25 liter backpack (purchased on Amazon)

• Toothbrush (from St. Anthony’s)

• Medical tape, wrap, and bandaids (from some homeless shelter)

• Copy of Don Quixote (stolen from the main SF Library)

• A couple of yellow #2 pencils (selectively chosen from the 5th floor of the SF Library)

• A California ID

• Some trash to throw away

Most of this I had acquired over the last week. Some of the clothes were the only remnants from my life before.

I began packing my bag. After one night, I was flush with the confidence of a seasoned off-grid survivalist. How quickly confidence emerges in man. I felt I only needed a couple more items and I could survive anywhere, survive any condition, survive anything at all. I packed my bag and felt I was heavier now than before. A compromise to the lightness of nothing. You need some things to live.

Another feeling knocked, and one that I knew all too well from before.

Shame.

Shame said, “Hey, you got this bag. This might be your survival kit. But you are now announcing to the world that you are, in fact, homeless. You are a billboard for the vagabond. Tsssk. Tsssk.”

I had seen myself as a traveler, abducted into this hellscape. This was my contrition, my retribution, and I was finally just beginning to feel like the hero of my own journey. I was beginning to feel like maybe there was some way out of this. And as I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, I was suddenly confronted with this other thought. I cared what other people might think of me again, in a reality where we weren’t all dead, but in fact, living.

Will they frown at me or pity me? They might not even look at me. But the thought of what someone else might think - it made itself known.

But it was just a knock, a friendly hello. A shadow to acknowledge. You don’t have to invite everyone into your home, but it’s nice to be kind to your neighbors.

I climbed out from under the bridge, onto the road, and headed the mile or so back to the center of Redwood City. It was still too early for the library. Beginning to trust the world a little more, I figured the Human Services Agency might be worth learning more about. I needed to figure out the food problem.

I walked the mile from the main library, past the Costco, to the San Mateo Human Service Agency in Redwood City. I was still early. If you go to places like the library or government service buildings before they open, you might find a flock of homeless people. You see more freedom of spirit among the homeless than the general population. But there is also more despair. And tiredness. Many are not completely strung out or crazy like you are often led to believe. Sure, some are. But many just don’t fit into the capitalistic system. They get stuck in concrete cities and bureaucracy and the heaviness of the systems and the limiting nature of the human mind.

When the office opened, I was given a number like the DMV. The Mexicans were called first. The Spanish speaking agents looked nice and helpful. I have come to believe that the Spanish speakers get better services than the English speakers at the Human Service Agency in Redwood City. I don’t think there’s any grand conspiratorial reason. I believe it’s because Spanish speakers are generally nicer people than English speakers. There is an inherent desire to want to help your neighbor whereas many English speakers in bureaucratic systems are not always so welcoming. But that’s my bias. It’s not tested. It’s a generalization. It’s my jump to an explanation based on an observation and some context that will be given, eventually, in a future story.

Finally my number was called.

A nice woman. She might have been Polish or maybe she was from Pennsylvania. She asked a couple of questions about my income, assets, and residency. Zero, zero, none. She told me that I could qualify for some emergency food stamps usually within 24 or 48 hours, but they could be taken back if I don’t submit the documents to prove my homeless status in San Mateo County within 10 days.

“How does one prove they are homeless?”

She said, “You can grab a letter from a case worker or a social worker from the homeless shelter. Have them sign it and then bring it back to us.”

Easy enough. I figured I could ask the woman who had let me stay at the Navigation Center in Redwood City a few nights back.

I asked how much money I would get in food stamps?

“$292”

“Wow,” I was genuinely surprised. What had been one of my biggest challenges was seemingly so quickly resolved with a couple of questions and answers.

I went to the library next door to check my email, research some defense strategies for my upcoming case, and plan my next movement.

My calendar for the next while unfolded itself. I had to be in San Francisco on April 8 for my court case where I was defending myself. On April 12, my mom had emailed me to say, there was a celebration of life happening for my grandma in Vegas. And then on April 16, I was due in a Vegas courtroom for the tree incident at the hospice.

Now that food stamps were coming my way, the concept of money crept back into my mind. In death, money didn’t mean anything. If I was living, money was beginning to take shape as resource.

