31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. - Luke 10: 31-34
I enjoy keeping my window in my studio apartment open at all times, regardless of the time of year. The first is that I can hear the waves lapping against the shores of Lake Michigan. Through some miracle of miracles, my apartment is one building removed from the lake shore, and so the beach is less than two minutes walking from my front doorstep. This is fantastic because I have longed to be near a soothing sound of nature ever since I moved into the city. When you come from the country, the sudden shift in noise from bird calls and wind blowing through trees changes to garbage trucks, the wind against your building, and people yelling at each other in the street. To hear the waves, suggestive of a large body of water not 100 feet away from me, is particularly soothing to my wayward heart.
The second reason is that I grew up in a cooler house. While my ancestral home does have a furnace that runs from November until March, it only effectively heats the downstairs rooms, and even then is set low because of the skyrocketing cost of propane fuel. With this in mind, turning the furnace up is out of the question. The resulting temperature in my room that I slept in on and off for twenty four years is a cool 55 degrees. (Or possibly 35, one never can be sure. I did wake up one Christmas morning to sub-zero temperatures outside and the string of drool that trailed down my cheek frosty to the touch. One thinks that a couple of dollars would be worth not having to wonder how my nose suffered an extreme case of frostbite overnight.) Over the years, one gets used to these sorts of things, and not only learns to put up with them, but also to embrace them. Consequently, I love piling my bed high with blankets, wearing sweatshirts and warm socks around the house, and making coffee just for the sake of absorbing the wayward heat transference. Keeping the window open in my apartment allows for a more chilled environment that makes me feel infinitely more at home than the sub-tropical settings of my radiator.
Which brings me to reason #3, my radiator(s). Wonderful marvels of engineering, they somehow have the ability to change my apartment from a vintage studio in need of some sort of remodeling with a marvelous view of Lake Michigan into a balmy South Beach sauna complete with Mexican attendant, palm trees, and an odd backdrop for South Beach because it seems to be a view of Lake Michigan on the North Side. Weird.
But I digress.
Winter has arrived in Chicago, the time when all the bar rats creep back into their holes, clamoring for booze and companionship (or so I imagine anyways). The first months of winter are among my favorites of the year, mostly because it signals a time of definite change in the air. Snow is falling, the year is turning over, and a fresh start is all but demanded of the world at large. Unfortunately, someone forgot to turn on winter this year until about mid-way through January.
When I first moved out here, I was delayed in arrival until December. Hearing ominous portents of a coming snow-pocalypse of epic proportions, rivaling the events of last winter here, I dreaded the oncoming piles of snow I would have to slog through while figuring out this new land of Chicago. This was made worse when I realized that one of the two restaurant jobs I had acquired would require a thirty minute walk in both directions. These are hard times for many of us, and I spent much of the last year holding down two to three jobs just to either a) make enough money to cover my piles of student loans or b) save money to move to a new location to try and find a better job/opportunities in theatre. At the moment, I'm still holding two jobs, but my obligations have changed. I no longer have to walk one hour to and from my job through a sketchy neighborhood, nor do I have to work double shifts at restaurants over an hour apart from each other. Instead, I can essentially mold my schedule to fit my needs for the week. (Because of this, my creative output has once again begun to pour, on a much more regular basis. More on that later.)
I'm one of the fortunate ones.
I was walking around downtown the other day, heading towards my bus stop, when I passed by another one of those tourists who love to take pictures of the Chicago skyline, most frequently while standing in the middle of the sidewalk. This little Asian man, holding an expensive camera, was very focused on photographing the Macy's building/Marshall Fields on State and Randolph. So much so that he failed to notice the grizzled, elderly homeless man approaching him from the side. With little hesitation, and most bizarrely, the homeless man leaned in close to the tourist's ear and began belting "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" as loud as he could, doing his best Mick Jagger while doing so.
(Why was this bizarre? It seems like something that one might see in the subway stop at any given time of day? What made this different? Well, let me tell you: he decided to start halfway through the song. Halfway through the chorus. To try and convey how strange this is, just start singing "Ode to Joy" halfway through the song, with no rhyme or reason given to measures or musical placement. It's quite strange, and somewhat unsettling.)
