Crazies on the Street

7:00 a.m. I'm walking my dog up Chestnut Street and down Congress Street. Our pace is slow as we make our way inevitably to Starbucks.

As we walk, I have a smile on my lips and a song in my heart. Actually, the smile and song keep changing places as I burst out whistling. It is a beautiful morning.

After a few minutes I stop whistling and my smile fades. I've just started looking around. I take a census over the next couple of blocks. The only people smiling are those off their meds. Once more I'm reminded that a chipper morning mood is the clearest sign of insanity.

Nuts. At least I have a day of drudgery and toil to which I can look forward. That should bring me down a couple of notches.

A goodbye letter to somebody I never knew.

My sister-in-law miscarried this weekend. She hadn't been pregnant long, weeks at most. The baby was due July 5th. I found tears when my brother told me the news this morning. Strange. I never knew it nor will I, but the grief is real.

I couldn’t wait to become an uncle (or as my family says in their French way, Oncle). I was gonna be the Auntie Mame of uncles. I don’t even have a name or gender for what was coming, I just call it “it.” And still, I saw myself introducing it to the great joys of life I’ve discovered over the years: live boxing matches, going to the opera, the great masters of painting and sculpting. I know that there will be another, whether it comes to my family through adoption or is blood related. But I still need to say goodbye to this one.

When I heard that my brother’s wife was pregnant, I wrote a letter to It. Here’s that letter followed by the second letter.


Dear Baby X,
Jason just called to tell me that you were expected in early July. It’s the end of September right now; you’ve got plenty of time. Over the next nine months I’m sure you’ll be hearing plenty about those in the world before you. I imagine it will sound pretty garbled through the amniotic fluid.
I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself before you’re swept away in a flood of cradling arms of aunts, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. I’m you’re uncle on your dad’s side. Despite how different we are, Jason and I are in fact brothers.
From what I understand about pregnancy, you’re essentially a cytoblast right now, a tiny nucleus of cells. I don’t want to overwhelm you with new information. Be well.
Oncle Joseph


Dear Baby X,
Jason just called to tell me that you are no longer expected. It’s the beginning of October right now, and the leaves are at their peak. Beauty is everywhere. I’m sorry you won’t be able to enjoy them next year.
One of the things you would have found out about me as you grew up was that unlike your parents and grandparents, I’m not a Catholic. If fact, I’m atheist. I think this would have annoyed you very much as a young person.
I don’t have the comfort of believing that you are in heaven right now. But I hope that the cluster of cells you were experienced the vibrations of your mother’s laughter or your father hugging her. If some nucleus that was working on bringing you to life somehow perceived the love those two felt for each other and you, than you experienced everything beautiful about life. Good bye.
Oncle Joseph

My favorite question comes from an unlikely source – that is to say, an unlikely source if you’re an atheist as I am. It comes from the Bible. In John 18:38, Pilate asks the imprisoned son of a Jewish carpenter “What is truth?” The prisoner gives no recorded answer.

It’s a question that has challenged humanity through out the ages. No mind engaging in any sort of philosophical endeavor will find it possible to reach a communicable understanding or even an inner answer granting personal peace without first addressing this question and the ramifications that come part and parcel with it.

The key word in the last sentence of that paragraph is addressing. Like all major life questions (e.g. Who are we? Where are we going? What will we eat for lunch?*), this question doesn’t come with a sound-byte, one-size-fits-all answer. I personally don’t believe it comes any answer, but still the need to ponder it and to find some kind of resolution gnaws away at my mind as it has done in the minds of people across the ages. It is a question which leads the asker to seek for the sake of seeking. Through that process, the seeker is given opportunity to address the question of The Truth in a way that will irrevocably shape and reshape his or her life. This reshaping is the result of constant encounters of the truths that lead to the formation of the beginning of understanding The Truth.

At this moment in my life, I have come to understand these little-t truths as cardamom pods. When you eat a dish flavored with cardamom, you know it’s there. The floral scent it unleashes stimulates the olfactory and the tongue discovers sweet citrus flavors that would otherwise have been masked by stronger flavors like garlic. If you’re not careful, you bite into a cardamom pod. Your mouth will become overpowered by a airy, almost mentholated feeling. It’s too much, humbling even. It’s shocking. Then, it’s gone. The moment and the flavor passes but the memories and lessons remain. You eat slower now, looking at the food before each bite.

* * *

Let me tell you about John Doe #1. I have no name for him. He won’t tell it to me. He sits every morning near the corner of High St and Congress St. Often I find him at Starbucks; sometimes in Longfellow Square. He’s approximately 5’5”, 200 pounds. His curly hair, pear shaped build and skin tone makes me think he comes from one of the Franco-American communities that dot Maine (as I myself do). He is dirty. His clothes, always a sweat suit and sometimes a jacket, are perpetually damp with sweat or rain depending on the weather. Around his neck he wears a small set of plastic rosary beads like those Catholic children are given on their first communion. He often sits on the corner swearing at people who walk by, fighting with the voices in his head, and sometime arguing with walls and lamp posts. I’m not joking; I watched him chew out the south wall of Key Bank one day.