I remembered some conversations with my grandma. She had told me that each of the grandkids was to get $10,000. I figured that might be coming within a couple of months. All that my journey necessitated right now was to learn how to survive the present and reach closure on the legal messes of my past.

I looked at Google Maps on the library computer and found what I believed to be a good destination. North of the Golden Gate Bridge, into the Marin Headlands and maybe as far as Mt. Tam or Point Reyes. I figured I could set up a proper camp somewhere in the woods.

I walked back to the central station in Redwood City and hopped on the Cal Train back to downtown SF. Before heading north, I stopped at the main branch of the SF Library. I reached into my bag and pulled out the stolen copy of Don Quixote. I hadn’t read too much of it. I had primarily kept it with me as an energetic companion. I didn’t need this book anymore though. I was going on my journey, not someone else’s. I dropped the book off.

I caught a bus heading towards the Presidio. One of the great things about the public buses in San Francisco is that you are rarely penalized for not paying the fare; it feels like an unspoken public subsidy for the vagabonds. I figured I’d catch the sunset over the Golden Gate before making the trek over. As the sun rays disappeared, the air turned brisk and cold, the people disappeared, the morning chemicals disappeared, my legs became heavy, the confidence wavered, I realized I may have overestimated my abilities.

I ended up on a long linear path called Lover’s Lane heading down towards the water. I didn’t want to make my presence known to the houses on the side of the trail, so I moved fast. At the end of Lover’s Lane, I found a bridge to a dirt trail that was darker and more concealed. I could have sworn I saw the silhouette of a coyote up ahead crossing the path.

Survival is a lot trickier in the dark than in the morning sun. But I was surprised about my eyes. They felt like they could see in the dark better than they ever had. My eyes were getting better without a phone straining them every minute of every day.

As I moved on, the house lights and street lights disappeared in distance, and the only light which remained was the faint glow of the sliver of the moon falling beneath the crevices of the trees. I trusted the intuitive pull of the woods. I took a few blind turns, off the trail, guided, until I literally stumbled onto a massive, collapsed tree. It was far enough away from the trail that morning joggers wouldn’t stumble on me. It was surreally perfect. It was actually 3 large trunks that had collapsed creating what seemed like walls and a roof to a shelter. Or a sanctuary.

I dropped my bag, unrolled my sleeping bag. I took off my shoes. I wandered a little ways into the brush and took a pee in the dark. I thought back to the morning in Redwood City and wondered if the root networks had communicated with each other. I believe they did.

This tree would become my home for the next week, and the anchor for the journey ahead. I had found shelter.

(photo taken May 2025, Presidio, California. The bag depicted is an evolution from the bag described in this article)

On Wednesday, I traveled from Berkeley to the Tenderloin. The rain was rushing down as I exited the Civic Center BART Station. I walked past the Main Library and water started filling my shoe through a hole I didn’t know existed. My sock got heavy. My foot got damp. Is there anything quite as awful?

The discomfort catapulted me back.

March 2025.

I stepped off a Greyhound into the shadow of the Salesforce Tower. It is the second tallest tower on the West Coast. It’s a giant glass needle that penetrates the clouds. Sometimes it looks the eye of Sauron. It’s a monument to a corporation that monetizes human connection. It is a machine that measures a human being’s worth based on how much money they can make you.

I arrived at its base with no money, no phone, and an empty backpack.

Time was ticking. The sky was gray. I didn’t want to sleep on the ground, or venture to the airport, or have to nod off on short bus routes that ended at nowheres in the middle of the night.

I walked up Market Street to the Main Library. As I sat in front of the computer, it was the first time I truly acknowledged the harsh truth I had been avoiding: I was homeless.

I found a list of shelters. I started with what I believed to be the nicest one.

Dignity Moves on Gough Street. Seventy private rooms. A staff member looked at me through the fence as if I was an invasive species. He told me there was no one to talk to. I had to call The SFHOT line. I had to wait for the van to pick me up and drop me off where they find fit.

“I am in front of you right now,” I said. “I am a person. I don’t have a phone. I don’t want a phone. I am here. I am tired. This is a shelter. I need shelter.”

“Can’t help you.” he said.

He walked away. I walked away. Did dignity move?

