My universal trust in safety acted like a double paned window to a storm; the colors and muted sounds permeate, but the storm is no longer real.  At times I step out onto a porch to experience the force of nature, a testament to the layers of personal protection afforded us by years and years out of the weather and without hunger. Dry towels and tea await my back turned to the unknown.
           
I had stopped in my steps to look in the direction of the sound.

“Just stupid kids playing with fireworks, they would not think it is so funny if they were dipped in gasoline.”   Cliff was assuaging my fears as well as venting his qualms.
           
The streets of Chicago do well to give space to the pedestrian. I felt comfortable and stimulated, unlike New York where one has to pay for comfort and stimuli.

Day 3 in my Chicago visit, I was returning from Filet Minion and a tour of the city, navigating my way by a business card sized map of the El train. Locals know that the buses are the way to bridge the gaps between you and the nearest stop of the Blue line or the red line. I had none of the savvy of a local. I having been in Chicago only once before in my 14th year and spending much of it reading fantasy novels. As well the preceding 2 days were a whirlwind of people I adore, dancing, and a roman candle war in the wee hours of a night full of riding a piñata and playing the make-the-straw-disappear game so I had little working knowledge of the city as a whole much less the inner workings of the bus system. 
 
 
In my venture towards the Blue line-off which my gracious host Ruby lived-I was taken out of the streets demurred by the grandeur of the buildings showing the triumph of man and the price of progress.  I was taken by fire stations and street side cafes by residential blocks and now by subsidized housing.  One can always tell a ‘project’ house from a place where people opt to live by the architecture.  The building is made to impose its self on the inhabitants and leave nothing left to pull off or dirty. Every brick suggests lethargy, not by the people living there, but by the burocraticaly imposed aesthetic of Big Brother.

Nothing of the place says ‘home’ or ‘take pride in yourself because we do too’ but rather it hints at “here you are, the next generation of Native Americans. And we are so bountiful as to grant you space to continue to live as you were.”
Where “as you were” is really “as we want you” which in this case is out of sight and out of mind, perpetuating an extrinsically imposed stereotype.

Manifest Destiny is still only for the wealthy.

I felt the space in my periphery. I didn’t need to venture a glance to see past the fences to the solid doors or the barred windows used functionally as a drying rack. I was on a mission to get back to my makeshift bed and belongings to recuperate before the evening’s dancing-my purpose for the visit quickly fading behind the wonder of the people and the events of a city teeming with life and eager to share.
Past this brick hive, a hive where there is no queen just the hint that there should be.
The inhabitants wait…
she will come and…
Time passes.
With it the certainty of a queen emerging to aid her hive to its purpose fades.
What is left is a decision.
A decision between hard work and subsidy to now fill the void, where promise has left its lie as a child.

Out of this building walked Cliff.
I felt him.
I could feel his presence.

The building, up and imposing its self on my right, spit out a human.

For the first time in recent memory I was producing endorphins, mentally flipping the fight or flight coin. I chose flight which decorum suggests is merely a quickening of ones steps, so as not to expose weakness as well as to not offend your would-be attacker. Strange world we live in.

His voice: “…not gun shots.”

One block of a quickened pace and I was stopped by reports and movement through the trees. My heightened senses and frightened mind jumped to the worst possible scenario. As I was looking to the right my fear came on the left and made sure that I was not afraid. Made sure that I knew that his neighborhood was not inwardly what it presented its self as outwardly.

No longer as sure of which side was up, I asked him if he knew the direction to the Blue line. He mumbled assent and pointed in the direction he was going and said that he would be passing it.  
He was a pure personification of energy. His muscles showed through his clothes, his height was proportional to his figure, and his amber eyes preceded his black skin and stunned his prey. I could point in his direction with my eyes closed, so strong was his projection of emotion. His hands only once left his pockets, at the perfunctory hand shake during the exchange of names 4 more block down the road.
His palms were sweaty.
For no reason, two people from different vectors converge for 6 blocks and their lives become linked.
His life had just turned on him. 
His wife had just kicked him out of the house. The energy that he was producing was his emotions battling in himself.

