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?

Bad Policy

It was a day when nothing much got done. Yes, I wrote a longish post in the morning, and then it was time to go, time to take the train to 42d street, examine the map, and decide that the A train to Far Rockaway was the ticket out of the city. Time to leave, time to go home.

And what had I seen in New York? Oddly, everything was as normal, except that there seemed to be a new breed of poverty and homelessness. There had always been street people, but they had seemed different—maybe drunks, maybe drugs, maybe just crazy. The point was that they couldn’t fit in—that’s why they were on the streets.

There was the woman sitting halfway down the stairs to the 42nd Street subway. She was sitting on cardboard on the landing; the air was a mix of the 40 degrees outside and the 60 degrees inside. Still, it was cold enough that she was bundled up and yet still shivering. And her sign was clever: Donate What You Can to Polish Your Karma.

Nor was she the only one—there were many more people like her. “One in five of our neighbors can’t put food on their tables,” stated the public service ad on the subway. Is it true? What would a Google search reveal?

Well, as usual, the picture isn’t clear. Yes, the rate of poverty in New York City inched up to 21.2%; it had been 20.9 the year before. But Bloomberg came out blazing—he stated that of the 20 largest cities in the country, New York was the only one whose level of poverty had not risen since 2000. It was 21.2% then, it’s 21.2% now. In other words, it’s gotten worse for every other city except New York.

It’s also true that I was in Manhattan all of the time I was there, unless you count passing through Brooklyn to get to the airport. And The New York Times has this to say about Manhattan:

Manhattan retained the dubious distinction of having the biggest income gap of any big county in the country. The mean income of the lowest fifth was $9,635, compared with $389,007 for the top fifth and $799,969 for the top 5 percent — more than an eightyfold difference between bottom and top.

All of this is based on new data from the Census Bureau, which leads me to wonder—how do you count homeless people? And in fact, looking it up, it appears that the Census Bureau itself has come out and said that its count of the homeless for 2010 was off by three million. Not surprising, really, since many state and city ordinances prohibit sleeping, loitering, or camping in public. So there are a lot of people who go uncounted.

The train to the airport had the usual buskers—in this case a really bad mariachi duo (a singer and an accordion) and a good trio singing songs from the 40s. But nobody except for the out-of-towners—maybe Minnesota nice?—seemed to be giving anything. Oh, and there were the people selling candy for a dollar—often their signs proclaimed them homeless or out of work.

It was a study in contrasts. The city has unimaginable wealth, both now and in the past. And I had been staying with my brother and sister in law, who live on Riverside Drive. Their apartment is hardly palatial, neither is it small; but that’s not the point.

And that is? John and Jeanne are living a bit better than their parents did. They had had good public school educations, they had gone to graduate programs, they were now taking vacations and spending in ways that their parents wouldn’t have dreamed of. And that’s good—that’s the way it should be. The American Dream, right?

Assuming a level playing field, yes. But I sat next to a young black woman and her daughter; mother had clearly picked up the five-year old from school. And her first action, on entering the train? Take out and power up a small tablet and hand it to the girl.

Two days earlier, I had been in a bus in Manhattan watching a white mother talking to her son of roughly the same age. No tablet, instead it was questions to the child—what had he learned at school, was his teacher happy with the class, was everybody there? By the end of ten blocks, the mother had gotten the boy to remember the material presented in school, had reinforced it, and had added to it.

Nor is it a white / black thing. There were black guys in very good three-piece suits who were getting on and off the subway in midtown New York. But I would wager any money that their parents had done the same thing that the woman on the bus in Manhattan was doing.

“I am a girl, and I am beautiful just the way I am,” the child with the tablet on the subway began to recite. She was reading a poster on the train. And as kids at that age will do, she started to repeat it endlessly.

I know what the lady on the bus would have done. She would have agreed, she would have probed—what were the best things about you, she would have asked. What things are most important to you? What kind of person do you like and what kind of person do you want to be?

The mother on the train shushed her child up.

Which was a shame, really, because the child was obviously very intelligent. There’s something about the eyes, you know, and the quickness of response to stimuli—you could tell this kid could go places.

