Wednesday

On Wednesdays. I volunteer at the homeless center. I've been doing this since August 04. It is already Spring and I still look forward to Wednesdays. I love Wednesdays.

When I first began working with the homeless, I thought of it as just that, working with them, helping them recover, get better, get their own zipcode, matching sheets sets and steady employment. I wanted tangible results. I wanted to leave behind a group of folks who were in better shape, safer, healthier, cleaner and mentally well.

That hasn't happened. Not to any of them. It's not from lack of trying.

What I've learned is that homelessness is a chronic complex layering of issues, bureaucracy, social institutions, perceptions of what people can expect from each other and health. When one layer is smoothed over and set to rights, another will topple down on it, setting everything off again.

There is nothing harder than sending a 70 year old mentally ill woman back onto the streets when the center closes. There is nothing more frustrating than taking her to the social worker's office where we sit for three hours, until she decides we are all out to get her and she stalks away, defiant.
There is nothing sadder than seeing a man who is about my age, who has week by week slid further into paranoia and deepest sorrow, covered with scratches and sores, shoeless, hungry, tattered, torn, battered and beaten and knowing I can do nothing for him. Nothing.

These are people I've had lengthy conversations with. These are people who trust me, people who I love to see each week. These people matter. These people live in a scary, hungry, lonely version of the world that I wake up to each morning.

Maybe St. Francis, Mother Theresa and Jesus would bring them home. I wonder if the Buddha would, or would Buddha say they were on some difficult soul journey. (I couldn't be a good Buddhist, karma makes me paranoid.)
I won't bring them home to my house. I'm not a Saint, my house is tiny, and I need my time away from their sorrows so I can show up again the next week. But I wonder, would someone take me in if I were homeless? Should they?

Someone told me once that we can't save the world, we can only live compassionately.
Maybe compassion will save the world.
Maybe compassion is enough.
I don't know.

where did i put last week?

I'm having fun these days...I've got work to do, much of it...the kind that pays in money, the kind that pays in adventure. I've got a garden started, happy dogs romp, happy cats romp, a happy teen sighs and rolls her eyes, slightly embarrassed but good-natured.

The only thing I'm lacking is time...

I need extra time to sit and contemplate, wrap my mind around the big things while the details can be silenced and hushed for a few hours...
I guess could use this extra time to deep clean my office, tidy things up, get rid of distractions, take my car in for maintenance, find my other set of car keys, fold all the clothes.

But, with my extra time, I would do this:

• remember all the times I spent with my Grandmother, track back through my memory and remember what she cooked, what she told me about her childhood, how she made pie dough, the time she took me to get my ears pierced, the time we traveled through Wales together.
• read a book all about medium format photography and spend several days pretending I'm Diane Arbus

Of course, I am not cut out for priesthood, even with the possibility of Episcopal priesthood, it's not something I aspire too, until I think of how they might spend their days... Priests don't have to deal so much with the minutiae of everyday life...they can stay in spiritual meditation, contemplate eternal life, learn Latin and Greek and then read ancient texts in these languages. Buddhist priests can chop wood and carry water.

Maybe the trick is to find some of that spiritual meditation within the minutiae, in the core of life.

A day in the alley...

I was up last night until 4:30a.m.
I was in that FLOW, (as a groovy seattleite called it once, though I bought the book and never really "got" what FLOW is) anyway, I was in it, editing Rescue Me.
I was putting in changes Nevie suggested and a few more, of course, and then around 4;00 the computer needed time to do some work...so I let it work, churn files, make a movie and I catnapped in my chair...but my foot slipped onto the power button and I turned the computer off, with my toe.

But wait! I recovered everything, got it going, got to bed, with the computer churning and working while I slept.

I went to sleep as the pope was buried. I kept the radio on so I could listen to BBC which I find pretty comforting.

I woke around 10, computer was still churning, only 50% complete... (its a long project)...so I cleaned my house...around 12, I told computer to stop and tried something simpler, got a DVD burning and headed downtown..

I was to meet homeless Joseph, the recovering alcoholic, artist/photographer. We were to spend time with my new medium format camera, taking pictures of folks. We had a great time...a great time. People were happy to have us take their picture, for the most part. And, Joseph knows his F-stops. He's a dear man, I love him to pieces.

He led me down a grassy alley and we took pictures of him amid trash and broken windows, while a large black man snoozed nearby. A police officer wandered up, looking curious. I asked him to please move out of the shot. (someone please tell this story to any grandchildren who might come to my wake many years hence.) He seemed to accept that I was making art, and I didn't offer any explanation. Its my city, too afterall...He did tell us a little about himself. "I just got back from Afghanistan and they are poor there, but they don't beg, not like here". He looked at Joseph as he said "you just need motivation, get right with the man upstairs.." I just said, " well, Afghanistan is a different world, isn't it? " And things like that, but, inside I was seething .
Copper left and Joseph said that was the nicest a cop had ever been to him. The cop didn't even make the sleeping black man wake up.
He led me in backdoor of the Salvation army a - an odd place, dark, turquoise walls, people seem comatose...Until we set up a shot with Joseph on some stairs coming down.
An officious man said, "You can't sit on the stairs". Joseph said, "We're just taking a picture." The man checked us out (I'm wearing my fave ratty jeans and a t-shirt.) and says,"well, if you dawdle, its a $500 fine, this is a fire hazard issue. "We'll be quick." Then the man asks if I have a release to shoot in there ..., no I don't...geez...we left.
I told Joseph, that place is way too turquoise to be that snooty.

So, we came out the side door, right into the famous crack alley, but in midday it is just full of sweet, chubby homeless people, mostly men, nice enough. I took more pictures of them, their tattoos, their faces.
I don't know if the pictures will come out, or not. I hope some do.

I love getting used to a whole new camera, allowing myself to just play a bit.

I came home and found the computer still churning a DVD...so I told it to stop again and built it a less high quality way. At 5:38 I drove to the downtown post office, through horrendous traffic, to get the package postmarked in time to for today's post date. I'm not a woman who loves clocks and calendars, but I'm damn good at making deadlines.
I barely made it, but made it, I did.


Taking pictures with Joseph was fun. I'm glad, that despite the wackyness of technology, that I did get out and used the old fashioned manual camera and take such delight in it.

It seems to me to be a triumph of the analog over the digital, the primitive over the technical.
The brilliant machine disappoints, the your abacus delivers.
All I know is, it was one of the finest Fridays I've spent in a long time.
The days that make life, a bit livelier. Even in my early 40's I can still get thrown out of places, mingle with the dark side and try new things. For that, I give Thanks!