| Homeless |
[Mar. 13th, 2006|02:41 am]
lemurling
|
I started with just some idle notes, but this got long and maudlin. Fair warning, you may want to scroll on by.
M's gone to the GAMA conference in Las Vegas until Wednesday night. We aren't apart much, so I'm rather lonesome (perhaps why I'm up at 2am), but it's such a short break, it's not like I'll even have time to get mopey.
Been doing a lot of reading today, to forestall any potential mope. Plunked myself down at Borders and read a few books, including Nickeled and Dimed which actually wasn't as miserable and depressing as I'd expected. I know very well that I will never be poor like so many people in that book, not because I'm smarter or work harder or am in any way better, but because of the simple fact that I have a safety net of family and friends, and was given the advantages that allowed me to build myself a second safety net of savings. A lot of the misery in that book was related to the trap of housing, that it takes too much money to get into housing, so short-term, but more expensive options are needed instead, or else homelessness, and the barrier that that places to steady employment at a job that pays enough to collect the savings to get oneself into the apartment and off the street. I will never worry about this.
There was brief mention in the book about how the problems of the poor have become invisible, how the poor themselves have become invisible, barring a hurricane or other natural disaster. Unless you are poor, most people almost never have a reason to regularly encounter poor people, except in a commercial relationship, and often not even then (I am as guilty as anyone of not always meeting a checker's eyes because I'm distracted with my own thoughts when I get to the register). Public transit though, is an education. Everyone should be required to spend a year taking public transit as their primary mode of transit, not just to work, but for errands and shopping and such. It's not practical, not possible, and those of you who've never done it probably think it's even more onerous and taxing than it actually is. But the power of it as a force of democracy must have few equals. Working at a charity might seem more in touch with poverty, but I think it's better to ride the bus, because then there is no act of service involved. Each person is doing the same thing, riding the bus. In that way, we are equals.
I suppose there are people who could ride the bus the way I have, very early in the morning, and feel more disgust than shame at the smelly heaps of fellow humanity riding with me. But I think if you rode often enough, at enough times of day, and every once in a while ended up without a book or a laptop or other means of hiding with the world, the experience would sink in. Most of the time the bus is fine, but those early runs and the late ones, they're not pleasant, not even at all. I hate the smell. I hate the feeling of insecurity when an obviously homeless person is waiting with me late at night for a bus (there is no way to know, if they are not obvious about it. Many homeless people manage to keep their clothes clean and store their things, and look like anyone else). I don't like my fear that they might be desperate enough to want something from me, be it my money or even just my attention, that I don't want to give. I don't like to engage. I am cold enough with people of my subculture and class and who I have something like a relationship with. But after so many years of riding the bus, when I have the energy, I do try. I try not to mind the smell, because I know that that bleary man, still stinking of some kind of alchohol, has been awakened every two hours this past night, barring an exceptionally kind driver, when the 22 hits Eastridge or Palo Alto at the end of its run. Woken up to shiver in the cold for a half hour or more until he can hope the next driver is nice enough to let him on his bus, even though he might not have the fare, to ride for another two hours to the other end. And it's not a life he ever chose, but how is he supposed to escape it?
I met a man who did. Just a chance conversation, one of the many that most people who know me might be surprised to know that I have, riding in to school on Thursday. He had asked me if I was Indian, because of the clothes I was wearing, and my long hair, and told me a few phrases of Hindu that he had learned from his best friend, laughing a little because he never could roll his tongue enough to learn Spanish, and his Indian wasn't quite right either. He was a big guy, black, dressed in a way that says blue collar, neat but working jeans and a shirt. And curious, because it was a detail that didn't quite fit, I asked him how he'd met his friend. A bit bashfully, he explained that when he was homeless, he'd found this Indian guy in his panhandling spot one morning, and jumped him when he wouldn't go away. The next morning, he'd been eating and the same guy, who'd been sleeping in the bushes next to the bench he was at, startled him by asking from the underbrush if he could have some of his food. Homeless people stick together, within their rules, and so of course he shared his food, and they got to talking, and became friends. He protected his friend, who as the only Indian homeless guy around, got mistreated and taken advantage of a lot. And thinking about it, I might even know his friend, because there was a sad man, though I thought he was Pakistani, that I used to talk to now and then, a year or more ago, in the mornings at Menlo Park, the end of the 22. He was an alcoholic, he told me once, lost his visa after the bust but didn't want to go home, and never got his feet under him. And you know, the man I was talking to now, he might have been there too, there was a pack of remarkably friendly bums, back then, who knew I could be counted on to say hello to them like they were people, and banter a little, as long as they didn't hustle me (I try never to give money, since I know it goes farther when I give to organizations, and creates a mercenary relationship between me and them that just doesn't feel right.)
It may have been the same men, or different. There are so many, and for each that makes it off the street, another replaces them. He told me a little about how he ended up homeless, how he'd been a single father, and then his son had grown up and left, and he'd lost his way. He didn't need much, he explained, a beer at the end of the day and he was happy, so without someone to take care of, without something to work for, it was really easy to just give up. Got into drinking and drugs, and pretty quickly bottomed out. It probably doesn't take much, if you don't have help. So he was on the street, two, three years. But then he'd met a woman, and as soon as he had someone to take care of again, he'd figured things out, gotten a job, gotten them both off the street. He'd tried to help his best friend, but the Indian just 'wasn't ready' you see. So he went to visit him when he could, and take care of him, and in the meantime he was working really hard because his wife ('well, she's not my wife, but I think of her as my wife') was pregnant, and soon he'd be a father again and have three to take care of. And I could see how strong his identity was wrapped up in that protection-image. He was overwhelmed, but it was happiness in him, even as he told me this matter of fact story. Even though I worry for that little child on the way, Desiree Tamara I think he said (he was very proud of picking the middle name), because looking at the bare facts, unmarried parents who had been homeless, with history of substance abuse, and not likely much in the way of education, living in the east side of San Jose, that's just not good odds, still, I had to be happy for a little bit, at his happiness.
In the end I had to go, and I thanked him for telling me his story, and he thanked me for listening. And I'm not sure he realized that the strange looking white girl with the long long hair and the dark eyes would still be thinking about him, days later. But he did know that I was really listening, and I think he really needed that. And I know I needed another little reminder of our common humanity, the beauty of a father's bashful smile, of a man's loyalty to his friend through thick and thin, and a bit of hope. For some of those people that frighten and sadden and make my bus rides a little darker from time to time, there might be a day when a magical moment happens, when they'll be able to steal a bit of love and a bit of strength. If the ones who make it back can be compassionate to the ones who never do, I certainly can be. |
|
|