He created my cardamom pod moment last Monday. It was 7:30 a.m. and I was taking my dog for his morning mile long constitutional. We were heading north on Congress St., between High St. and Forest Ave., when we passed on the sidewalk. “That dog! That dog!” John Doe #1 began shouting at me as I passed.

In my most affable manner I attempted to defuse the situation. “Good morning,” I said smiling.
John Doe #1 stared right into my eyes and then shouted, “Fuck you! It’s not a good morning.” We each took a step backwards and then continued on our separate paths.

I made it three yards before I dissolved into laughter. I wasn’t laughing at him, but at the moment of truth that hit me with all the subtly of biting into a cardamom pod. I had been totally incorrect in my comment to him. It was not a good morning for him. He spends nights in a shelter (if he’s lucky), he needs medical attention and suffers from some form of mental illness. Who was I to trivialize his daily struggle with my presumptive “good morning?” Just another schmuck on the street blind to the dire struggles happening around me, that’s who.

* * *

This morning, while walking my dog and experiencing my little cardamom pod epiphany, I passed John Doe #1 again. I looked at him. He looked at me – there was no recognition of the other day in his eyes. He scowled and then made a chopping motion with is arm. “Case closed,” he shouted. I agreed and respected his pain with a moment of silence.

We Have a Problem?

This morning as I left Deering Oaks Park with Brody, a woman with a miniature schnauzer stopped me so our dogs could meet. The woman exemplified pleasant from her gregarious smile and perfectly white clothes to her sympathetic chuckle when I told her that my 120 pound mastiff/lab mix phobia of small dogs. Like most dog owners who meet, she wanted to talk.

She had moved to Portland yesterday. I didn’t ask where from. She’s an artist and her son is starting at the Maine College of Art. Could I recommend and good places where her dog could play off leash with other dogs? She was out meandering through Portland’s Parkside neighborhood appreciating the architecture. And, aren’t there a lot of homeless in the area?

I’m not sure why she phrased the last part as a question but I answered it as such. Sort of. “Yes, the city has a very visible homeless population,” I said. “And it grows significantly in the winter.”

Her mouth lost the pleasant creases of a smile. The corners dipped down distastefully low and her voice became a conspiratorial whisper. “There are so many panhandlers,” she said. “And some areas stink like urine.” Immediately I looked at my watch and using the oldest of all excuses, time, I extricated myself from the situation.

Brody and I walked a block and a half before I realized why her comments bothered me. She wasn’t being cruel. She wasn’t abusing anybody in front of me. To be fair, Portland’s PR arm doesn’t exactly highlight this aspect of our beautiful costal postcard perfect city. There’s no way she could have known that I had spent the last hour trying to convince one of the causes of her changed expression in the park that the government wasn’t 18 billion dollars from him and that he needed to start thinking of winter housing? There’s no way she could have been expected to assume that earlier that morning I’d been discussing with my mother the importance of recognizing dignity when people at a point in their life when it appears that all of their humanity eroded away into nothing. It bothered me that there was no way she could have known this.

But That’s not “We,” That’s Them

You and I are people. We use proper nouns like Joe to talk about ourselves in the singular and words like people to discuss ourselves en masse. If a person doesn’t have a permanent residence we change our words slightly. We omit any reference to the commonality of our shared humanity. We got some great terms for them. Panhandlers is a functional term, it evokes an image of something inanimate and easily found like a dishwasher or streetlight. Vagrant is more transitory in nature, like a passing annoyance or bad mood. A hobo is quaint like a local custom and a bum is a growing waste.

My favorite is homeless when used as a plural noun. The careful omission of and reference to people in that term defines a segment of the population as something other than human like you and I based on their residential status. I receive mail, therefore I am. They do not, therefore the diverse group (including: the mentally handicapped; addicts of all sorts; those hit by financial hardship; social castaways; and so on) can be summed up with one dingy grey, fit all word that places them exactly where they fit into our lives: outside.

What Was the Problem Again? Can You Put It Into Numbers?

We live in an information age. It’s great. Every morning I can roll out of bed, turn on my computer, and bring into my home anything in this world that I want. In a matter of seconds I can immerse myself in the thoughts of Jean-Paul Sartre or the adventures of Jean-Luc Picard. With ingenuity and focus I can make myself a strong voice with power to shake the masses or I can get lazy and veg out on flash games. It’s all there. We’re all there. Almost.

If a person doesn’t have a home, then they don’t have a computer. I can argue the benefits of capitalism versus communism with FoxyRed83 in China from the comfort of my living room at the push of a button. Learning that a particular homeless kid in my neighborhood is being regularly harassed by a local gang? That’s much more difficult. Since the homeless kid doesn’t have a computer, communication breaks down. I can’t interface with him.

