Just Gale (reposted)

I wrote the post below exactly one year ago today, and since I don't feel like writing a new one at the moment, I'm happy to repost it, instead. It's good to revisit ourselves!
 

It’s December 12, the old year is ending, and comparisons are inevitable. Where am I now, versus where was I a year ago?

Answer—much better off.

Financially, no. But in every other way, yes. A year ago I was still reeling from the loss of a job. Today, nothing would compel me to go back to where I misspent seven long years.

Because for those seven years, I was on autopilot. I had no time to think, much less to write. One small thing—a need to visit a store, a phone call—could upset the rigid and delicate structure of the day. A pebble was a colossus.

And if the day got upended, then everything fell apart and it was scramble scramble scramble to put it back and then go on and watch out because maybe there’s another pebble and if there is wait I think there IS a pebble oh SHIT I can’t go through another disruption to my day.

Feel the tension in your shoulder?

That’s where it got me, in those days of waiting for the end. I would go down to Amilda, in Sam’s, and she would sigh and open her desk and give me the patch that smelled of Ben-Gay and I would stick it on and struggle through the rest of the day.

Relaxation was something that was structured, as well. Or at least scheduled. There was no “hey, let’s go to the beach.” That had to be planned, and every day had something in it—something to do. Something, usually, I HAD to do.

When all that goes away, it’s like experiencing the world after the big bang. There’s a lot of time, a lot of space, a lot of nothing. What to put into the nothing?

A structure.

Another structure.

So I learned—every day begins with a trot. But I learned as well—sometimes the interruption is as valid as the trot.

Which is why I was talking to Gale, yesterday. She’s one step up from homeless—living in a housing project that she describes as “crack hell.” And she’s a bit worried—three people have died recently on her floor. Is it the huge puddle of water that accumulates after every rain, a perfect breeding pond for mosquitoes and then dengue fever? Nobody, of course, bothers to unclog the drains….

Gale looks to me like a bipolar who is currently on a slight manic phase. Pressured speech, restless movement, emotional lability, and some pretty fantastic stories.

How the government ripped her off of 75,000 dollars. Her daughter, who is bedridden in a hospital in New York and whom Gale cannot see because if she does, she’ll freak out, and the daughter can’t handle that.

So I generally give Gale some money, because I respect what she does. She combs the beach every day looking for shells, coral, interesting vegetation or indeed any object. Then she glues them together into an interesting, occasionally beautiful object, and tries to sell it.

‘Another thing to dust,’ I think. So I give Gale the money and refuse the object.

So we were chatting, yesterday, because just giving the money didn’t seem enough. She’s lonely and depressed—went into the Old City a night or two ago, but the bright lights and party spirit made her feel more alone. And since she doesn’t speak Spanish—she’s got an accent that booms Long Island—she’s even more alone.

“Call me,” she says, “I’ll clean your house. It would be an honor to clean your house. I love to work….”

I consider this briefly. At this point on the spiraling curve downward to pure chaos, only a manic could reverse the trend in this house.

This is now my pebble. A near-homeless person scrambling to get by whom I, having more money than she, give money to because…

…well, she needs it.

As much as she needs to tell me that the cops are abusive—they see people robbing people and they KNOW they’re robbing people and she TELLS THEM they’re robbing people and what do they do?

Nothing! Stupid idiots! “No comprendo,” she imitates.

She’s had to pull a knife twice, just to protect herself.

The pebble of Gale would have entirely upended my day in those Wal-Mart years. First of all because I didn’t have five minutes to spend talking to a person.

‘I can’t believe that that woman waits until the bus comes to a complete stop and then she looks around like she’s never seen a bus stop and then of course she has to take 25 years to look around for the door to exit and does she get it—NO!—she goes out the front and not the back which is totally my pet peeve people trying to get on the bus but can’t because stupid idiots, and oh my God now she’s kissing everybody on the bus and showing pictures of her grandchildren to the bus driver and doesn’t she realize SHE HAS WASTED THIRTY MINUTES COLLECTIVELY OF OUR TIME!’

Or how about this.