I drifted south to SOMA. I passed a tent handing out clean needles. I thought of Huxley’s Brave New World. Soma: the government-produced drug for artificial happiness. An opiate for the masses. I arrived at the next shelter. They asked if I was an addict. I told them I had a couple beers in a couple months.

“This place is only for addicts,” they said. “Try the Human Services Agency.”

Sobriety was the disqualifier. And the Human Services Agency? The name felt wrong. Like how aliens might describe us. Or a department in a Kafka story.

It was getting close to dark. I went back to the library. I sat down in front of the computer again and found a temporary shelter a few blocks away at the Quaker’s Meeting Hall on 9th Street.

I joined the line. These were odd folks. I suppose I was an odd folk, too. A woman with purple hair held a clipboard like a shield. She pointed a thermometer at my head.

“Ninety-four degrees.”

“What?” I asked.

She wrote it down.

“Shouldn’t it be 97 or 98?”

“No. Ninety-four.”

She didn’t recognize the disconnect. I looked at her ledger. The temperatures ranged from eighty-eight to ninety-five.

It reaffirmed a delusion that had previously gripped my mind and begun my psychosis; I must be dead. This place, purgatory. I prayed for a quest or that my retribution was almost over, so that I could go back to land of the living.

I entered the hall.

The old lady’s came marching in, and fed us pasta and bread and cake and cookies. There was Coca Cola. I ate because I had no choice, but suspicious of the sugar they forced on us. We slept on green mats. Most of the folks, drenched theirs in Industrial Clorox. I thought they had it wrong. Embrace the filth. Do you trust the chemicals?

At 8:05 PM, the lights died. I had no blue light. I had no screen. Just exhaustion and the collective breathing of fifty souls. Tired souls. Hurting souls. I slept as deep as you can until 5:30 AM.

The morning crew felt like NPCs (for those older folks, an NPC is a character in a video game that is scripted or run by AI). This morning crew was Sneakerheads. Starbucks and Air Force Ones, tracksuits and the chit chat of urban culture. I wonder how much they were getting paid?

One man marched in every morning and kept repeating, “Drago! Drago! Drago!” at an invisible enemy in the air. They brought French toast in white containers. Some of the people around me drenched theirs in mountains of maple syrup. Is sugar the enemy?

Out by 7am. I entered Mission Mode. Survival is a series of small, concrete objectives.

Find a shower. Find laundry. Find food.

There was a shelter in the Mission that offered laundry and showers on Tuesdays, but only for women.

“I identify as a woman,” I said.

She smiled. She said ok. You are smart. The gate opened.

I sat with some older women who knitted and shared some pizza. I looked around. I had a small breath of relief.

“Your turn.” I had five minutes to shower. I shaved too fast and cut my face. I watched the blood mix with the water.

I had found a shower. I had found laundry. I had food. Missions accomplished. I went back to the Quaker’s Meeting Hall that evening.

In the margins of the day, I started reading a lot and building a website for time travelers. I thought I might be able to communicate that way.

One day, I went to the St. Vincent’s clothing pantry. I tried on Miami Vice-like Hawaiian shirts that felt like Grand Theft Auto outfits. However after a few blocks with my new clothes, I decided they must be cursed. Filled with the bad energy of their previous owners. I wore them 30 or so blocks. And donated my new clothes at a Goodwill. I stuck to my original avatar. Jeans and a Marine Layer hoodie.

I needed a guide. I stole Don Quixote from the library.

One night, in the Quaker Meeting Hall, I thought I found my Sancho Panza: an older Chinese man who waddled with three plastic bags filled with Pringles containers. I don’t know what he did during the day. Or why he always carried those plastic bags. Or why the contents of those plastic bags never changed. I thought we might be knights.

The end of March happened and so did the temporary shelter. I needed to find a new place.

I remembered a place in San Mateo I rejected back in February. It hadn’t crossed my mind when I first arrived back in San Francisco. When I had been offered it in February, I rejected the offer because I thought it was ludicrous to think I was homeless. I come from a relatively privileged upbringing, and the idea of homelessness was a distant concept to my naive brain.

