Gratitude List 1846

(1) Though I am not in particularly good spirits this morning, there are plenty of things to remain grateful for–including the sentiment expressed in this sentence.

(2) Homeless at the Piano is being published in the Unitarian Universalists Class Conversations newsletter. Grateful and proud.

(3) Cooper, Keva & Cody are all being considered for leading roles in the 2023 production of Eden in Babylon at RTOP. Cooper is preparing a singing solo to match this track as we speak.

(4) Bicycle chain is busted again, but I’ve been getting some good runs in, and yesterday even felt pleasant muscle fatigue.

(5) I’m creating a bizarre-looking link that will house twelve piano tunes that are generally thought to be my best. I will either sell it to you or give it to you depending on where we stand. Performance tracks for Eden in Babylon are coming along too, and it’s a beautiful morning on the Palouse.

Don’t be a clown.
Kick it down.

The Leprosy of Homelessness

“The Leprosy of Homelessness” was first posted to my online diary on July 14, 2016. I believe nine “followers” had access to these words.

As you may recall, on July 17, 2016, I fell to my knees, sick with a flu and suffering outside, and screamed to the heavens that Somebody would put a stop to all this homelessness. On July 27, 2016, I stepped off the bus in the city where I was born, a city where I’d not been for 63 years. On September 1, 2016, I signed a one-year-lease on my first apartment here.

I unearthed “The Leprosy of Homelessness” two days ago, while searching for the address of a guy named Barry who had me stay with him throughout December of 2010. I wanted to find it so I can pay off a $40 debt that’s been nagging at me.

I’m incredibly sick with this awful flu, more so than even at the start. I’m outside in the elements. I’m sick with a flu. Don’t people get it? They ask me things like: “If you’re homeless, how come you have a laptop?” As though a homeless person couldn’t own a laptop.

They ask me where I’m sending these messages from if I’m homeless? I tell them I’m sitting outside the Burlingame Public Library shivering with my laptop plugged into their outdoor power outlet. But they don’t believe me.

People always act like I’m trying to pull of some kind of scam — just because I’m homeless, or else the scam is that I am homeless — if like say, they know me from the Internet, and they think I’m “too intelligent to be homeless.” They further suspect me of being a liar, a scammer, a hustler, a criminal, and a crook. But why? Can people not believe that my situation is as critical as it is??

I petitioned everyone on my Facebook friends list to let me in for a few days, so I can recover. But of course nobody will let me in. I got kicked of the homeless shelter where I caught it, because they figured I would spread it. The hospital wouldn’t let me in. They said if they let me in, they’d have to let “all of us” in. I got kicked off the night bus because it was obvious I was sick–and I get it. I might contaminate somebody. But I’m only trying to stay alive — why am I getting all this suspicion and distrust? Or worse yet, indifference?

It reminds me of that scene in New York where something like fifty-one people watched a guy get stabbed to death and nobody wanted to get involved. It was a big news story when I was a kid. Or even in Berkeley a couple years ago, where that guy beat this guy to death with a tire iron for asking him for a cigarette. People stood by and watched, and I remember somebody shouted: “Somebody with a gun, shoot that guy!” But whoever might have had a gun (who knows?) nobody brought it out, nobody shot the guy. Everybody just watched as he beat the guy to death before the police came.

You guys have been following me here. You’re all in my corner. We’re all cool. But say if I were to post it on my Facebook (which I just might), people are probably only going to say: “Aw, come on, Andy! Get a grip!” But that’s because they don’t know. They can’t imagine. I put all these words together, in an effort to get people to picture what it’s like down here, but usually the only response is: “I can’t imagine what it must be like.”

I become infuriated. I want to say: “Did you even read a single word I wrote? Are my writing skills and my communication skills so God-awfully bad that after I go out of my way to describe what it’s like, all you can say is “I can’t imagine what it must be like?” It’s damned insulting! If someone’s not interested in what it’s like down here, why don’t they just say so? Or else, don’t follow me, for God’s sake.

When a number of my acquaintances died on the streets of Berkeley a while back, I would write to my brother and my remaining friends in the Mainstream trying to demonstrate how somebody would not have died had they been inside, or had they even had a dollar or two to ride all night on one of those buses. First off, people have a hard time figuring out why we have trouble coming up with a dollar or two, or why a couple bucks is going to make such a huge difference in a homeless person’s life. But I watched Darlene die overnight. She didn’t need to die! Two bucks would have saved Darlene’s life.