‘No, you are not gonna put that sauce in a stupid little sauceboat because in the first place it will take 8 million years to find the damn sauceboat, and then you will have to rinse it, and then I will have to dry it, and I don’t have time, and then the ladle will have to be washed as well as the little dish that goes UNDER the stupid little sauceboat and I woke up at 5:30 and I’m tired AND I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR A SAUCEBOAT!’ 

So—if I didn’t have time for a sauceboat, did I have time to listen to a lady down on her luck (also probably down on her Lithium….)? A lady from whom the government stole 75,000$? 

I have time, now, and generally use it well. I spent, for example, an hour looking at Laurie Anderson on YouTube. Well, that would have appalled me, those years ago. But now?

Well, it’s interesting to hear music I don’t like, but in a sense admire. I certainly think she’s an interesting person. And like all people from the “dear” suburbs of Chicago (“Winnetka, dear,” or “Highland Park, dear,” they always responded—the “dear” took some of the sting off) she doesn’t open her mouth.

And it’s interesting to ponder the question.

I think she’s right. I think we may not have a society anymore. Looking at my life as it was, there was no point in which I interacted with people as people. They were units—the cashier who took my money, the driver who guided the bus, the student who had to be taught.

And I, of course, was a unit too.

Until the day when I was bumped off the treadmill, feel rudely on my ass, and picked myself up and looked around me.

There’s a woman worse off than me out collecting flotsam and jetsam and she’s hungry and I’m in her path and I have the five bucks she needs. And should I let her into my house because what if she breaks something? And as well, she may be OK now, but what if she gets REALLY manic? Do I really want her to know where I live? But what can I do for her?

She’s no longer a pebble.

Is she a problem?

Or is she just Gale?

Tire 'em Out! Revisited

Well, it was looking as if my father’s worst fear was about to come true. What if he woke up one day and everybody was acting normal? Nobody was looking for treasures in the sandbars of the Wisconsin River, or trying to memorize the Iliad so that he could recite it to inner city kids with the message that they too could be a hero, or teaching dance to convicts as a way to channel energy and foment creativity. So what would he write about?

This, Dear Reader, does not qualify as a sizzling newspaper story: Mary Smith woke up, took a shower, feed the kids, and headed to work.

Read that, and you instantly think—what’s gonna happen to Mary? Will someone shoot, will she see something she shouldn’t and go into hiding, are the kids all right?

Remember—this was before the electronic age. I’ve spent two hours on the Internet, trolling for anything, anything to write about. My father, in contrast, burnt up some shoe leather every day, poking around town, looking for news.

So he might have happened on Father Michael Pfleger in person, had Jack been loping around the South Side of Chicago these days, not as I met Pfleger—electronically on YouTube via Diane Sawyer and ABC News.

And Sawyer had this idea: get all the gang members—or as many as would come—together in a big room and talk. Set a goal: get one idea about how to end the gun violence that is plaguing Chicago.

Which has, as the NRA will tell you, some of the toughest gun laws in the country. It also has young men who can’t find jobs and lots of gang activity. So they have the meeting, and people start to talk. Then Sawyer meets Father Pfleger, who has an idea—a basketball tournament for peace.

Other things are happening: a guy is giving boxing lessons on the street corner; Sawyer dons her gloves and tries it out. People are organizing job-training programs, programs to get kids off the street.

And it may be that there is some hope—Pfleger notes that after the tournament, there hasn’t been a killing in the neighborhood. Twenty kids signed onto the training programs, the police are using new methods to focus on the killers, not the place.

Well, certainly an interesting bit of news. And what’s the deal with Pfleger? Who’s he?

Well, a guy whose natural element seems to be hot water. Which got him, as recently as 2010, suspended, which meant that he could no longer perform the sacraments, except for the Sacrament of Penance in an emergency, which even laicized or excommunicated priests can do. For a priest, that’s a big deal.

Pfleger had come out swinging for the ordination of women three weeks earlier, in a 70-minute homily in his church, St. Sabina, which has been his parish for an incredible 30 years. (Average tenure is five to ten years….) Well, the predictable happened, and the Archbishop of Chicago told him, essentially, to go to his room and not come out until he was sorry. So he apologized, and then went onto his Facebook page and recanted his apology.

