January 12, 2007
Bow Tie Six
ote: Some of the topics to be explored in The Bow Tie will be continued over a period of time. This keeps me from getting bored and maybe others as well.
I want to start with Homelessness. There is something about the very word “homeless” that is most disconcerting. It separates itself out from other words in a way that is strangely unique. For a moment, let’s take a look at this labeling game; and I don’t mean the sickening yet persistent epithet madness game. We usually identify people by geography, race, ethnicity, religion, neighborhood gang, educational or social status, political party and, of course, sexual preference/affiliation. But, think about it, each one of these categories – if we call them that – have to do with what an individual or group has as opposed to the absence of something. So to say homeless means, quite apparently, that a given human being is without a place to live. What a disaster!
Although there may well have been some, I don’t remember any homeless people when growing up in New Haven. Oh, there was a smattering of people (men) we called “bums” who we’d see sleeping or at least dozing in any one of Dixwell Avenue’s alleys. But the assumption was that was the spot they had chosen for sleeping and not where they actually lived!
As I hope to do with other Bow Tie offerings, I want to include the personal dimension. What seems like ages ago I worked among the – for lack of a better term – housed homeless. Sure, that’s a contradiction; but their so-called dwellings were Skid Row flop houses (aka SRO). Small and dank. There was really no social work done with the rag tag group of aimless men, all of whom had stories to tell, each story with its own varying degree of believability. But that was all those of us assigned to Single Men Intake were expected to do. Just check on their eligibility for General Relief by verifying the non-existence of income and personally visit their humble abode to make sure they lived (ha!) where they said they lived. So, Skid Row Los Angeles was my first County Social Worker beat. My jaunts to that part of town after other assignments were irregular. I would simply drive through on my way to some other place or just to break the monotony of moving about what a local paper calls This Considerable Town.
Roughly 10 years ago, I was at a meeting at St. John’s. As often happens with church meetings, there was food left over. And as is too often the case, cleaning up meant throwing away those pesky leftovers. Someone wisely asked, however, if anyone wanted the extra trays. Without knowing why, I said I’d take them. On the spur of the moment I decided to take the trays “someplace in Skid Row” with no specific destination in mind. I loaded ‘em up and drove the few miles to The Row. I parked on a block (I later learned it was Winston Street) that was filled with cardboard dwellings, rectangular edifices that were containers for large refrigerators or water heaters in their former lives. After parking I and went to the back of the weather beaten Ram Charger. No one paid any attention. When I (ill advisedly) announced that I had food to give away the sidewalk suddenly came alive. There was a quick and unorganized rush to the raised door. Then came a unexpectedly and booming voice that said, “You guys know better than that! You know that Mama eats first!” (Wow! Was that the voice of God barking a reminder in this all but forgotten part of town?) The “crowd” sheepishly moved back to its previously unseen spots and I saw a diminutive Black woman sitting on what was perhaps a milk crate. She said nothing but, accompanied by an escort (who was probably the source of the verbal boom) came to the back of the truck and helped herself to the food. It was not until she was though and safely perched on her plastic seat that the other – now just as hungry but more orderly than before, came and took what was left. I came away with the positive thought that although Skid Row may not been the shining example of “manners,” there was certainly a well understood code for what goes and what doesn’t.
Then the tape rolls ahead to my academic work at Antioch which began in 1992. To date I have put together a series of workshops and courses that require going to Skid Row to bring home to students the reality of living on the streets. There was the Youth in Los Angeles workshop, for example, that included a visit to the Union Rescue Mission, one of a number of missions downtown which “specializes” in programs for families. It was a real eye-opener to find families “on the street” right outside an organization in business to get them inside!
Of course, all of this city’s homeless folks are not confined to the downtown area. A course I designed titled, The City: Myth, Madness and Maturity required students to interview a homeless person preferably in their own neighborhood and then write a 5 page paper on the experience. It was (and is) important that the plight of the homeless be realized in a more personal way. Reading about what it is like to have the sky as one’s “shelter” and eye balling someone who is in such a predicament is quite different. Articles and studies on homelessness abound. As important as that kind of data might be, it can serve as an unintentional barrier or balm for human disconnect. I have purposely tried to guard against suggesting to students that they will study homelessness and, have instead, fostered the notion of learning, the difference being what happens when we talk and listen to another human being. Without going into all the particulars here I should mention the perspective I share about giving money to homeless people. I simply suggest that they do what they feel comfortable doing. If there is an unavoidable judgment made that “They will only use it for drugs,” then the student should not feel obligated to fork over some loose or not so loose change. But since that is not always the case, parting with a few coins or dollars does no harm whatsoever. Some students have, in fact, developed interesting personal relationships with homeless people…an unexpected but invaluable outcome that I will revisit in the future when I will write about a true oasis in Skid Row Los Angeles: The Downtown Women’s Center.