I told my friends about it. They offered condolences, and their condolences were accepted. But this was not about receiving condolences. I hardly knew her. I hardly knew Tom, or Jimmy, or any of them. I only know that they were outside trying to deal with medical conditions that are best dealt with inside, and that they died. I was trying to illustrate how in one guy’s case, three bucks would have spared his life. But people don’t want to hear that. They only want to shrug it off with a superficial condolence: “I’m sorry to hear of the loss of your friend.” Unless the person was of crucial closeness to them, they don’t really care how they died. And me? I care – because I’m one of them. I care – because I’m trying to get a point across.

We are a nation that has become plagued with the Leprosy of Homelessness. And it is entirely unnecessary! Services, Shelters – they will not solve the problem. They do not address the core heart of the issue. They only keep a person bound in the shame and stigma of a conspicuously visible condition that nobody wants to look at. Why? Is it because they know inwardly how soon it could happen to them? They, after all, are human too – like us. Or are we human? Do we need to be dehumanized in order for our separation from the rest of humanity to be complete? If that’s what it is going to take to ease the conscience of the Mainstream, I guarantee you, that’s what’s going to happen.

It happened in Nazi Germany. Don’t think it can’t happen here.

So I used one of the H-words and both of the S-words. “Homeless, Shelter & Services” have come out of my mouth, but not “Housing.” I shoot myself in the foot every time I use these “buzz words.” A “real human being” doesn’t seek “shelter” — he seeks a “place to live” for God’s sake! But what does it matter now? In the light of possible death, what does my recently accelerated search for dignified indoor dwelling mean now? Not much. God will provide me the dignified internal dwelling space that I need. And outside will be dogs, and adulterers, and idolaters, and every person who loves the lie more than the the truth – because their deeds are evil. — (And that’s Revelation 22:15 in case you suddenly thought I was a great poet.) Do you want to be that kind of person? Do you want to be outside the gates of the City of God?

Probably not, if you really were to stop to think about it. I know I wouldn’t want to be excluded among everybody who loved and practiced falsehood. That’s why I’m so adamant about getting a truth across, a truth that in this society, as concerned as we are with liberty and justice for all, most of us have not really paused to consider. I know I didn’t, before I was thrust into first-time homelessness back in 2004.

So consider these words of truth. These are not the rantings of a political radical with an aggressive agenda. They are the best words I can think of to describe a reality that affects me and my homeless brothers and sisters every single day of our lives. How many times has it been been pouring rain in a thunderstorm, and a single dollar got me into McDonald’s for a senior cup of coffee, to get out of the rain? Lots of times. How do I get that dollar? Well, some people called “hustlers” don’t have too hard a time running up to every Tom, Dick, and Harry saying “Spare some change? Spare a dollar? Spare a dollar? Spare some change!” But can you imagine me doing something like that? I sure hope you can’t. I can’t. And I’ve been homeless for the better part of twelve years.

Homeless – for the better part of twelve years. How many times have I had the flu in those twelve years?Exactly twice. Like I said, God bless her, the first time my friend D. was able to take seven hundred bucks off of her credit card – I didn’t even ask for it, God bless her – and that got me a hotel room for a couple weeks. When I got my check at the top of the next month, I sent her the seven hundred dollars back. That was a totally positive, one-time huge favor that she did for somebody she cared about. She can’t do it right now. Why?

For one thing, she has to take care of her mom and her brother, and have them in her house, crowded though it might have been, because they were in some kind of straits, and I don’t want to go into the personal financial details of a friend of mine, but suffice it to say she helped them out at a time when they needed to be let indoors. And this, she did while six months pregnant with her first child.

I also know for a fact that George would let me in if he didn’t have his nephew and his sister over their right now, and his wife hadn’t have broken her leg, because that’s just the type of guy he is. Hell, D would probably buy me a house if she had the money. One time when I needed to eat, George and his wife went out of their way to meet me at a Burger King near a motel I had put money down on, and make sure I ate, and make sure I had some cash. I told D about this, and she immediately quoted the Proverb: “There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

That’s for sure. I don’t want to talk about my brother– and you don’t want to ask about him. I love my brother and he loves me — and let’s leave it at that. We just don’t see things the same way. He’s helped me when he could help, and I have appreciated it. But that help stops at the border marked by his front door. Now let me reiterate: I have been homeless throughout most of the last twelve years. In that period of time, exactly five people have let me so much as walk through their front doors, at a time while I was homeless. George was one of them. This guy Barry was another. And a stranger wants had me over for spaghetti and a shower. And Howard let me house-sit. And then there was Art.

