Scott

I met Scott on the max Saturday. He was homeless and travelling to I'm-not-really-sure-where. I was meeting up with friends. He made a bit of small talk in the slightly-less-than-stable way that homeless men tend to though he managed coherency.

He greeted me and made a quip about the space in the tram (which really wasn't crowded). When I smiled and responded, he began talking about how he still has his sense of humor if nothing else. His words were hurried as if he were afraid that his time in my attention had already run out and I would soon become mindful of this and turn away. A few seconds of silence passed as he squatted down in the bike zone near the wall opposite me. He complimented my eyes and my sunglasses. He liked the way they were accentuated without being exposed, like a mystery.

And then shame.

He became quick to tell me he was too old (56 years) to think of me that way, that I did not have to worry. He just meant to compliment me. I reassured him that I was not freaked out and I watched as all of him relaxed. I asked his name and he looked up at me to say, "Scott" and then ask mine. We filled the space that followed with mutually believed commentary on how Americans are too stand-off when they travel and do not know how to have time for the people around them. (I am pretty sure that we bewildered the people around us to pieces, he and I.) He thanked me for my time and told me he was tired of talking to himself, that he missed conversation. He expounded on the dichotomy of security and freedom saying that if we never take any risks we lose our freedom. And again, when we seek security over freedom, we lose both.

And I listened. Through my aviators, across the max, I listened for the whole of maybe 5 or 10 minutes. And then he did what almost every homeless man I talk to does.

Scott told me that he liked my confidence. He likes the way I carry myself boldly, comfortably but not offensively. As he was talking, I passed my stop so I went over to shake his hand. He continued complimenting and encouraging me gently but firmly, not rushed to let all of his words fall out like he was when we first met ten minutes prior. Scott said that I shouldn't worry, I have a lot more figured out than I think I do, I've just got to keep the faith.

I do not feel that I really know what it is that he and Mike and Dave and Richard see in me. And I do not know why they all tell me the same things: confidence. faith. don't worry. i'm headed in a good direction. Always. And always men around the age of 55. And almost always, homeless. It is like they know that I do not trust myself in the least on my bad days.

In some unconventional way, we need each other. People like me and people like Scott. We need to have someone hand us back our humanity from whatever dark place it has been cast and let us rest awhile in friendly conversation. We cannot waste time because we only have 4 or so max stops for our familiarity to mature. I would have gladly spent more time with him to hear about the family he alluded to and just to watch him become more human.

Some of us are more visibly and more desperately clinging to our humanity than others. Scott is one of them. Too many people will never give him a real name...just labels and titles and shadows to live in. They wont remember seeing him. They are likely to be offended if he spoke to them. He is on the streets because he is alone. For whatever reason, he has lost or severed all the ties that might have caught him. I cannot help but use people like him to measure society against because the heart of a nation can be seen in how they treat their outcasts.

We are offended by them. We do not understand them and we do not have the time to. And it breaks me. I saw so many other people that same day. A homeless woman through the window yelling and crying in the corner of a building. A beggar working the St. Patrick's crowd. A woman and her pimp. Stories writhing without pages.

I had been told that the most meaningful things you can give to a homeless person, should reason and security allow, are an identity and a little human contact. And it is funny the way can you know something that has been told to you and still be blown away by it in real and living life. He never asked for money. He just wanted to talk, to remember, and to be without being alone. And he did not take my time even, because he gave too. I am bewildered by what he said to me, but I treasure it too. And I hope to understand.

Airplanes & My Dentist

...I was definitely in the process of writing out this long post that I was not sure if I was going to post or not because it was starting to sound...gross. Not like gory or dirty. But gross in the sense that it was a list of complaints I had about life. I was itchy. I had lost my contentment and I was somewhere between giving up and into complacency ...and rebelling against all of my current confines.

Then school got out. Spring break started. I went to the dentist. And my dentist gave me a book. A children's book. Someday I will spend some introspective time on my love for stories and how I believe that children *need* quality stories, obvious myths and challenging legends, to grow up on; but today, just know that I love stories...good stories, real stories all messy and occasionally triumphant.

I am now the proud owner of Violet the Pilot. I was grinning so big that I know I looked like a fool with half my mouth numb from the Novocaine; but I couldn't care in that moment. I am, however, impressed that Dr. Bennett managed not to laugh at me. Instead, she just told me that she believed in supporting strong women with dreams and that the book was her daughter's favorite. I do not have a clue why she gave it to me. We had talked about it while she was drilling on me, but still...she didn't have to do that. And she could not have known what it would have meant to me.