He is a poet, a street poet.

He informed me that there was no money in street poetry, only rap songs, but he remained strong to his art. Doing my best to be worthy of his confessions I made conversation.
“Do you have any children?”
“9”
“…”
“Two before my wife with a different woman, my wife had five when I married her, and we have two together.”
He offered me a poem in exchange for money. I had none. He gave me the poem anyway. A series of rhyming couplets. Couplets that described children. Innocent until proven trapped, trapped by situation.

He told me never to marry a woman with children. Not because that was the problem with their relationship but because:
“They become your children. And there is nothing that you won’t do for them.” Trapped to a woman and in a time and situation because there is nothing that you won’t do for your children.
Cliff the street poet had miles to walk that evening. Miles to his sister’s house where he would regroup and the life of a father would continue and the life of a husband may die.

At the subterranean entrance to the public transit I clasped his shoulder in an act of solidarity and said words that come so easily to every one, yet I meant them. Good luck. He walked away heavy hands in his pockets with out raising his head from the gum stained side walk.
 

It has been my self appointed task to take quilting under my arm and knock on the doors of the worlds museums and art galleries. I have been working over the past few years to understand the lore and history of the media I tout to the world. I’ve shown quilts nationally for years and only now am I turning to traditional patterning and the ripe history of quilting past. I’m continually fueled by the community of quilters world wide who are so supportive and willing to share their years of experience and knowledge base from a life of oral history and countless hours of practice.

Coming from the world of fine art and Architecture I know about design and visual aesthetic response, and now I am learning about a whole new historical context that I can add like a layer to my quilting.

My recent work has been an amalgam of tradition and function and aesthetic. I have been taking used clothes and making them into traditional quilt patterns. This speaks to the function implicit in historical quilting as well as the aesthetic methodology inherent in the formation of patterns. To this I add my own personal touch. I bring the methods that I have learned through trials and many errors and add them to each project to make the tradition my own; to grab for my own context and method a whole new way to envision Quilts so I can be a step in the path of Art and bring with me the millions of hours we have spent creating our context in fabric.

Warning: this has sadness.

We were driving out to Candler today to retrieve a sewing machine for me to borrow. The sewing machine had hidden its pedal so I was unable to use it to push my sewing and practice my quilting while on sabbatical to the east coast.

We had turned off the main highway; taken a exit from between the large freight trucks marking a line across the country with their wheels, a burnish line to fold the country in half. On this tributary of asphalt the terrain was changing. The trees lining the large thoroughfare of highway 40 had spread out to form hills, had melted from the wall of visual blockage and noise attenuation to the trees left between stores and shopping-plexes and used car lots, had dissolved into street trees and planter boxes, then grew into the foliage on the mountains beyond, barren of leaves cutting the light into geometrical fingernails between the shadow of the trees resolved to bear the weight of the winter and sit till the days became long again to bud the flowers and canopy to again feed them to fuel them for the warm months. The man made interventions were changing from fuel driven signage to business and industry. The traffic was channeled into a smaller more focused lanes with destination on the mind and the notions of rural life and a thinning density merely 15 miles further down this road.

In the hermetic bubble of the minivan we were postulating over the school systems and I was asking about hows and whats. The road was curving away in front and behind us speaking more of the mountains that were once under the houses and stores and nurseries and churches, slowly meeting the ground on its terms.