And Barry – I don’t even know this man very well. I remember he and his wife were extremely cordial and accommodating. I got a lot of music written. There was some issue about my “panic attacks” but it wasn’t so bad, if I recall. Later, however, Carol had to take care of her granddaughter – so my staying over there wasn’t an option. But when it was an option, what a wonderful period it was in my life! I got so much music written. Why? Because somebody let me in, at a time when I was not able to get myself “in” – by myself. It’s that simple.

But year after year goes by, day after day. The times I’ve even been let inside somebody’s car now amount to exactly twice. The people who have let me in their cars are Paul and Cary. It might have been Paul’s girlfriend’s car, but the point is WOW! Somebody actually trusted a homeless person to sit in the back seat of their car!! I felt LOVED. Loved! You can’t imagine what it feels like to step inside somebody’s house, and feel the sense of home – the sense of protection, the sense of warmth – the sense of LOVE!!

The feeling of stepping into a MacDonald’s in the rain, of getting that single dollar – believe me, I might not feel loved by the person who let me have a dollar, but I feel loved by God when that kind of thing happens. He will not chasten me forever. He will, in the end, be merciful. And God will always, always let me in. All I need do, is knock.

Knock – and He will open. Ask – and He will answer. Seek – and He will be found. And I will seek Him! And I will find Him — in the day when I seek Him with all of my heart.

I recently reconnected with my old friend Sara, a Christian musician. I was chatting with her last night, pondering if I should remove my previous post on the matter, wondering if it was too strident, if I ought to have been more mellow, if I ought to have been less dramatic, perhaps, and most importantly, if I risked laying a guilt trip on everybody.

She instantly said: “Leave it.”

I asked her: “Why?”

She said: “You spoke from your heart. You’ve told them – the hospital does not have beds reserved for illnesses that are readily dealt with in people’s homes. You don’t have a home. Your only recourse is for somebody to let you in – or else for you to get a motel room, which costs money you don’t have. So why aren’t they letting you in? Leave it! They should feel guilty.”

Be that as it may. If my brother were to call me up, and he had lost everything, and he was out on the streets, and he asked me to please let him stay over for a few days, there would be no guilt left for me, but only the joy of being able to say: “Steve, you’re my brother, I’ll get the coffee on, you get over here right now!“

Why someone would prefer guilt to that simple surrender of love that lets their own family back in their house, is beyond me. But maybe someone has something to hide. That’s the condemnation, right? The guilt Jesus talks about in the third chapter of the Gospel of John. “And this is the condemnation: the people loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil.”

Evil? Am I the one who called you evil? If you’re evil, then I am evil as well. Compared to GOD, we’re ALL evil! So you don’t want me to see the messy kitchen. So maybe you watch porn and you don’t want anyone to know about it. Am I going to go about snitching you out in light of you having done something so huge as to have been the sixth person in twelve years to let me inside your front door??

Or is it me? Do I smell? That Mexican gal on the train sure didn’t seem to mind. Am I a space case? Will I rant and rave and talk your ear off? You can stick a rubber ball in my mouth for all I care. Will I space something out? Leave a towel on the bathroom floor? Leave the broiler oven on all night? Probably – but really – is the just punishment for being the Absent-Minded Professor — HOMELESSNESS???

Do I have anything to hide? I daresay I do not! I knock – and He is opening. I ask – and He is answering. I seek – and He is found. For I have sought Him, and I have found Him, in the day when I will have sought Him with my whole heart.

That day – is today.

Let me in. If you don’t, He will.

I have nothing to lose.

Andy Pope
Burlingame, CA
July 14, 2015

Please donate to Eden in Babylon.

Classism, Stigma and Long Distance Running

This is going to sound horribly crass, but I keep thinking that only rich people are supposed to be about long distance running. I keep thinking that we poor people are supposed to be wasting all our money on drugs, cigarettes and alcohol in order to cope with all the miseries of poverty.