While riding the bus back home, still frightened by the homeless Mick Jagger and in need of some sort of sustenance to stave off the encroaching Fear setting upon me, I was displeased to note an extended delay at the Michigan and Deleware stop. Looking towards the front of the bus, I could see the delay was another homeless lady boarding the handicapped seats. What's more, she had to wait to clear an additional seat on the bus, not for a pet or a companion, but for a single potted orchid that she set down gingerly, patting it on the leaves as she did so.
To this date, that is one of the more heart-breaking affectionate moments that I have witnessed in the city, to see that much compassion for something that would be so simple to the rest of us, yet so dear and essential to the life of another person.
The one thing that I have noticed either from traveling in the city or from just living in it is that to the majority of crowds, homeless people are regarded as a plague and a nuisance. Discarded, spat upon, believed to be diseased alcoholics out of their tiny little minds, they are kicked, bullied, and openly shunned to their faces. Sure, there are those who do what they can to help them, through the offering of cigarettes, change, or even a bus ride from time to time. I helped out a man the other day with a bus ride, after I found myself unable to provide any change. (The digital revolution would be the type of event that truly hurts the homeless, if only because nobody carries cash anymore.) Most of the time, they are simply ignored or cast out.
Society has always had its begging class, its poor and destitute. The very nature of the American Dream Machine welcomes the poor and downtrodden, (or so says a particularly emerald bust sitting on a rock in the ocean nearby a certain large city) allowing them to make their profit and fortunes in this land of opportunity. However, this is an impossibility for everyone to achieve, if only because in capitalism there are winners and losers. We are condition from childhood to believe that there is a place and task for everyone and all participants will be rewarded, but upon graduation, we enter the hyper-competitive job market, pushing and fighting for every dollar that we can get. For the weak, the poor, the diseased, there is an uphill struggle. For some, the struggle is too much. For others, circumstance and poor decisions lead to becoming the lowest of the low, the homeless.
Go and ask your local congressman the last time that they talked to a homeless person about their state. When Occupy protestors are told to go get a job, how much do they mean the young children of middle class yuppies and how much are they yelling at the people for whom welfare is the only option? How is a schizophrenic man supposed to hold down a position as even a fry cook at McDonald's?
(The apparent fear of the homeless class is widespread, and the belief among many in power is that they are undeserving of sympathy, pity, or the chance to survive. Welfare is regarded with racist beliefs that the people who use it are lazy. That's like saying that rich people exploit the tax code to pay fewer taxes. Both have cases that merit the truth of those statements, but it can hardly be said to be true of everybody. What can be noted is that oftentimes the people who want to break welfare because of they dislike providing services to people for free have their own skeletons in their closets and are hardly free of sin themselves.)
What's worse to me is that this is what I call an "accepted state of being", an unwritten social contract that we all just agree with. We all consent to ignore the homeless people sitting in the streets, because we have places to be. We don't offer change to the pro-offered cup, taught as young children not to look them in the eye because that will not draw them towards you like parasitic insects. Let them feed upon the nectar of the sympathetic.
Sure, there are plenty who help out, who volunteer at food pantries, who donate to charities, who spend time in soup kitchens serving the destitute. There are plenty of people who do drop change into the homeless person's cup. But how often do we see that?
Let's say that 1% of the people you run into on a given day are the ones who donate towards the homeless person in the street. The rest of us, let's say the 99% of us, avoid this, because we don't want to support a drug habit, because we know they'll just spend it on booze, because we're late for work, or a meeting, or a thousand other different things that cause us to keep going on with our lives, ignorant of the lesser people, because they are just that: lesser. I realize that many people don't help one person because that leads to a tidal wave of guilt because we are not able to help everybody. I think that's fair, but I also think that it is bullshit not to be able to help one person because then we'd have to help everybody. In terms of dollars, that makes sense. In terms of absolute morality, it is a sin. Morality is relative in the case of the homeless.
I say that I like having the cold in my house, which I do. I am grateful that it's a cold I can control, and not an ever present cold that comes from having to sleep under the train tracks, or aboard the El train late at night, or in any number of dirty back alleys within the city. I am grateful for where I come from. And like most of the people that I have the pleasure of knowing, (No sarcasm intended, I enjoy the people in my life, and they are all good people, I assure you), I generally take it for granted that I am not a "bum in the street." This is a lesson that we are all forced to confront often, as I did the other evening.