“It was my librarian,” said Jeanne, when I asked who had made the difference in her life. Her parents had never read, never even completed high school—but the librarian had hooked Jeanne on books, and gave her the message: you’re sharp, you’ll go far.

Will there be anyone there for the little girl, who is beautiful just the way she is? Or will our cuts in education, arts programs, and Head Start mean that only the rich have a shot at a better life? I wish we could see that neglecting people, and especially kids, has another dimension than morality or equality.

It’s also disastrous economic policy.

Our Kids on the Street

As I write this, there are four children playing in the Poetry Space of the gift shop next door. And guess what? The kids are loud, so periodically one of the parents has to come and give a directive—quiet down! That works for ten minutes, and then the crescendo begins. At some point, the other parent can abide it no longer, and will come down and reapply the directive. I, of course, am currently not attempting to squelch the noise, since these are not my kids. But I am observing the different parenting styles, and trying to assess the efficacy of each. My conclusion—both are pretty much as effective, which is to say…not very.

These kids are lucky—their parents are loving, concerned, educated. And there’s something else as well: these parents have known a lot of gay people, and if any of these kids is gay, the parent will barely blink an eye.

Now then—time for some facts:

One in every four LGBT kids who comes out to his or her parents ends up on the streets, either because she or he was kicked out, or because the child decided to leave.

The average age for kids to come out, nowadays, is fourteen. In the seventies, most people came out much later, when they were in college and relatively more stable.

Lastly, here is a paragraph from the Human Rights Campaign:

Youth homelessness in the United States is a national crisis in urban, suburban, and rural communities affecting nearly 2.8 million youth between the ages of 12 and 24. Furthermore, consistent research finds that gay and transgender youth are over-represented among homeless youth, comprising anywhere between 20 and 39 percent of the total homeless youth population even though they make up less than 10 percent of the overall youth population.

OK—my toy computer doesn’t have the calculator that my Mac does, but my feeble math skills suggest that we may have one million gay and lesbian kids on the streets. And while marriage equality and anti-bullying efforts are important—isn’t doing something for these kids important, too?

What are the problems? Well, the first is what to do with kids who are on the streets—are there beds in the shelters for them?

Answer—no. According to the clip below, called “A Day in our Shoes,” there are 3,800 homeless youth in New York alone, and 1,500 of them are LGBT. And how many beds are there for them? Two hundred.

Shelter is just one issue. A kid on the street is at major risk for drug and alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, prostitution, and being the victim of violent crime. That kid you see sleeping after “school” on the subway? That’s the only safe—relatively—place for him to sleep. He’ll be up at five minute intervals all night, checking to make sure he’s all right.

It may be there are treatment programs which will help a kid achieve the daunting task of being an adult: paying bills on time, going to the dentist, convincing the bank to let you open a checking account even though your only ID is a high school identification card. But even those programs “age kids out,” as one of the directors in the clip “Kicked Out” put it. So at age 21 you’re supposed to be on your own—but what happens when you fall at the disco and need to go to the hospital? Ask any parent—it doesn’t stop at age 21.

Which is why Caitlin Ryan’s work at the Family Acceptance Project is so exciting. She starts with a simple premise—virtually no parent wants his or her kid on the street. No matter how terrible the parent is, or how badly drunk or addicted he or she is—no parent wants that for their kid. So the trick is to find a way to get parents to accept their gay kids.

It makes intuitive sense—families do change. Mine did, and Raf’s as well. And as you can see in the second clip below—even very macho, Hispanic families can change. And as the clip on the Family Acceptance Project website shows—the Mormons can change as well. Perhaps especially so, since the family is of huge importance in the Mormon church.

Ryan has reached out to John Kerry, who in 2011 introduced the Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act. Here’s what the Human Rights Commission has to say about it:

The Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services establish a demonstration project to develop programs that are focused on improving family relationships and reducing homelessness for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. These programs must include research-based behavioral interventions designed to decrease rejecting behaviors and increase supportive behaviors in families with LGBT youth and research-based assessment tools to help identify LGBT youth at risk for family conflict or ejection from their homes. Additionally, the Secretary must provide educational tools and resources to help families identify behaviors that put LGBT youth at risk as well as provide multimedia educational tools and resources that are focused on helping a diverse range of families understand how their behavior affects LGBT youth.