Now that I was beginning to land in reality,

I hopped on the Cal Train to Redwood City and walked to LifeMoves Navigation Center. They accepted me for a night but said I needed an official recommendation from the Human Service Agency to stay. I would do it after my court case the next morning.

April 2nd, 2025

I stood in a courtroom. Four felonies.

My public defender reminded me of a woman I did ayahuasca with in upstate New York. But she didn’t like me the same as the ayahuasca friend. She hadn’t responded to my emails. She was never in her office. I didn’t like the lack of communication.

I told her I wanted to represent myself.

She looked at me like I was insane. “You might not even be allowed to represent yourself.”

If there is one thing to know about me, it’s this: as soon as the words, “You can’t” or “You aren’t allowed” are spoken - especially when there is objective truth- it becomes my mission to prove the right way, to prove a truth. Purpose endowed.

The judge looked down from the bench. “Are you sure? If convicted, you could spend three to five years in prison.”

“I am sure,” I said. “I am capable. I understand the charges. I understand the possibility of the consequences. And I understand the process. I want to represent myself.”

She said, “Ok. I’ll see you at the end of the month.”

I walked out of the courtroom, a homeless felon acting as his own attorney.

I took the Caltrain back to Redwood City. I went to the library. I saw the email from my mom.

Your grandma passed away this morning.

Twenty-two days in hospice. Supposedly she broke the record in that hospice. She couldn’t die without winning.

I went to the Human Services Agency in Redwood City. My paranoia of the place had dissipated slightly as the idea of having my own room felt pretty nice. But they denied me from the LifeMoves Navigation Center. Instead they offered me a bed in a room with twenty men in Menlo Park. She pointed to 3 guys who were missing their teeth and I summed them up to be probable meth users.

“You can join them. I’m calling them an Uber right now.”

“No,” I said.

I was done with barracks and shared rooms in homeless shelters. I walked out.

I walked into a Savers. I didn’t have money. Since that 94 degree reading, I had refused to steal, convinced I was in purgatory and doing the “right thing” was the only way to pass the test. But standing there, the rules dissolved. The moral guardrails of our broken systems suddenly felt absurd. Today, survival wasn’t a sin. It was a step in this journey. I felt a wink from my grandma.

I took a sleeping bag, and a Thermos. I walked out.

I walked into a Sports Basement. I grabbed a portable stove and a small propane tank.

I walked into a Safeway and grabbed some taro roots, tortillas, beans, and a steak.

I found a bridge in Redwood City. Concrete. Brutalist. A bit damp.

I unrolled my sleeping bag in the dirt. The moon came up. A raccoon walked on the other side of the river. I turned on the mini propane tank, cut and cooked the taro, the steak, and the beans - and made myself some delicious steak tacos.

A couple months ago, I found that particular bridge was next to an office building inhabited by some of my old colleagues. A start-up I had been a part of in New York. Where I was the first employee. I had owned equity. They had eventually sold for $350 million. At that moment, they were raising $140 million to build robots for the future.

And here I was, a man facing felony charges, homeless, penniless, sleeping in the dirt just a stone’s throw away from a future that could have been.

It was funny.

I closed my eyes. I could defend myself. I could fend for myself. I could survive.

I then walked 7 miles across Las Vegas, over the strip, from west to east, until I arrived at Nathan Adelson Hospice.

It’d been a little over two and half years since I’d been there. Inside I walked past the cafe where I had many ice cream cones, and saw the ice cream machine was now broken.

Years before I had 24 hours to find this hospice. At the time, I was fresh out of a drug rehab and the hospital was trying to discharge my dad to a nursing home. Months before that particular moment, I had made a promise to my dad that I’d never let him end up in a nursing home again. I helped check my dad into Nathan Adelson hospice. Coincidentally, on the same day, his twin brother 2700 miles away in Hawaii was checked into a hospice as well.

This time though, I didn’t have the same weight of responsibility. That was on my mom and her 4 brothers. I was just a visitor for Dr. Joan Cole, my Grandma.

She was a single mother during the 60s who became a teacher, then got her doctorate, and eventually became a principal in Palm Springs. She was also the one who taught me to write. She took me and my brother to donuts every Saturday as a kid. On motorhome trips to Cedar City for the Shakespeare Festival or Chula Vista to relax or to Palm Springs for the film festival. She taught me to believe in myself. She believed in me, maybe a little too much.