Taking the train home after working a double shift downtown, I was tired and exhausted. Reading my book of choice on the train, I braced myself for a long ride back to the Jarvis stop, a good 40 to 45 minute ride. Sitting in a sparsely populated train car, I kept to myself, much as the 10 or 12 other people were doing. Toward the front of the car, I heard a noise of a door being opened. Curious, I glanced over my shoulder to see what it was. Looking back, I saw that it was a thin, bearded man wearing a ragged moth-eaten sweater, obviously homeless, unshaven, and looking as skeletal as the pictures of Jewish survivors of concentration camps in the 1940's. I shifted over in my seat, trying to not draw attention to myself. Casually glancing around the car, I saw everybody on the train in front of me do the exact same thing. (I can only imagine the people behind me doing that as well. Universal reactions are contagious when part of an assumed social contract.)
The homeless man proceeded to go to each person in the car and ask by if, "by the Grace of God, you could spare a man anything? Anything at all?" I remember his exact words clearly without having to record them in my journal at the time, and I remember his ragged voice, held together with what seemed like Scotch tape and rusty nails. Proceeding down the car, he repeated his call: "By the Grace of God, could you spare a man anything?"
No one gave anything. There were a few responses of "I don't have anything," but never a "I'm so sorry" or a "Let me check," just "I don't have anything," stated with the implications of "Get the hell away from me, you beggar." I am ashamed to admit I was one of those, because I had things to do, more important things to occupy my time. Having acquired nothing, the man kept moving from person to person, never breaking from his speech, until he had reached the end of the car. Empty handed, he proceeded further on up the train and out of my sight.
When the train reached my stop, many people got up to leave the train car as well. As we got out, my immediate attention was drawn to a woman standing in the heat bunker on the train stop. Next to her was a shopping cart filled with blankets, bags, and assorted newspapers. She was so bundled in scarves and clothes that it was hard to determine there was a person under there. It was doubly hard to identify her because she was leaning over, one hand braced against the wall of the bunker for support, retching bile and greasy yellow vomit onto the station. All I could hear were dry heaves and sobs from within.
Yet again, no one offered any assistance, instead rushing downstairs. Again, I joined the fray, unwilling to offer my assistance in her time of need.
Reaching the bottom of the station, I overheard two guards talking about the woman on the track upstairs, debating what to do with her. Instead of offering to help, to ask if she would be alright, I pushed through the turnstile, not looking at anyone, and rushed out the door, just the same as everyone else who had just seen her was doing on that night. Racing home, I unlocked the door of my apartment, threw off my warm Kenneth Cole jacket, slipped on warm pajamas, powered up my internet-accessible laptop, and looked at my work schedule online before collapsing on my new full-sized mattress with clean sheets, feeling wretched and fighting back tears of self-loathing. It might have been my worst night in Chicago by far, because I realized exactly who I am.
I am the real 99%.
(Postscript #1: Again, a shorter entry and a deviation from the humor of the last couple. I like to shake things up from time to time, and this is an issue that's been weighing upon my mind a great deal as of late. I realize that there's only so much that any one person can do, and that yes, we cannot help every person we see. If I gave a dollar to every homeless person I passed in a given day, or everyone who needed it, I would soon be out of money myself. That being said, I find it appalling that people who have not found success/monetary gains/etc in society are shunned as almost third class citizens by everyone around them. To me, there's no justification in that. As Doctor Seuss wrote, "a person's a person, no matter how small.")
(Postscript #2: I promised that I would include writing updates from my other projects, and those are a much more optimistic topic to write about, so here goes. The fantasy novel that I've been outlining is underway! I am currently five chapters in, four complete, for a word count of over 17,000 words. For a book that's going to end up around 115,000 to 120,000 words, I feel that's a decent start. River of Doubt is also progressing, as the research and beginning of the outline has commenced. My writing partner and I are in agreement on what story we're telling, and are both greatly enthused for the project. Look for the first scenes to be written for that in March, and for the rough draft of my book to be completed around the same time.)
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