And now a confession—I know that this legislation was not approved in 2011, and I think it has been reintroduced, though as of June of this year it hadn’t been. But after Googling frantically for 15 minutes, I can’t find who reintroduced it or when.

Normally, this would upset me, but nowadays I have more perspective. Not being able to chase down a reference is annoying. Being fifteen, gay, and on the streets?

That’s major!

OK—Flunked That Test….

Yeah?

That seems to be my reaction to everything, today, since the news, guys, is anything but great. True—no category five hurricanes are barreling down on us, and the murder rate is actually down in the little town of Loíza, traditionally a very hot-in-every-sense place. Internationally, the news from Syria is good. Oh, and in Florida, this hovel got sold….

Yes, I bring you this in the spirit of compare and contrast, which was dear to the hearts of all of my high school teachers. So here it is:

1. Compare and contrast the lives of the 1% versus the 99%

(‘Shit, I hate these questions—hey, can I use the Internet? There’s gotta be something there….)

To start, the top 1% in terms of wealth own one third of the net worth of the United States. And that’s why, dear Reader, somebody was able to shell out 41.1 million greenbacks to live in the current mansion of the former Gianni Versace in Miami.

In the meantime, we have this:

Meet Deirdre Cunningham, who, according to today’s The New York Times, is working two jobs and living in a homeless shelter. Nor is that unusual—apparently over 20% of people in New York’s homeless population—estimated at 50,000—are working. An apartment costs at least 1,000 bucks in New York, and Cunningham doesn’t have a good credit rating: she was evicted.

Consider this curious sentence, from the Times:

The average monthly cost for the government to shelter a family is more than $3,000; the cost for a single person is more than $2,300.

Ummm—is anybody seeing what I’m seeing? Such as if there are apartments for $1,000, why aren’t we renting them and putting homeless people in them and saving 1,300 or 2,000 bucks monthly?

This idea, apparently, would be anathema to New York’s mayor Michael R. Bloomberg—who if he’s not part of the 1%, by the way, we’re really fucked—since he feels that the homeless like to be homeless and like to live in shelters. Or something like that—that’s how I interpret this sentence from the Times:

To make the shelter system less inviting, the city also stopped giving homeless families priority for public housing, and made it harder for those who left the system to return.

Pretty clear, hunh? A few details from Cunningham’s life:

1. she gets four hours of sleep from 7AM to 11AM
2. She can’t keep sharp objects of razor blades with her
3. She has to take her laundry to a laundromat, since the washing machines at the shelter are either broken or being used
4. Oh—there’s a curfew, so even if she had the money to go out, she couldn’t

I’ll come clean—that wasn’t all Deidre: it was a composite of three women mentioned in the article.

But there is something perversely wrong about American culture today. Do we really think anybody would want to live in a shelter? Listen to another sentence:

But in an interview, Ms. Gibbs reiterated the Bloomberg administration’s long-held position that more benefits only attract more people to shelters. “That drives more demand,” she said. “It’s a Catch-22.”

Guys—we’re talking about people here, not widgets. People whose alternative is the streets at 3AM. People who have daughters—Deirdre’s is eight, and wants to take ballet.

I remember when my family went to New York, for my brother’s wedding. We saw a man pawing through the trash can.

“What’s he doing,” asked my father.

“Looking for food,” said Jeanne.

“In AMERICA?” cried my father.

What have we become?

The Beatitudes Banned?

Every day, the same guy hits me up for food, and I have to confess. I’m annoyed with him.

Annoyed because he hits me up twice or three times in a day—shouldn’t once be enough? Annoyed because I give him three dollars—enough for bread, ham and orange juice, and he wants five dollars for “a hamburger at Burger King.” Annoyed because he now has taken to coming into the café where I “work” and asking for money while I’m busy writing. In short, he isn’t acting like a properly grateful beggar—I have become his bank. And so? I am not a cheerful giver, which I should be.

Right—so why don’t I tell him to go to hell?

Because he’s hungry, dammit.

