SHADOW FIGURES
One day last week I took an essay I'd been planning to read with me on a trip to a nearby city. I completed my errands, then sat in a comfortable armchair in the Senior Center, to wait for my husband to complete his afternoon of billiards playing. The heat has taken over our area and the airconditioned atmosphere offered the perfect spot to read.
"The Box Man" by Lazear Ascher hit pretty close to home. As you might surmise, the essay is about a homeless man who collects just the right boxes to form his shelter for the night. It brought to mind the homeless across the street, the men and women who huddle around the machinery and vents that operate the laundry in winter and find shade beneath the trees along the street in summer.
Asher writes from my viewpoint. He acknowledges the lost jobs, the shattered personal lives and the mental illness that drives them from homes, and the fear that keeps them out there. But he and I also know there are people out there who want to be on the streets. The ones I have observed and listened to, some I have even discussed their plight with, are willing to admit they receive enough assistance from government subsidies to have an apartment but they like the life of leisure, the friends they've made, and the freedom from rules and regulations living a "citizen" life requires. I look at the young, able-bodied people and am sad for the waste.
These homeless people do not appear to be on drugs or alcohol. I don't know what their lives were like earlier, if they cooked their brains, or are now ill. I make no judgments of these people, although it does concern me that this is a percentage of the population of a generation who feel they owe no alligience to neighbor or country, a lost core who accepts no responsibility for themselves--and certainly none for others.
I want to do something but know I can only listen. I want them to believe they have something to offer the world they live in, if they would only apply themselves. But I'm not sure they believe they have something to offer anyone, even themselves. And, who am I, to tell them how to act in this world we, not they, have created? When I look at them more closely I wonder if they aren't better off than many of us.
They are basically happy, not worried about terrorism, the economy, society.Their life is laughing and smoking and hanging out with people they have come to trust--all day--until it is time to search for the perfect boxes.
**
Search the streets for those stories you see each day.
"The Box Man" by Lazear Ascher hit pretty close to home. As you might surmise, the essay is about a homeless man who collects just the right boxes to form his shelter for the night. It brought to mind the homeless across the street, the men and women who huddle around the machinery and vents that operate the laundry in winter and find shade beneath the trees along the street in summer.
Asher writes from my viewpoint. He acknowledges the lost jobs, the shattered personal lives and the mental illness that drives them from homes, and the fear that keeps them out there. But he and I also know there are people out there who want to be on the streets. The ones I have observed and listened to, some I have even discussed their plight with, are willing to admit they receive enough assistance from government subsidies to have an apartment but they like the life of leisure, the friends they've made, and the freedom from rules and regulations living a "citizen" life requires. I look at the young, able-bodied people and am sad for the waste.
These homeless people do not appear to be on drugs or alcohol. I don't know what their lives were like earlier, if they cooked their brains, or are now ill. I make no judgments of these people, although it does concern me that this is a percentage of the population of a generation who feel they owe no alligience to neighbor or country, a lost core who accepts no responsibility for themselves--and certainly none for others.
I want to do something but know I can only listen. I want them to believe they have something to offer the world they live in, if they would only apply themselves. But I'm not sure they believe they have something to offer anyone, even themselves. And, who am I, to tell them how to act in this world we, not they, have created? When I look at them more closely I wonder if they aren't better off than many of us.
They are basically happy, not worried about terrorism, the economy, society.Their life is laughing and smoking and hanging out with people they have come to trust--all day--until it is time to search for the perfect boxes.
**
Search the streets for those stories you see each day.
posted by Barb | 8:33 PM
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