Nor is it just ordination of women. The guy has adopted two kids, and is fostering a third. Cardinal Cody is apoplectic and threatens to fire him, but Pfleger goes ahead anyway. He fights against tobacco and alcohol, at one point getting up the ladder and defacing advertisement for cigarettes and booze. Then he gets into a little tussle with Hillary, during the 2008 campaign. Here’s Wikipedia again:

"I really believe that she just always thought, 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife. I'm white, and this is mine. I just gotta get up and step into the plate.' Then out of nowhere came, 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama,' and she said, 'Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I'm white! I'm entitled! There's a black man stealing my show!'" He then pretended to wipe tears from his face, a reference to Clinton's emotional speech before the New Hampshire primary, and added, "She wasn't the only one crying. There was a whole lot of white people crying."[23]

Pfleger is German-American, the congregation is predominantly black. Right, so now it’s Obama who calls and asks him to apologize, so he does, saying slyly that his words “were inconsistent with Obama’s life and message.”

Then Pfleger invites Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor or ex-pastor who made an incendiary remark or two in the 2008 campaign, to come and speak and give a blessing when Maya Angelou comes to call. Wright, according to Pfleger, “is one of the great Biblical scholars of our country,” and has been “shamefully demonized.”

Right—Pfleger then takes on disrespectful-to-women rappers and hip-hop singers, and then turns to helping prostitutes. Oh, and did I mention that he invites Al Sharpton….

Granted, he’s had thirty years to do all this stuff, but just reading about it makes me yearn for an afternoon nap. The guy is the Schwarzenegger of muscular Christianity, a fly in the ointment of the diocese of Chicago, a straight shooter unafraid to take on anyone.

And two things strike me. First: the people, who are intelligent, articulate, and as children were filled with ambition—to be a doctor, a policeman, president. Now? They’re gang members.

Second thing: they may be sitting on a gold mine. I couldn’t see much, but you get glimpses of the neighborhood—the insanely wide streets (Chicago had all that prairie to cover, it seems—or maybe it was just a little scheme to use more concrete and up the kickback…), the mature shade trees, the architectural jewels that have fallen down, but could be wonderful again.

If they could get just one house, use it as a training lab for roofers, carpenters, electricians, turn it around and sell it, where would it lead?

Tire the young men out, says a nation builder. Give ‘em jobs and put ‘em to work and get them believing that they’re doing something right. Guys without jobs drink, pick fights, and take the guns out of their pockets and kill.

Tired guys are home in bed.

Just Gale

It’s December 12, the old year is ending, and comparisons are inevitable. Where am I now, versus where was I a year ago?

Answer—much better off.

Financially, no. But in every other way, yes. A year ago I was still reeling from the loss of a job. Today, nothing would compel me to go back to where I misspent seven long years.

Because for those seven years, I was on autopilot. I had no time to think, much less to write. One small thing—a need to visit a store, a phone call—could upset the rigid and delicate structure of the day. A pebble was a colossus.

And if the day got upended, then everything fell apart and it was scramble scramble scramble to put it back and then go on and watch out because maybe there’s another pebble and if there is wait I think there IS a pebble oh SHIT I can’t go through another disruption to my day.

Feel the tension in your shoulder?

That’s where it got me, in those days of waiting for the end. I would go down to Amilda, in Sam’s, and she would sigh and open her desk and give me the patch that smelled of Ben-Gay and I would stick it on and struggle through the rest of the day.

Relaxation was something that was structured, as well. Or at least scheduled. There was no “hey, let’s go to the beach.” That had to be planned, and every day had something in it—something to do. Something, usually, I HAD to do.

When all that goes away, it’s like experiencing the world after the big bang. There’s a lot of time, a lot of space, a lot of nothing. What to put into the nothing?

A structure.

Another structure.

So I learned—every day begins with a trot. But I learned as well—sometimes the interruption is as valid as the trot.