In a turn of the road off to the right was a dog pacing through traffic, A bronze boxer pit-bull mix. She was not attentive to the flow of cars hugging the turn from around the hill that proceeded her. She was there, dazed. As we passed I noticed the other dog laying across the white line that meant the edge of the road, perforating the paint with his body. I could see blood even from within the moving vehicle. Desa slowed at the next inlet after the scene had made its gravity known, she was the force of compassion that stopped the car. Two stores down we turned around to go gather the devoted sentinel. Being the passenger I had noticed the other dog, she had not. We parked and walked up the road towards the grass on the hill behind the pair of dogs. The golden dog was pacing around, not knowing what to respond to. I could tell that she was friendly from her eye contact and demeanor, but she was not going to come to calls. It was her charge to watch over her friend till he got back up, till the strange cleave in her reality had reknit. I called her, she looked back and led me to her friend. I came up to her to try and grab her to get her to stop running in traffic but she was not to be cowed, not to be tamed, not to be stopped in her vigil of running to support her dog friend.

There were other people stopping at this time. A lady was coming up with a rope, and I went to get it from her to slow down the one dog still standing. I sat on my haunches and she came over to me to pass by as if to say: “thanks for your kind words, but I cannot stop moving or else I will have failed.” I got the rope around her neck and she struggled to get free, pulling and bucking and backing away till I gathered the rope and came up to her. As soon as I put my hand on her she stopped and stayed still. She put her trust in me. She sat by me while the rest of the scene played on. I then was able to look around, to assess what was happening and what to do.

The other dog was breathing. The graphite colored pit bull was heaving breath.

More people were there. Some directing others, some with hands on one of the dogs to reassure. A man with a motorcycle came to stand over, informing the few of us that he knew the owner. Had called and gotten no answer.

Desa knelt by me and this mother dog. She knew of a clinic just up the road a few blocks. I called it. A girl in a red work shirt with her name tag still on either going or coming from work had called animal control. Her name tag was crooked. Tristan.

The animal hospital blocks away asked me if I knew the name of the owner, and I relayed that information to them. They had no record of that person or that dog name. They had no vehicle to help us. They were unwilling to give aid if the owner was not present. Money.

The man in the motorcycle jacket had blood on his hands.

A car pulled to a stop in the road. Blinking lights. He was an EMT.

The lady with the rope had a large freezer bag and was coming down the hill. She asked someone to rip it open as a makeshift gurney to take the dog from the road. The EMT pulled out his bag of medical supplies and gave the dog an IV drip to keep him hydrated till we either moved him or someone came to save the day.

The dog that I was petting was looking around. I was talking to her, telling her that she was being brave and a good dog. She looked up at me and licked my face.

A person was reached. The owner had been informed.

Nothing happened. We called around to other clinics to see if they had a record of that owner and name, but no one knew of them.

The mother dog was there laying under a bit of pressure by the few of us keeping her company. She wanted to get up and pace to see what was going on, to see what was happening to her friend.

I could hear the breath was beginning to rattle, there was a labor that only meant one thing. The gray dog that was paralyzed from the front legs back was fighting against the blood in his lungs. There was nothing to be done. The dog that I was petting knew, she fought against us to go see her friend. We let her up. She walked over to watch and look and sniff. She knew the moment he died. Her demeanor shifted. She was no longer moving and pacing and walking and vigilant. She was still and somber.

The red truck of the owner came down the hill on the road to the church. He stopped and came out not fast, but with a directed movement. Surveying what was going on, seeing his dog laid out on the freezer bag and the other standing next to him watching. The EMT told him that the dog had passed.

The information hit him like a wave as if he were standing in the ocean and the calm sea just sent a wave over his head. He was knocked back. He grounded his feet and then looked at the dog. Tears.

He was a big man wearing a black button shirt.

The male dog was loaded into the back of his truck, while he told everyone around that he was having a really hard time, because these two dogs had just met a few weeks ago and were inseparable. The gray male dog was alone for most of his life and now, just now, made a friend.

I picked up the bronze she-dog and put her in the cab. Looking back over the small work truck to the broken tailgate and the dog on the ripped bag amongst the gear and wood bits and detritus that are the artifacts of using the truck. The owner was explaining, was apologizing, was looking for us to tell him that he couldn't have made any difference had he gotten their any earlier.