This also means that the pleasant lady I met would have little idea that there are an estimated 3,500 to 5,000 people homeless in Portland. That’s 5% to 7% of this city’s population. To put this statistic into perspective, that’s more than the combined totals all of the Asians, African Americans, and mix raced people in the city. It’s roughly equal to how many people in Portland are of German ancestry.

That’s a fucking lot of invisible people out there. It’s more than I can help.

So Now What?

I like listening to people and I like writing. I can write a few of their stories. I don’t think this will change the world or even change one life. I need to do something. I can’t sit here without these numbers running through my mind. They make my stomach get all tight and I start feeling queasy. I don’t have money to give, even if that could be the silver bullet solution. I need to do something and this is something I can do.

I’ll tell you Chris’s story – the one waiting for billions owed to him by the Maine State government. I’ll tell you about Red’s laugh when he’s spanging outside the high end boutique I work at. When I’m done those two, there will always be High Steppin’ Bob, Betty Thompson, the Tommy’s Park punks and so on. Let's see who these people are.

Waiting for Peace - Some thoughts about Sunday

There’s something almost religious about standing on the Casco Bay Bridge on a rainy Sunday afternoon. There were six of us this week – R., L., and myself as well as a few people further down. We stood in the drizzle from noon to one, holding our sign or flag, making peace signs with chilled fingers, and laughing as yet another person drove by and gave us the finger.

I know these actions won’t end the war in Iraq. Call it cynical, but my sign says “Stop This War” so I don’t need to paint a new sign after we invade Iran. So, as I march out to the bridge on Sunday I ask myself, “Why?”

R. argues that going out sparks discussion. Whether or not people support the war, making ourselves visible puts the war in the forefront of their mind at least for the 45 seconds it takes them to drive the bridge. He may be on to something there.

Like I said though, it’s almost religious for me; religious as in a “religious practice.” I’m going out with no chance of personal gain and standing there in meditation for an hour. Maybe we would have more peace in the world if the monotheists who are fighting right now focused more on the practice part of their creed rather than the religious part of it.

Ahimsa & Satyam

Most mornings I walk about a mile and a half to the gym for a quick workout before work. I love this walk during spring and summer. I past blooming snow drops and crocuses in April. I enjoy the serenade of beautiful birdsongs throughout May and June. I’m wrapped in cool morning breezes during the hot months.
My walk starts out in Portland’s business district, Congress Street and the like, before meandering through the city’s small industrial area near bayside. In all of this, there’s one particular area I treasure walking through the most: Portland Street. That’s where the soup kitchen is. As I walk up Portland Street and veer left onto Oxford I pass a veritable army of Portland’s homeless. They’re coming from the various shelters towards the soup kitchen for breakfast.
When I reach this area I take my headphones and sunglasses off. I slow down. I try to make eye contact with each person I pass and I wish them a good morning. The expressions I get are worth the extra five minutes that are added to my walk. They, that mysterious They we call those who aren’t members of what we define as productive society, smile back. Many look surprised to be greeted so casually.
It’s a silly thing. Why should I care about saying hello to some vagabond whose face I’ll forget in thirty seconds. And why the hell should they smile at somebody like me wishing them a good morning but not doing anything else for them?
The answer all comes down to something my mom taught me. “Try to see the humanity in everybody you pass,” she often said. “You may be the only person to smile and say hello to them all day.” If I heard that lesson once, I heard it a thousand times. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, I must of heard her say those sentences at least once every two weeks.
I didn’t really understand what she meant or believe her until July of 2000. I was working at a coffee shop in Monument Square and every Wednesday, after finishing my shift at two, I would spend all of my tip money on flowers from the flower market and then walk through the city handing them out to people for no reason at all.
One Wednesday I had one last stem of daisy’s left and I was working my way towards home – I was living a few blocks up from the square on Congress Street. I passed a woman in her forties sitting on the curb. When I gave her the flowers she started sobbing. “Nobody has ever given my flowers in my life,” she said. I sorta freaked out, not publicly or on her, but I never gave out flowers again like that. I got angry at her for ruining what had been a fun, whimsical past time by showing me how much it meant to people. I could never give out flowers again without wondering if I was about to change a life. I didn’t want that responsibility. I just wanted to see people smile.
Then I got it. I didn’t know the words for it at the time, but know I understand it to be my first deep realization of ahimsa and satyam. In a world of violence, particularly the emotional violence suffered by the invisible masses of working poor, homeless, addicted and wounded, I acted in a way to intentionally counter that violence – this si the non-violence of ahimsa. In a world of lies and pressures telling people they need to consume, and “Buy! Buy! Buy!” I found truth in the act of giving freely something not processed, not edited, just grown from the earth – this truthfulness is satyam.
These were not great acts. I’m under no illusions about the ability to help through flowers. Nor were these acts selfless. On the contrary, I acted from purely selfish motivations – I love seeing surprised smiles. But neither fact negates the small good done by them. Like smiling at the homeless I passed, I opened a door that allowed the humanity of this one woman to come through. It burned to hot for me then, I was and still am very immature, though I begin to understand it now.