All I want to do is fly...so I joke about leaving everything to go do it and most of the time, I am joking. And then there are times when I do not understand why things must fall in the order that I have agreed to and anything short of leaving to go enroll in flight school is either cowardice or a fool's hope. It is this fire that burns at me and I wonder if it is ok to want something this badly. Then it starts feeling really far away and I realize that I have thrown in my lot with God and airplanes...I do not really have anything outside of that in regards to direction. It becomes a strange matter of fear and trust and one step at a time with the immediate potential to overwhelm me.

Now, the Novocaine is gone and I am so sore...too sore to smile as large as I would like. But I am happy and I know that I am known and loved in a way that I could never deserve to be...in a way that I would not even know how to ask for. I do not know how life will work out this week or tomorrow much less those after should they come, but I hope I can be the person my dentist seems to think I am.

Rosa

She is a woman people have stopped expecting anything from, but whatever they want to take. She is a woman who has been around the block--and worn deep ruts from her passing. She is a woman who has learned brokenness on a cellular level.

Her face shows signs of abuse, internal and external, though perhaps-we hope- passed. She is small in nearly every way. Not threatening. Unassuming. Just, there.

And I do not believe I have ever met someone so overwhelmingly beautiful.

I have met her three times now as I volunteer, and this most recent time will be the last. She is leaving the program. She is recovered enough to move south to her two little girls and her family and hopefully to success. The way she talks about the future is breathtaking... the way it can only be coming from someone who has lost hope for a future and life and living... and then one day refused to accept that.

I wish I knew more of her story. There are a few telltale signs on which to build some generalizations. ...but I want to hear her tell it. Because her joy and her honesty are contagious, infectious, and so many other things. I do not know why. Or maybe I do. I think I feel hope rising and being fueled. I think my eyes are being lifted up past the pain and brokenness and curse of this world. I think weight is being given to the promise that the way things are is wrong, but it wont stay this way. Sometimes, after a good long fight, people come out stronger, better, triumphant. (I don't think she knows it yet.)

See I can be an idealist. Just not on a macro scale. Call me a micro-idealist. People. Individuals. Little steps on otherwise unimportant days.

I wanted to hug her and tell her she was strong. That she was beautiful. I wanted to invent new words so that she knew the worth and the value I wanted her to feel attached to what I wanted to say. But I'm just that quiet stranger being trained to do maintenance in the home that she is leaving. She does not know how much my prayers race my heart beat. I am so excited for her.

so many thoughts and no sifter large enough to fit them into

I want to hide myself in pictures, but only words come.

I want refuge in the expressed yet unexplained.

I want to lose myself to complexities of color and depth.

But everything has been laid bare:

too vulnerable,

too certain,

too easily ascertained;

but not the least bit understood.

So I am left saying what I try to mean

And not meaning very much.

If I could but bite and swallow and win and smile--

all at the same time,

in the space of half a breath.

...If I could just command obedience,

and cooperation from my insides

to my fingers...

then maybe you, they, I would see

what it is that I keep inside of me.

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Your body of suffering now brings pain where once I sought release. It is not supposed to be this way, I think. But here it is in my body condemned to death. And it is fitting, though unexpected. You are the only one I could accept this from. But that does not mean that I want to. Forgive me?

I want to be strong enough to give you my weakness. Perhaps, tomorrow. Or perhaps a miracle instead. If only I could be strong enough, but weakness is my marrow, my blood, my DNA, my name. No, not my name. It is in my weakness that I find those quiet moments.

In these moments I am finding out who I am. And who I am is Pain.

Your body, broken for me, has never meant so much... but it has never felt so far away. Our symbols break down and I feel the weight of the debris. Silly contradicting vanities open wide their questions and load them on my shoulders. Too strong, but not strong enough to be weak. Not weak enough to surrender them to you.

I do not think I am doing this right; but I am not yet ready to stop, only ready to be taught again.

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I can feel you leaving.

Bit by desperately-needing-to-be-untangled-bit.

I do not have the power to stop you--

Only this bit of broken will.

But you say nothing to draw attention,

(you had that a long time ago.)

You do nothing to be remembered,

(It doesn't matter. I have tallied the smallest details of expressions.)

You try your best to fade out.

(I am disappointed by your lack of originality.)

Friend, stay?

And that is all I have to offer.

But things are changing like a city in its last hour of day light.

Soon nothing will be the way it was.

tgif

Lamar, a mug of mashed potatoes, and Lloyd C. Douglas. My companions for ignoring a week that I just don't have the energy to deal with. I call it the "February hangover." Rest is coming soon I hear.

Also, I am super excited for "Eve" who has been occupying my bedroom floor for entirely too long with slow progress. She's pretty though and almost complete...and, unlike my heart piece, I look forward to putting her up on the wall.