I got there and she was getting used to the morphine. Unknowingly, maybe coincidentally, she thanked me for moving all of her luggage. She closed her eyes and started snoring.

I wandered into the courtyard in the center of the hospice. There were 2 large olive trees. Underneath one of the trees, there was a statue of a little girl reading a book. I remembered when my grandma used to read me and my classmates The Giving Tree.

Seeing this tree, being a tree and all, and me being a human, I began to climb.

An olive tree is great. The branches start low, they are long, and multidirectional, so you can get up pretty high, pretty quick. High enough to overlook the roof encircling the courtyard, past the Strip, the mountains, the desert.

A breeze picked up. I could have sworn I was drifting with the spirits of my grandma and my dad.

A security guard making her rounds noticed me in the tree, and asked that I come down.

I asked, “What are trees for if they are not for climbing?”

She said, “I’d like to be up there too, but we can’t.”

I smiled and looked back beyond.

The energy below shifted. A front desk person came out yelling at me to come down. I said no to him. It’s remarkable the power of the simple no. He flew into rage and threatened to call the police.

Two of my uncles came into the courtyard, puzzled. They thought it absurd that I was up there. I thought it absurd that anyone was making this an issue.

I told one of my uncles that I didn’t like the autotune in his music. I liked the sound of his voice though. I told another one that he was in the middle, like me.

So as not to be so absolutely stubborn, I worked out a deal with them that I would come down, under one condition. A cone of ice cream. And it had to be a chocolate/vanilla swirl.

As I made that deal, the police arrived.

One of my uncles re-entered the courtyard with strawberry ice cream in a cup. It’s a start, but it just wasn’t what we agreed on.

He said, “the machine’s broken.”

I said, I know, maybe they can fix it. Or maybe the world’s inverted. Try McDonalds.

He was defeated. The police circled the tree. They were joined by firefighters. They put ladders into the tree. I climbed higher. Until I got to what might have been the highest point possible. 14 officers and firefighters looked up at me. I looked down at them. Is there really nothing better that you can be doing?

Eventually they backed off. The courtyard was empty. I climbed down, and made a run to the other tree.

It was an ambush.

As I was half way across the courtyard, the doors opened, the police officers stormed out, I was tackled, handcuffed, and arrested.

My mom arrived. She was sad and confused.

I would spend the next 12 hours in jail.

I didn’t know what it was then, nor really did anyone near me, since I rarely talked to anyone about the nature of my thoughts. I wouldn’t begin to understand what was going on until after my grandma passed away 3 weeks later, and even then it was a slow dissolution and realization.

But the truth, and it’s rather frightening to admit, is that I had been in the grip of an intense psychosis for months. I’d never known or experienced anything like it before.

In the middle of the night, they released me from jail. I showered and cleaned every speck of dust from the Airbnb that I was staying at. There was a Tiffany blue panini maker in my Airbnb. I thought if you plugged it in a certain way, it could activate portals to different dimensions. I left it unplugged.

The next day, I put on an empty backpack, and made the walk back to the hospice one more time. I had to sneak back in, since I was 86’d from the place. I snuck in through the back and gave my grandma a kiss goodbye. I asked my uncle to buy me a bus ticket to San Francisco.

I left my phone there, with a note to my mom to lock it in a safe, and not to worry. I needed to go. I needed to give them space to grieve.

I got onto a bus to San Francisco, with the clothes on my back and an empty backpack. I had no money. I had no plan. I had no clear connection with reality. I was lighter than I’d ever been before. I should have been terrified. And actually, there were points that I was. But as the moments of terror gripped me, there was always one voice in my head that somehow pushed me through this psychosis. It was my grandma’s voice.

“You are here. This is what it is. This is school. You just need to learn.”

The next day, I arrived in downtown San Francisco. Ready to start again.

That tree was one of the many sanctuaries I could find in 2025. In 2026, I am building a sanctuary. It’s called the Sanctuary of the Silent Star.

If you want to help me build the Sanctuary of the Silent Star, you can email me at zamoshi@proton.me. View the website at www.zamoshi.com to see some of the schematics.