But as I analyze that sentiment, I begin to wonder about it. Let’s cite three specific wonderments, for the record.

(1) Why on earth would I be relating something so simple as health and fitness to financial status?

Well, I think it’s safe to say that criminalization of the poor is a real phenomenon. Impoverished people in our society are not only criminalized by those who are well-off. We are criminalized by some of the very poor people we find in our midst.

Often, when I mention to someone in my financial bracket that I am going on a “run,” the word “run” is interpreted differently than I intended.

“A food run?” one might ask, supposing I’m about to go to the Food Bank or grocery store.

“A drug binge?” one might ask, since a “run” is colloquial for a bender.

When I tell them what form of running I mean, I have sometimes heard this reply: “You’re not going to see me running anywhere, unless I’m running from the law.”

Why is it that when a poor person is seen running, it is associated with running from the law?

For one thing, I don’t exactly have fine Nike shoes and Gore-Tex running suits. I run in my normal duds, wearing old beat up shoes with holes in the soles. I’m lucky if I even own a single pair of shorts for that matter. The ones I run in now have tears in the sides. But hey – how much of a priority is it to get good running clothes when one goes broke midway through every month? At the risk of further crassness, let’s get real.

If a person is a bit better off, they can afford expensive running gear, and expensive race registrations, for that matter. Not so with the poor folks. So we have the association of visible poverty with criminality. This cannot be overlooked — but let’s move on to the second question.

(2) Who dictates what one is “supposed” to be doing in the first place?

While this is a very important question, I don’t think it warrants much extra analysis. Once a person is a grown adult, no longer under parental guidance, no one dictates what that person is “supposed” to be doing.

No one but God, that is — and even in the case of God’s “dictates,” there is plenty of grace and room for personal preference. The idea that poor people are “supposed” to be spending all their money on cigarettes and alcohol is only a social stigma. That many poor people do smoke is quite true, and quite sad. Cigarettes cost a lot of money, and poor people do not have that money. But cigarettes are also very highly addictive, and that addiction is hard to break — for rich and poor alike.

(3) Is poverty really all that “miserable?”

Personally, I don’t associate poverty with misery. I associate poverty with inconvenience. But inconvenience and misery are two different things.

Say I have a number of errands to do, as I did yesterday. Say my bicycle is in the shop, as it was yesterday. The errands take a great deal of time. At one point, a drug store that I was depending on turned out to have gone out of business. I then balked at making it all the way over to the next nearest drug store, which was miles away. All of this stuff is inconvenient.

But was I miserable once I had finished my errands? Not at all! To the contrary, I felt great satisfaction in getting them all accomplished, even though the process was time-consuming. In fact, if I had a car, I would be paying for upkeep and maintenance, if not car payments. The bicycle consumes more time than a car, but it’s a wonderful way of getting around — given good weather conditions — and one gets one’s daily exercise in the process. It also points to the beauty of the “middle place” – that beautiful place where one finds a healthy balance between extremes.

The Bible makes it clear that many blessings are afforded to poor people. And no one relates God’s blessings to misery. In fact, the words “happy” and “blessed” are interchangeable in Old Testament languages. The words “Blessed are the poor” appear verbatim in the Gospel According to Luke, and slightly qualified in the Gospel According to Matthew. The words “blessed are the rich,” on the other hand, are nowhere to be found.

Now the Word does say: “The rich and the poor have this in common: The LORD is Maker of them all.” (Ecclesiastes 22:2.) This is one of many fine Scriptures, along with Colossians 3:11 and Galatians 3:28, that point to egalitarianism. (Even the Scriptures suggesting that women are to be submissive to their husbands are usually followed by Scriptures suggesting that husbands ought to be submissive to their wives — but for some reason we don’t like to look at those parts.)

Outside of Scriptural documentation, common sense suggests that we are all equal in the eyes of God, and that we should be equal in the eyes of each other. In my opinion, the only people who need to be robbed of certain rights to liberty are hardened criminals who should remain behind bars, as they would otherwise remain threats to society. But whether one is rich or poor — or anywhere in between — does not alter their essential humanity. We have a lot more in common with people in other social classes than we think. We are all human.

