While I have resisted flying the flag of the homeless (Sharpie on cardboard, bearing the traditional Will Work For Food motto or the more recent and brief Please Help), I’m no better than those who do. I’ve never had a pride problem accepting the infrequent food box or spontaneous handout, or “money from home,” despite the initial humiliation, and you get over that, somewhat. Probably you shouldn’t.
It puts people on the spot when you ask for money, and it’s disheartening for them to watch a friend or loved one sink beneath the waves and ultimately vanish. Even if they could help, they eventually grow weary of throwing good money after bad. It doesn’t appear to accomplish anything. It causes deep concern and it damages relationships. I know all this. I sympathize. But as a favor to me, please keep in mind that while I don’t know your innermost thoughts or deepest feelings or all that I’ve put you through, neither do you entirely know me.
I don’t blame anyone for anything (with the exception of those who mistakenly believe that, as a homeless person, there is something fundamentally wrong with me and I am a member of the last societal group that can be openly persecuted. To them I say, ‘Don’t count on it. I’m not a member of anything’).
I’m here tonight leaning on the hood of my car, bone-tired, low on oxygen (I’ve developed some infirmities), lightning flashing in the distance, dreading the approach of law enforcement, just as I was when this publication opted to print my first futile words. It was a different place, a different car and a different tablet, and I fell asleep on my feet that night, mashing my computer screen. I’ll try to avoid that tonight. I stink and all my clothes are filthy. I’m covered with mosquito-bite welts. My scalp itches. My hips are sore from my sleeping arrangement. Why haven’t I the good sense, after all this time, to simply give up?
Perhaps, as Jim Carroll once put it, “It ain't hip to sink that low unless you’re gonna make a resurrection.” He came back from child prostitution and heroin addiction, and was a successful musician and writer, dying at his desk at age 60. They made a movie based on a book about his youth called The Basketball Diaries, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
When asked how many years it took to write a book, naturalist writer Edward Abbey said, “However many you’ve been alive.” Abbey’s best known work, and inspiration for the Earth First movement, is probably The Monkey Wrench Gang, but his nonfiction, including Desert Solitare, is at times sublime.
Maybe I’m seeking to vindicate myself. But no excuses. I made the decisions I had to make, as who I was then. What else could I have done? Some may have been stupid choices, but I don’t apologize for making them. Maybe I should have suffered in silence, but good writers don’t do that; they must communicate, they bleed out loud, on the page. Carroll was two years younger than I when he died. Abbey was my age. I’m still here, I’m still human, so maybe there’s time.
At the very least I can seek grace. There is an infinite number of worse things I could spend my remaining time trying to attain. Understand, I don’t feel shame for being homeless. I suffer no remorse over anything I’ve failed to experience. I’ve lived my own life, such as it has been and is, and I got something out of it.
“Must you value what others value, and avoid what they would avoid? Ridiculous!” — Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching
I can still laugh and cry and hate and love and be amazed and be offended. I know fear and peace. I can still enjoy a good book (even after they turn it into a crappy movie) and a good meal. Unfortunately I can also still realize what a painful burden I’ve been to others, and I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do about that. Not enough, though. I fear that for me, it can never be enough.
Thank you. Forgive me. Peace.