I watched as his truck bobbled away up the road with the bronze pit bull boxer mix in the front seat with him.

Turns out I didn't drive out there to get a sewing machine, I went to learn lessons on love from a dying dog.

In the breaks of the reggaeton I could hear the synchronized shouting reminiscent of a cult reciting its vows.

I had walked in two minutes early, which in my book is late for a job interview. I was there for my second interview. The job was a manager for a company that was a bit unclear in my head. I had found the job under a strange listing in Craigslist.

“HIPPIES WITH THE FLOW (Kirkland)”

The search was during a particular time of freaking out over monies. Monies and following a career in the arts. [I admit that at times I question my path. Its only healthy...I've heard.] I had sent out a million or so queries and resumes and cover letters and phone calls and responses to adds for work, this was the one that got back to me.

The office is located 40 minutes from my now home in north Seattle. The add was suspect in its wording, but since it was the only one that got back to me and wasn’t a cookie decorating third shift for minimum wage I put on a clean shirt with buttons and drove my resume over. The address was a difficult one to locate and I had to call and ask again, making it there just in time. The lady on the phone who turned out to be the front desk lady was super sweet. I am not sure I have had occasion to speak with someone so personable on the phone even just for directions. Once inside the office-plex [the strip mall of higher commerce] I was greeted by the lady from the other end of the phone, topped with a bouquet of dreadlocks and the sounds of Damian Rice from the stereo audible and melodic, a good sign for their tastes. The art on the walls were prints of artists I know from my museum wanderings, showing me that they were tasteful and contemporary. There was an office dog. A good sign for me since I am a dog enthusiast as well as good with them, so it made me happy to know that there was a K-9 in my future place of employment as well as a way to show my skills of communicating and nurturing vicariously through the pet. I was there with one other applicant lady whom I could tell was no match for me, just by the look of her. From her posture to her clothes choices I had the top hand on that baseball bat. She was there to make me look good. Something her pink blouse didn’t do for her.

The first interview took upwards of five minutes. The interviewer was terse and asked her few questions that would weed me out, and then concluded before I could ask any questions intended to forever endear her to me, or use my conscious interview language that includes saying “we” a lot and offering suggestions to aid the company using my skill set. After our session I was informed that she would get back to me the next day if she wanted to schedule a follow up interview to make sure I was right for the position. All they had were positions for managers.

What I knew of the company was that they sold art. I was hooked. Manager at a company that sold art, and primarily to businesses! This was the right answer to my query over how to support my self as an artist and yet not indenture myself into the service industry. I could sell art [maybe even my own!] and at the same time learn the ways of working with professionals in the art industry.

Oh boy was I wrong.

I spent the next day waiting for the call anxious over my few words in the interview. Did I hold myself right? Was my resume formatted right? Was my skill set matching those that they were looking for? Since they trained the managers in house, they informed me that they like no experience in that field so they can train the employees in the fashion they choose to best fit their business model. [word to the wise: experience is always good, if they don't want it they are either looking for a lower pay grade or are shady. Often both.] Since I was not that wise at the time, I thought it looked good for me, I had all the tangential skills and was open to learning and working hard in a field I respect.

I was going to manage selling art. I was going to oversee workers and the dissemination of the wares that I have chosen for the rest of my life to peddle. The pay seemed good. It was win-win.