How do I know? Well, he’s rail thin. And I see him “selling” parking spaces on the street, as well as pushing shopping carts with food for customers at the grocery store. In short, he’s struggling, and he’s just getting by.

I write this because Susan has sent a link to a church website in Raleigh, North Carolina, which has apparently banned churches from giving out food to the homeless. The church, Love Wins, had for 6 years given coffee and sandwiches to anybody who came by on Saturday and Sunday mornings. They were recently told this is illegal.

Second confession—I have not been able to access the link, and I suspect that everybody else in the country is having the same problem. I did read, however, news of the affair in The Daily Kos, and here’s the link.

In chasing down this improbable but seemingly true story, I came upon the interesting news that many major American cities have done the same. In Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter has prohibited groups from distributing food in city parks, saying the practice is unsanitary and lacking in dignity. (Hey—just the facts; that’s what he said…)

And it goes on and on—New York City, Orlando, Dallas, Las Vegas and Houston have all restricted feeding the poor in some ways. Here’s what one blogger wrote:

New York City has banned all food donations to government-run homeless shelters because the bureaucrats there are concerned that the donated food will not be "nutritious" enough.

Yes, this is really true.

The following is from a recent Fox News article....

The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term “food police” to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.

In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.

You know, I’ve often believed that the internal combustion engine was the ruination of America. Why? Because too many of us wake up, leave our houses, drive to work, come home, eat, and go to sleep. Maybe it would be better to take the bus, as I do. Then people would see, as I once did, a whole family in a parked car at five in the morning. They were all asleep, all except the father, sitting in the driver’s seat. Nor will I forget his eyes, which plainly told me—“this is all we have, all we can do.”

Or people would see—as I do—the guy who routinely goes into the dumpster up the street, fishing out scraps of food. Oh, and the guy in Houston who did so in March of this year? Here’s what the Houston Chronicle said:

James Kelly was hungry and looking for something to eat. He tried to find it in a trash bin near Houston City Hall.

For that, the man, who said he spent about nine years in the Navy but fell on hard times, was ticketed by a Houston police officer.

According to his copy of the citation, Kelly, 44, was charged on Thursday with "disturbing the contents of a garbage can in (the) downtown business district."

"I was just basically looking for something to eat," Kelly said Monday night. "I wasn't in a real good mood."

Houston, by the way, passed an ordinance in 2012 requiring organizations to get a permit to distribute food, and socking any organization in violation with a $500 fine.

You know, there are days when I think the Victorians did it better. However bad the workhouse was, it provided shelter and food. I give it to you, which would you prefer, the streets or this?

Workhouse in Ripon, England

Hard to Do Good to....

There are days when the topic presents itself, when the island outdoes itself in some species of lunacy or illogic that the post virtually writes itself. Today?

Well, I started out trawling for an interesting story. I can therefore tell you that there is a guy, Patrick McConlogue, who observed a homeless person living down by the Hudson River in New York City. McConlogue thought there was something interesting about the guy—he didn’t seem crazy, he wasn’t talking to himself, he was reading and writing. So McConlogue, who is a software engineer, devised a test—he would approach the person and offer two alternatives. The first, he would give the guy $100. The second alternative was a laptop computer, three books on Java script writing, and lessons every morning for three months.

Guess what? Leo, the homeless guy, chose the second offer. And it developed that Leo is a sharp guy—he’s particularly passionate about the environment…but let McConlogue describe it:

It turns out Leo is a genius particularly concerned with environment issues. As I sat there becoming increasing stunned, he rattled off import/export prices on food, the importance of solar and green energy, and his approval for “efficient public transportation initiatives [referring to NY’s new Citibike]”. He is smart, logical, and articulate. Most importantly, he is serious. It’s up to him if dedication is also his gift.

So he returned the next day with the following stuff:

      Samsung Chromebook with 3G (access to code academy etc).

            Beginner: “JavaScript for Beginners”

            Intermediate: “Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja”

            Advanced: “Javascript the Good Parts”

            Solar charger for the laptop.