The Bible does however go a bit harder on the wealthy. There are scores of warnings delivered in the Word to those of high stature. James 5:1 and Mark 10:5 come to mind immediately — but there are many others as well. On the other hand, very few warnings are delivered to the poor. In fact, the Prayer of Agur is just about as close as they come:

Two things I ask of You—
do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me.
Give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the bread that is my portion.
Otherwise, I may have too much
and deny You, saying, ‘Who is the LORD?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
profaning the name of my God.
— Proverbs 30:7-9

This also points to the beauty of the middle class: the middle class that is gradually disappearing from our social structure. We have recently seen billionaires in the Cabinet. Decent people — I repeat, decent people — are strewn about the streets of Seattle and San Francisco, drowning in a culture that no human being should be forced to endure.

But in the middle place there is balance. One will neither think of God as unnecessary, nor curse God for apparent failure to provide.

If this new job works out — which so far, I am sad to say, it does not appear to be — I may be able to reach that middle place. If not, the words of St. Paul still ring true:

“For we brought nothing into the world, neither are we able to carry out anything. But having sustenance and coverings, with these we will be content.” — 1 Timothy 6:8

There is a certain measure of comfort in that directive. That comfort may be felt by anyone who is human, and who believes. But to equate a quest for greater health and fitness with having the money to afford high quality health food and fancy running gear is to miss the mark.

Digest the Word. Soak it in. Find in the Word the Beauty and Truth thereof. “It will bring healing to your body, and refreshment to your bones.” — Proverbs 3:8

Please donate to Eden in Babylon.

Authenticity and Community

To start off this Thursday’s post, I’m going to spin off of something I wrote last week:

“What is being brought to light in the podcasts is how, when we were homeless, we were not in the position to be able to distinguish, among all the authority figures and “pseudo-authorities” in our midst, who were the ones who represented benign agencies whose role it was to assist us, and who were the ones who represented more-or-less adversarial institutions designed to investigate and incriminate us. All these “higher ups” were relegated into the box of our “observers from inside” – and thus it was difficult to distinguish them, one from another.

“In a corresponding way, it was difficult for those who lived indoors to discern from among those who were outside who was a legitimate candidate for genuine assistance, and who was of a criminal bent. Those in the latter camp often feigned a need for assistance in order to gain benefits. They were also often very good at it. Whatever the case, I can assure you that I didn’t look much different than any other person on the streets — at least not at first glance.”

Having become homeless, I was dealing with this dynamic from the start. Add to this the conditions under which the homelessness began; that is, that I had been subjected to a costly medical misdiagnosis that at first I embraced naively, only later to find myself headed for the streets. The further I fell, the more it appeared that people in the medical profession were assuming authority over me. This in fact was indicative of a greater phenomenon: The further one descended down the socio-economic scale, the more people began to exert power and authority over that person. The lower I got, the higher became the number of “pseudo-authorities.” As more and more people seemed to grab power over me, I literally felt myself losing my last shreds of personal power–losing my value to society–as I became homeless.

The more people assumed authority over me, the more I rebelled against them. After all, they did not know me personally and made no effort to engage me meaningfully. What authority qualified them to boss me around? Why should this particular batch of emerging new people, eminently random in my span of life experience, be the ones to whom I hold myself accountable? In the case of the medical professionals in particular, I not only ceased to hold myself accountable to them, but I went so far as to address them from an adversarial stance, sometimes even a hostile one. For it was they who had, in my view, initiated my demise.

Abuse of Authority

The absolute audacity! The very sort of people whom I thought should be held accountable for my downfall were now in a position of supposed authority over me! They lived indoors; they had jobs with responsibilities and tenure; they wore badges. Mental health professionals did not differ much from security guards in their approach toward us, when we were homeless. Nor did we ourselves hold any particularly greater degree of respect for them than we did for anyone else who wore a badge.

While my previous relationship with my psychiatrist had ordinarily been pleasant as well as at least potentially helpful, my new position with respect to mental health professionals was clearly one of assumed subordination. Earlier, when I lived indoors and paid into my Kaiser health-insurance, I was happy to discuss life with my psychiatrist and more than willing to take her suggestions, since I felt she and I were on an even playing field. But now, mental health officials often showed up in cahoots with police officers and fire department personnel, in a scenario where the badges even of emergency medical technicians seemed no less intimidating than those of the chief executive officers of major corporate hospitals. The idea that any of these detached pseudo-authorities should even care to get to know me personally, let alone that I should be expected to blindly obey their uninformed commands, was absurd. There was no reasonable choice other than to rebel.