I arrived there to an empty reception room, music blaring. Blaring. Something about shooting the sheriff but not the rest of the staff at the police house. There was a whiteboard on which was scrawled something to the effect of: “ wait a moment we will be right out. Make yourself comfortable.” that charge proved most difficult. In the waiting room sat two other applicants, including that atrocious pink wearing lady from the week prior. Foreshadowing. The little cockerspanial Phoenix wasn’t even there to ease the palpable silence of the three of us waiting in the deafening cacophony from the satellite radio turned to the ‘island’ station. I took my place standing by the window. I didn’t want to be caught sitting, approached from above demure to the benefactor of my future career in Seattle Washington. Most of the people I know and had talked to in the week separating the call till the interview, knew I was in the running for a position as a manager in a firm that sold art. The frequent retelling enhanced the idea of the job even in my brain, such that when I was there standing front of the corner window looking out at the concrete planter median I was ready to start my new life as an art consultant. Ready to take on the selling of fantastic works of art and working with the large budgets of corporations and lobbies of skyscrapers and sculptural adornments for office parks. Ready to lead this charge into battle against the recession and the cutting of decressionary spending! Me and my quilts and knowledge of the world of fine arts was about to go into battle for this company and so be it if this blazed trail took me and my work with it to fame then ultimate fortune. Who was I to stop the train of my destiny?

46 minutes of waiting by the window took some of this flame out of my shorts.

Through the gaps in the song, and between the ringing in my ears I heard some loud chanting from the back room. Sounds associated with a locker room’s spirited war cry reached us in the front room. The two who were there with me as well as the third lady who had come late didn’t seem to notice. Either to entrenched in their revery or to dazed by the world outside of their parents basement they sat there waiting for further instruction after the dictum by the whiteboard, not making eye contact or sharing my amusement at the whooping from the rear of the pastel painted collection of rectangular rooms and halls.

The train came, but it wasn’t the train of destiny it was the train of sales people to shake our hand and exude the spirit of what ever pep talk they had just group high-fived over. They toured around the room shaking our hands in turn and telling us their name. Then out the front door went most of them leaving the two women I had met, the nice reception lady and the succinct owner, and two other people, as of yet unknown.

Oh to have lived in that blissful ignorance for ever….

They were introduced.

Bo and Mel.

The four interviewees were split two and two to go on shadow day with the two sales people. I was paired with Bo and Mariah Mariah I was to learn was a recent high school graduate with no aspirations but piercings and a steady job. Steady being the only criterion for said job.

Off into the world in the back seat of what is left of a Volkswagen.

[Note: I am still under the spell that a week of daydreaming had cast over me. I am only now in retrospect able to add the details with their true clarity and contextual eye raising.]

I opted for the back seat to allow Mariah the first hand at being the aggressive applicant, knowing full well that I had it in the bag. I waited for her to start in asking the questions I knew to be pertinent, starting with inquiring into him personally to establish a repore and then to find out his position in the company and how deep he is in the running of it. She sat there. From the back seat it was my turn to run the interview, learning as much from his answers by his tone and attitude. Asking about the job and his tenure at the company. About his personal habits and the requirements of taking on the responsibility of managing employees.

Break for gas. I remember the moment vividly. As we pull into the filling station I ask from amidst the cardboard wrapped frames of tacky poster quality art if we[they] worked with any original art.

“No, I wouldn’t feel safe with that kind of valuable art just rolling around the back of my car.”

Red flag #136 [but the first one I noticed]

That was the moment I should have stepped from the car thanked him and walked back the miles to my car. I didn’t. Personal delusions are powerful things.

“We sell quality art prints, the same quality as you can find in any mall across the country.”

Said with a straight face and a hint of pride in his voice. I hope never to use America’s capitalist mediocrity machine as a datum of quality in my work.

I even think “..any mall across the country” was accompanied with a sweeping motion of the hand to indicate the horizon and the breadth of mall dissemination across this fair land as if to say “as far as the eye can see”. Kind of scary if you think about it.

I didn’t jump from the moving vehicle [which in retrospect would have been the best choice.] so into town we went. I finishing up my questions and Mariah holdin’ down the quiet introspection corner in the front seat.

We arrived in our territory and us two future employees decided that it would be best to take turns going inside with him on his ventures. Which at this point we knew nothing about.

We walk into the rental office of an apartment complex. Bo jumps right into his diatribe. Which I am informed later is one of the 5 keys to success.

“Can I interest you in some art?”