            Something to hide the laptop in. (Anyone have ideas? Email me: pmcconlogue[at]gmail.com)

McConlogue then went on to write a blog post entitled (infelicitously) “Finding the unjustly homeless, and teach them to code.”

Vitriol exploded across the Internet. Were there “justly” homeless people, critics demanded? Was McConlogue really suggesting….

One guy tweeted, “I hope the homeless guys takes the 100 bucks, just to mess with this condescending dick-face.

Guys? This guy is a software engineer, not a public relations expert. Of course he was suggesting that some people deserved to be homeless. Oh, and remind me again—what are you doing for the homeless?

“It’s so very hard to do good to people,” Margaret Mead once said. You want to help—but is that money you give some homeless person going for food or drugs? And will Leo—despite his brains—be able to stick to three months of learning Java script?

My gut tells me that Leo is very likely bipolar and is currently exhibiting no symptoms—but what do I know? At any rate, it’s an interesting experiment—and I hope it works.

So that got me thinking about The Soloist, Nathaniel Antonio Ayers, Jr.—the former student at Juilliard whom Steven López, an LA Times reporter, befriended. Ayers dropped out of Juilliard when he had a psychotic break—and he never quite got his life back again. So López got involved, got Ayers an apartment, contacted Ayers’ sister; he did a mammoth job of helping a person who…

…was not always easy to help.

What do you do when you convince a landlord to rent an apartment to a psychiatric patient, and then the tenants start complaining—why is that guy in 4D walking around outside the building all night?

He’s pacing because he’s hearing voices and he’s scared to be in his apartment. Or he attributes some magical power to a ritual in which he must walk nine times around the building, saying a talismanic series of phrases. And if he gets it wrong, he has to start all over again. Or maybe….

You get the picture.

OK—so Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. made a film—also called The Soloist in 2009. And what’s up with Ayers now? Now that the book has been written, the movie filmed? Anyone still concerned about Ayers?

I’ve looked. Ayers’ sister has a foundation to help artistically gifted people who are suffering psychiatric illnesses, but there’s not much info on Ayers there. So the most recent info came from Pat LaMarche in Huffington Post from April of this year. Here’s part of what she wrote:

Ayers wants to change what people call him. He wants to be Tony Ocean. He has emblazoned the new name all over his violin case; his trumpet case hasn't yet been monogrammed.

Ocean says "his" reporter made him a household word: "I have a reporter. His name is Steve Lopez, from the LA Times. He made me famous. I went to the White House. I was in the China Room. I flew Alaska Air. They made a movie about me and about his book." It seems this fame is the reason Ocean has dumped his old name. "I threw the other one away. I want to be Tony because I like the food there." Ocean took the menu for Tony's lunch counter out of his trumpet case to emphasize the name change, "and because my mother liked to call me that. I picked Ocean because I like the sound of the ocean. I like the rolling sound as it comes and goes."

Ocean likes the sound of the music he hears on Skid Row too. "I was a Cleveland-born person. I decided to move here because the center of town has Beethoven. And you can get food. They have a pot full of beans and they will give you some," Ocean explains without mentioning exactly who "they" are. Then he referenced his audience as a reason to stay, "And Steve Lopez says, 'you were playing your violin for your friends.'" And that's reason enough for Ocean to stay on Skid Row.  

Well, most people make their choices in real estate based on something other than where Beethoven is. And those people who do, like Ayers?

Not easy to do good to….

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?

Beatus Vir

A question for you, Gentle Reader.

Sleep in a bed last night?

I know now—if the question surprises you, you’re lucky.

I’m happy to say that last night I did. And this morning I chatted briefly with someone who did not.

I had a hankering, starting off on the trot, for a bit of Monteverdi. Perfect music for a Monday morning, and it had been years since I had heard the Selva morale e spirituale.

Well, it’s exalted music, and a fine performance. Beach was good too—the water surprisingly smooth after a week of rough seas. Then it was time to get back home and start the rest of the day.

Of course, I had to clean my feet first, because walking with sand pressed by the sock into your feet is annoying. Fortunately, though the showers installed by the government no longer work, the surfers have rigged up a little hose that provides no-doubt-bootlegged water.

So that’s where I saw the guy, my beatus vir. 