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January 08, 2007
Bow Tie Four
I was a poet
before I was
when I was a
dreamer of real
worlds
now I remember
from breath to heartbeat
all I seen and been
and what it felt
like what it
meant
extract from “Past Present”by Amiri Baraka
~
It is rightly said that the most challenging part of a major writing project is getting started. Perhaps the same truism holds for a minor one as well. At this early juncture I won’t presume which label best fits The Bow Tie. But I will say that I have given the real beginning considerable thought. With an uncharacteristic degree of personal relief, I settled on distancing myself from any potential reader. That, quite obviously, is a strange contradiction since who other than a known or unknown reader will take the time to look at these writings in the first place? Writing is neither be created in a vacuum nor viewed in any semblance of same. There must be a writer-reader connection for the process to work. Otherwise, why bother? The alternative is to quietly engage in nonjudgmental literary navel-gazing?
So I have the task to make my caveat as clear as I possibly can: My intent is certainly not to disregard the reader altogether. In fact, I already know that my personal or indirect or casual or some other non-descript relationships with any number of people [known and unknown as the saying goes] constitute the frame of reference for a significant part of what I intend to explore and share. There, that’s been established. What I do feel compelled to note, however, is that I will try with uncharacteristic vigor to not be unduly swayed by their real or imagined approval or disapproval. Allow me to linger on this very point for a bit.
Recently, I had a conversation with a talented woman who has completed and is planning a series of film projects. During the course of a our conversation we discussed her earlier habit of being almost immobilized by the need to seek the approval of others. I suggested something I had given no thought to whatsoever until that time. After she said she now works on ways in which she does not journey into the murky territory of seeking the approval of others, I suggested this: Because we are human, we want to be appreciated. To seek approval of another person should not lead us down the slippery slope of being controlled by that same approval. Yes, of course there are exceptions of a commercial or business and personal nature. There are specific instances in which approval is what we consciously seek and approval is what we definitely need. But we were talking more generally; reflecting on how, as adults, we find ourselves (automatically) following the same patterns we engaged in as approval-hungry children.
I suggested that if we fail to have what we extend to others come back unappreciated, we remain in tack. Why? Because (in the context of our animated conversation) appreciation carries with it an aesthetic dimension, whereas approval is personal and potentially damaging or at least restrictive. As an artist, she could relate to this; and as an incessant gabber, I gave myself an unexpected High Five!
So my caveat here is to put some unaccustomed distance between myself and whomever. To “move” from ordinary close territory to another place from which I can say/write what I want to say/write without the worry of the withholding of the power of other-controlled green lights of smiles, accolades and approval. To do what I have to do, I’m gonna move………
I’m Gonna Move Way On the Outskirts of Town
I'm gonna move way out on the outskirts of town
I'm gonna move way out on the outskirts of town
I don't want nobody, ooh always hangin' around
I'm gonna tell you baby, we gonna move away from here
I don't want no ice man, I'm goin' get me a frigidaire
When we move way out on the outskirts of town
I don't want nobody, ooh always hangin' around
I'm goin' bring my own groceries, bring them every day
That'll stop that grocery boy, and keep him away
When we move way out on the outskirts of town
I don't want nobody, ooh Lord baby always hangin' around
It may seem funny, funny as it can be
But if we have any Children,
I want 'em all named after me
We move way out on the outskirts of town
I don't want nobody, ooh always hangin' around
(William Weldon/Roy Jacobs)
In a related vein, there is another “stance” I want to set forth here. There are those times when one must declare a certain independence or emotional remoteness from others…most especially those who are (excuse the redundancy) emotionally close. Writing in and of itself is not necessarily a lonely activity. We often choose any number of complimentary distractions and joyfully peck away at the laptop or jot morsels of our obvious brilliance on the pages of a battered notebook. All the same, that which is indispensable is clarity of thinking and, hopefully, a candor about feelings. Our countless cherished human ties notwithstanding, we can be nobody’s darling…….
Be Nobody’s Darling
Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.
Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.
Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.
Alice Walker
Enough said………….the rest will have to speak for itself.
Posted by mbowen at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)