“I brought a few pieces to show you today.”

Bo has a framed print of a picture of Seattle in the 1940s and a framed print of an old wine add that looks as though it were designed by a high school art class looking at the effect of placing an object in the dead center of a field of color with the intent to bore the viewer into a standing coma.

“We are the company that sells these old prints of Seattle.”

While Bo is giving the run down to the person trying to inch away from his sales pitch he uses his gut to hold up one corner of the picture. Which I think is a good use of problem solving myself. This frees his other hand to make gestures and quick change the images he has to peddle if he senses the sale going south.

The first place we went in the manager was a nice fella. He didn’t buy anything. Dear Bo was undeterred. On the way to the next venue of door to door sales he explained the law of averages to us in the car. The more people you talk to the more likely there will be a sale. He cited 20%. So out of a hundred people he harasses 20 will purchase his goods. A sound business model it seems to me, and Bo has been at this for 8 years.

8 years.

Impressive.

He could have become a doctor in that time.

“I work for an interior decorating firm that is offering these prints for 45$ they are usually 160$

or this one for 40$ that is usually 135$!”

It took me several stops to understand that he is living the life and all the glory of a traveling salesman, saying anything that would encourage someone to take one of these quality prints so he can take home a commission from each sale.

After about 4 times of going in to any office we see in the area we were assigned it was time for lunch, being Thursday I had a suggestion: “BBQ. I know a place.”

He had his task to give us a speech and pieces of paper with inspirational lists of sales techniques and the plan outlining the pyramid scheme of the company. Where the term ‘manager’ was made clear to us as the top of the pyramid where one can reach after completing the last several tiers of sales progress and in house sales training.

This was the moment I zoned out. Folded the paper and put it in my pocket foreshadowing the toss into the waste bin later.

To wrap this whole endeavor up I sat in the back of the car for the next few harassment sessions asking Mariah to go with him to save me the mortification of going into a business and standing next to this man as he asked if anyone wanted a framed picture of a wine bottle. As the drone of this interment went on I was getting more and more frantic, so I called in help to come save me from this and pick me up and drive me 45 minutes to my car. [good friends are so handy] to save me the next few hours of my life. Well worth it. Afterward we went to the ballet. Which I think almost evened out the resulting cultural depravity of driving around a four block radius for 6 straight hours knocking on doors embodying the physical manifestation of spam e-mail.

]]> http://blog.lukehaynes.com/archives/64/feed 0 http://blog.lukehaynes.com/archives/42 http://blog.lukehaynes.com/archives/42#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:22:28 +0000 Luke http://blog.lukehaynes.com/2009/08/29/i-was-witness-to-a-moment-of-lucidity/

As the red light paused my movement in the established ant rut of the paved road, I looked to my right to see a large unkempt man amble back to his shopping cart from the trash can. He and his cart were inhabiting the traffic triangle, the no mans land, the interstitial space that is not big enough to house a Starbucks or a block of section 8 housing, but not small enough to be accomplished with a spray painted arrow. His country represented the space between the right turners and the straight goers. A place of such small regard to be overlooked by most and forgotten by the rest. There he reigned, him and his cart. His hair was like the human caricature of cartoon hair, which in turn is a caricature of human hair, all spikes that move with the head as though one solid mass. These points were blond; what’s left of blond to the visible eye under the dirt and grime that amounted to both a pillow and a sun cover. His cart was heaped with bags and detritus. The bags were tied on in a manner that suggested practice and disregard, flowing over each other like the grapes in a bunch filling the space to make the whole a solid mass of movable “home” the smell of which wound be not unlike those grapes left in the sun past ripe, bringing to call those bugs attracted to decay.

I was on my way from somewhere to somewhere. I had a great sense of expediency and purpose. I no longer remember where I was going or why I was leaving.

From that drive I have taken with me only his face.