The first rule of the day is to say hello to everyone. It’s something that was constantly adjured on us (to us?) at Wal-Mart, and though few people did it, I did. It brings you into contact with people you’d never interact with otherwise.

He had an El Greco face with one of those marvelous noses: thin, elongated, curved inward and then outward. Salt-and-pepper hair, thin, brown eyes. And sunken cheeks.

Oh, and he had a bar of soap and was busy applying it to his blue jeans.

The jeans he was wearing.

Right—no washing machine.

Did the greetings, and he asked where I was from.

“Wisconsin…You?”

“Nowhere, really. I’m on the streets.”

“How long?”

“Two weeks and five days.”

OK—he’s never been homeless before, but now, yeah. And he’d been living with his mother, but she was in a project, and they have rules, see? Anybody living with her, and they kick her out. And she’s 86, and he’d die of shame if they kicked her out….

So he left.

Pretty hard, he says, to be on the streets. Went to Salvation Army this morning, but they couldn’t give him breakfast.

They only feed four people breakfast a day.

What about the place in Santurce.

“Yeah, La Fondita de Jesús? They told me to go there….”

I pass the hose back to him—feet are washed now. He wets his shirt, and starts rubbing the soap all over it. Logically, he pays special attention to the armpits.

“You know, I couldn’t get into City Hall to ask for help. They told me if I was homeless I couldn’t get into the building. Politicians—they come and kiss you when they’re campaigning, then they kick you the rest of the time….”

I put on my socks, and empty change and keys from one of the shoes. Put the keys in my pocket.

“If I can get out to Bayamón, I can stay at a place there. I’ve seen it. It’s real nice. They give you your own room. Like a hotel….”

Costs $1.25 to get to Bayamón.

I’m ready for the trot back home. He’s soaping his neck, now. I offer my hand, which he bumps with his elbow. It’s a Puerto Rican thing.

“Good luck,” I say.

“Hey, you left your change,” he says.

Duh….

“Take it,” I say.

“Sorry to bother you and all,” he says.

“You didn’t bother me, not at all.”

Nor did he. In fact, I felt honored. Honored to meet someone with the nobility to point out the dimes and quarters and pennies that had such terrible value to him and were almost worthless to me. A guy who moves to the streets so his mother doesn’t get kicked out. A guy who cleans himself painstakingly—I wouldn’t—and chats with a stranger and exposes his pain matter-of-factly and then apologizes.

I’m calling him a guy. Wrong—beatus vir.

Beatus vir

Beatus vir, qui timet Dominum:

In mandatis eius rolet nimis.

Potens in terra erit semen eius;

Generatio rectorum benedicetur.

Gloria et divitiae in domo eius;

Et justitia eius manet in saeculum saeculi.

Exortum est in tenebris lumen rectis:

Misericors, et miserator et justus.

Jucundus homo qui miseretur et commodat.

Disponet sermones suos in judicio:

Quia in aeternum non commovebitur.

In memoria aeterna erit justus.

Ab auditione mala non timebit.

Paratum cor eius sperare in Domino;

Confirmatum est, cor eius:

Non commovebitur,

Donec despiciat inimicos suos.

Dispersit, dedit pauperibus:

Justitia eius manct in saeculum saeculi,

Cornu eius exaltabitur in gloria.

Peccator videbit, et irascetur;

Dentibus suis fremet et tabescet.

Desiderium peccatorum peribit.

Translation

Blessed is the man who fears the lord:

He delights greatly in his commandments.

His seed will be mighty on earth;

The generation of the upright will be blessed.

Wealth and riches are in his house;

And his righteousness endures forever and ever.

Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness:

He is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.

Good is the man who is full of compassion and lends.

He will guide his affairs with discretion:

Because he will not be moved forever.

The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance.

He will not be afraid of evil tidings.

His heart is fixed, trusting in the lord;

His heart is established:

He will not be moved,

Until he gazes at his enemies.

He has dispersed, he has given to the poor:

His righteousness endures for ever and ever,

The strength of his soul will be exalted with honour.

The sinner will see it, and will be grieved;

He will gnash with his teeth, and melt away.