Which is why I was talking to Gale, yesterday. She’s one step up from homeless—living in a housing project that she describes as “crack hell.” And she’s a bit worried—three people have died recently on her floor. Is it the huge puddle of water that accumulates after every rain, a perfect breeding pond for mosquitoes and then dengue fever? Nobody, of course, bothers to unclog the drains….

Gale looks to me like a bipolar who is currently on a slight manic phase. Pressured speech, restless movement, emotional lability, and some pretty fantastic stories.

How the government ripped her off of 75,000 dollars. Her daughter, who is bedridden in a hospital in New York and whom Gale cannot see because if she does, she’ll freak out, and the daughter can’t handle that.

So I generally give Gale some money, because I respect what she does. She combs the beach every day looking for shells, coral, interesting vegetation or indeed any object. Then she glues them together into an interesting, occasionally beautiful object, and tries to sell it.

‘Another thing to dust,’ I think. So I give Gale the money and refuse the object.

So we were chatting, yesterday, because just giving the money didn’t seem enough. She’s lonely and depressed—went into the Old City a night or two ago, but the bright lights and party spirit made her feel more alone. And since she doesn’t speak Spanish—she’s got an accent that booms Long Island—she’s even more alone.

“Call me,” she says, “I’ll clean your house. It would be an honor to clean your house. I love to work….”

I consider this briefly. At this point on the spiraling curve downward to pure chaos, only a manic could reverse the trend in this house.

This is now my pebble. A near-homeless person scrambling to get by whom I, having more money than she, give money to because…

…well, she needs it.

As much as she needs to tell me that the cops are abusive—they see people robbing people and they KNOW they’re robbing people and she TELLS THEM they’re robbing people and what do they do?

Nothing! Stupid idiots! “No comprendo,” she imitates.

She’s had to pull a knife twice, just to protect herself.

The pebble of Gale would have entirely upended my day in those Wal-Mart years. First of all because I didn’t have five minutes to spend talking to a person.

‘I can’t believe that that woman waits until the bus comes to a complete stop and then she looks around like she’s never seen a bus stop and then of course she has to take 25 years to look around for the door to exit and does she get it—NO!—she goes out the front and not the back which is totally my pet peeve people trying to get on the bus but can’t because stupid idiots, and oh my God now she’s kissing everybody on the bus and showing pictures of her grandchildren to the bus driver and doesn’t she realize SHE HAS WASTED THIRTY MINUTES COLLECTIVELY OF OUR TIME!’

Or how about this.

‘No, you are not gonna put that sauce in a stupid little sauceboat because in the first place it will take 8 million years to find the damn sauceboat, and then you will have to rinse it, and then I will have to dry it, and I don’t have time, and then the ladle will have to be washed as well as the little dish that goes UNDER the stupid little sauceboat and I woke up at 5:30 and I’m tired AND I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR A SAUCEBOAT!’ 

So—if I didn’t have time for a sauceboat, did I have time to listen to a lady down on her luck (also probably down on her Lithium….)? A lady from whom the government stole 75,000$? 

I have time, now, and generally use it well. I spent, for example, an hour looking at Laurie Anderson on YouTube. Well, that would have appalled me, those years ago. But now?

Well, it’s interesting to hear music I don’t like, but in a sense admire. I certainly think she’s an interesting person. And like all people from the “dear” suburbs of Chicago (“Winnetka, dear,” or “Highland Park, dear,” they always responded—the “dear” took some of the sting off) she doesn’t open her mouth.

And it’s interesting to ponder the question.

I think she’s right. I think we may not have a society anymore. Looking at my life as it was, there was no point in which I interacted with people as people. They were units—the cashier who took my money, the driver who guided the bus, the student who had to be taught.

And I, of course, was a unit too.

Until the day when I was bumped off the treadmill, feel rudely on my ass, and picked myself up and looked around me.

There’s a woman worse off than me out collecting flotsam and jetsam and she’s hungry and I’m in her path and I have the five bucks she needs. And should I let her into my house because what if she breaks something? And as well, she may be OK now, but what if she gets REALLY manic? Do I really want her to know where I live? But what can I do for her?

She’s no longer a pebble.

Is she a problem?

Or is she just Gale?