I was paused by the regulated traffic signals allowing others to make the transition from somewhere to somethere, and what I took from that entire movement of miles and explosive wheel turning urgency is a moment that this man had of awakening within his self. As I watched is movements his amble gained purpose and comprehension. He didn’t gain direction or need but a consciousness of movement. In the time it took for him to make it back to his cart from the sidewalk across the street where the trash held possibility, he had become aware. This could be seen in the way he surveyed his amalgam of belongings. Knowing all the items in their places, but with the added knowledge of resolute despondency. He tugged on his hair, adding the self to consciousness. Pulling on the bits of stray brown tinged spires to get them to point down, as if they need to subjugate themselves to the paradigm of public appearance. His space collided with that of his basket of comfort, his worldly possessions that keep him alternately warm and cool and fed and high and drunk and entertained and grounded.

He came to the cart.

The cart left in the traffic median between directions of forward momentum, forcing the drivers decision 10 feet before the intersection of choice.

He came to a stop surveying his life on wheels, his cart between us. I could see the way he looked at the bags both seeing them and seeing the thousands of similar iterations of bags tied to carts filled with stuff in his mind with out any hope of knowing if those bags in his mind were phantoms of bags in the past or yet in the future. His inertia of this life brought him to stand next to this cart. His shoulders slumped under the weight of the realizations.

As he stood there surveying the cart, back empty handed from the trash excursion of moments before he reached into the midst and pulled out a jar of peanut butter, like a wave skipper knows when to grab the crab as it tunnels down to escape, at the right time and place and with a firm hand. His peanut butter came out and was held apart from him, as if at half mast, never making it to the zenith of ingestion or to the revulsion of casting it aside. It merely became the palimpsest for the entire contents of the life on coasters before him. The way I could know that his actions were those of pensive scrutiny and not of continued delusion was his eyes.

He looked at his surroundings.

He became a part of the movement of his surroundings.

His posture assumed shame. He qualified his stature and life through his own eyes staring at this peanut butter jar. I could see that the question that was the crux of this moment was weather or not to eat a bit of this, as though this were the elixir that could bring him out of this self-shame and back into the bliss of ignorance and tying bags to this cart or not, to cast aside the mash of legumes into the cart and walk away into the sting of rehabilitation.

The light turned green. I was ushered back into my trajectory by the urgency of those around me. I went.

somewhere.

I just gave away a pair of boxers and a shirt that I have had for a few years to a homeless man. His name was William, I know this because in the way of registering himself on me as a person he told me.

I was walking into my apartment building carrying my supplies for the project I am working on, laden slightly by the three sheets of double ply chip board from Utrecht 10 blocks away. There is instant recognition by anyone who has lived in a city long enough when someone is going to ask for money.

“My name is William.”

I know the only reason someone tells me their name is to verify legitimacy., to humanize himself so I would be more apt to give him the money that he needs for what ever substance he wants to abuse at the time. I am happy to oblige if that substance is food, but the remaining category of vices are not something I like to support as a life style. I smiled and said “no”. He moved on to technique number two, he helped me with the door, while continuing on his diatribe about his needs and life:

“I am homeless. I don’t have any money till the end of the month when my check from…”

“I don’t have any money to give you.”

during this exchange, he let the door shut between us. This door is wrought iron. The bars on it are spaced close enough to keep arms and fingers out. There was an impassable barrier between us. I was on the side of warmth and refrigerated leftovers and he was in the fog and wind. Or only tie was the communication that slipped through the bars. What I could see of him pieced together by my brain from between the vertical black lines, was moving constantly. He was like a snake charming his prey and like a child unsure of his body, feeling the cold but not sure exactly what that means.

“let me finish”

He was not done with his entreaty. Before he could respond to me on a real level he had to deliver the speech that was engrained as the perfunctory greeting in his social edicate. His foot was stamped and I let him tell me about his needs and wants. I then informed him that I had no money to give him and that unless he could use double ply chipboard to his advantage I had little on me of use to his current predicament.

At this point I was invested in this life. I was the pervayor of goods to ease the suffering of this soul. Not really, but in the visceral empathetic level it sure feels that way.

“I don’t have anything on me to help you.”

“But then you are going up…”

William pointed a finger up. Up, where the source of food, bed, luxury, and salvation hovers. His blackened finger pointed out of his shirt cuff followed by the hands so often the intermediary between him and the world. The cups for change and the hooks for dragging blankets and now the timid arrow to allude to my power to help.

“do you need food?”

“what kind of food?”

This is a funny answer I get at times from homeless people. Were I destitute, I would assume that any food would suffice. But I suppose there may be pescatarian homeless men asking for money to get some macrobiotic meals. I told him of what little I have in the house that would be ready for immediate consumption. He picked a few of the items, and asked if I had a shirt.

“I really need a shirt.

And some underwear.

Long sleeve.”

I asked if there were any soup kitchens in the area, that could offer him food more to his liking. He told me there were, but you have to wait in line.

“Have to wait in line

Line

Line

Line

Line…”

He was scratching his beard this time while repeating this word in to the wind, the word floated away with the flakes of his face from where he scratched. He was in rough shape. Oil of Olay wouldnt know where to begin. He told me that waiting in line was too much like the yard at the pen. He drew with his fingers in the air circles calling to mind scenes from Clockwork Orange where the inmates are required to walk in the concrete yard for their exercise.

“I am not ever going back there.”

“OK. Wait here William, I’ll be back with what I can find.”

in my house, which is the same size as the foyer in which I stood behind the metal door protecting me from the night and the people who may want to take from me, I foraged for what I could give to fit the description of what he wanted, and hopefully needed.

Its funny how things tend to have a deep nostalgic history when you are about to give them away to a thankless homeless man. “…Oh I cant give him that shirt…its the one I wore when…and those underwear were a gift…and those just make me look sexy…”

I eventually found a few items fitting the desires of William, Placed them in a brown paper shopping bag touting on the side to reuse or recycle it; I was afforded an opportunity for the former, and took them down the elevator from the elevation where good stuff comes from. William was waiting on the sidewalk acosting passersby asking the same set of questions following his diatribe that has me now holding out a bag of my belongings topped with a bag of Cheesits, an apple and the last banana I had.

William offered me in the way of thanks a long look in the bag and what sounded like static from a radio far off from any channel complete with hand gestures of what would pass in charades as waves. As I backed towards my door, the safety and the continuation of the project that had taken me from my room in the first place, he said thanks. It was under his breath and I am not sure that it was entirely conscious, but there it was, the vestiges of the communication that had brought about our exchange in the first place the end of the cycle. The opposing book end to “Please”.

After I had given him my bag of offerings, I came back up. Sitting on the one chair I contemplated what this all had meant. What had I gotten from the exchange. Was this my duty for Karma? Was this my monthly tithe for God to hear my prayers? Was I proliferating the socialist ideals? Pay it forward? The golden rule?

…

…

…

We have anything because someone was kind to us, be it our parents for raising us to be functional, be it teachers for teaching us properly be it bosses for saying yes to hiring us, be it the CEO of Target for offering prices that are affordable. Were we to live in a vacuum we would have nothing. Nothing to own, nothing to play with or wear or watch or make or eat or jump or kiss or love or wrestle or give or give or give. The days since have been cold. I have not wanted for that shirt, and I hope that William has gotten some use out of it, that it has helped him with his day. I would love to be a small kindness that offered to him some of the wealth of kindness I have received in my life. I dont expect a thank you note or even recognition by him of what I gave, since it is is routine to ask for aid, head just below water for the time between kindnesses.

Giving to William makes me say thank you to the people who have been and are and will be kind to me.

Cheers, guys.

[Guess its a little like pay it forward...crap. I am a product of my surroundings. I'm going to drink a Frapichino to drown my sorrows. ]