It was with such biases weighing upon me that I found myself eager to give musical and dramatic form to my emerging worldview. For one thing, the season of life was quite exciting. I was meeting other men and women who had fallen into the same predicament, and their views coincided closely with my own. In fact, our perceptions began to build and feed upon each other. Before long, I found myself overtaken by an alternate view of reality. It was as though I had become a member of an alternative society, formed by the interactions that entailed among myself and others, as we all set out to interpret what had befallen us in a way that made mutual sense.

It was in such an atmosphere that I naturally conceived of the musical that was to become Eden in Babylon. I felt an eagerness to use my particular skills to hone a medium through which a picture of youth homelessness in urban America could be presented. Naturally, the Kids in the story would hang together and be protective of one another, in an environment where they were constantly having orders barked at them by desensitized pseudo-officials. In such a scenario, an idealistic protagonist who finds himself subjected to brutal torture on the part of the “powers that be” in a psychiatric facility seemed to fit right in.

A New Life

Fast forward about ten years, and we find the playwright in a quiet college town in North Idaho, having not only lived inside for almost five years now, but actually having become acclimated to an accepting community of artists and academicians. In the process, I cannot help but have gradually embraced some of the details of functioning in a healthy indoor community that, when I was outside, I would have shunned as “mainstream.” The same system of tacitly acknowledged social conventions that I disdained when I was outside now appears at worst to be a necessary evil, and at best a convenience designed to make life easier on myself and on the others with whom I come into contact.

In such a markedly different culture, the thought of finding a compatible doctor and therapist, and of exploring medications that might assist in adapting to the established social norms, does not seem very far-fetched at all. There is at least a tangible ideal of connecting meaningfully with mental health professionals who may assist me along my path. Before, it was like, “get him in, give him some meds, get him out of here.” I’d be ejected from the system turnstile just in time to have all my new meds stolen out of my backpack in a food line.

But it is not only my position with respect to medical professionals that has changed. If something unruly is taking place in the neighborhood, I am confident that I can call the local cops, give them my name, receive their assistance, and be regarded as a responsible citizen in the process. This would not have been the case when I was homeless. The menacing nature of all the “badges” has diminished since I’ve been back inside. There appear to be fewer of them now, and the ones that there are no longer hover so high above me.

Also significantly diminished is the sense of inexorable evil wrapped up in this entity we called the Mainstream. No longer do I feel that there is this giant social ogre — the Mainstream — ready to expel me from all the blessings of indoor living if I don’t abide precisely by all its confusing restrictions and demands. Because of this, I feel that the cry that was so often expressed by my homeless brothers and sisters has been heard in the affirmative. “How can we get back inside without getting caught up again in the Mainstream?” That was the perennial question.

Authenticity and Community

The answer for me has been twofold. I had to first agree with myself to be genuine and authentic in my approach toward others and toward life. I had to be myself decidedly, and to believe in myself — otherwise I would construct from all my guise and façade the very Mainstream that I was trying to avoid. Life would again become a game in which I had already proven myself a very poor player, and I would risk being cast outside once again.

Secondly, I had to agree to give of myself to a community that I would serve and in which I would play a part. Here in Moscow, I have found a supportive church group, I have volunteered at a recovery center where I have found an emotional support group, I have found artists and musicians committed to my work, and I participate in theology groups with professors from both of the nearby Universities. This accountability – or connectivity – keeps me from the isolation that would occur if I were still setting myself as an entity separate from and almost opposed to the world — the natural iconoclasm that sets in when one becomes homeless.

Thus is found the construction of an authentic life within an authentic community. This differs hugely from what I experienced for years before ever becoming homeless. I remember on the Peninsula wondering if I had any friends among the many associates whom I classified as consisting of the “three C’s” — clients, colleagues, and co-workers. Many of my associations were contractual, and more money was indeed made. But few of my associations were truly meaningful. In a sense, this experience of a threatening Mainstream that sought to devour my true identity was itself only a social construct, because it was composed of the consequences of my own hypocrisy. All its many conventions and protocols were but a reflection of my own personal falsity.

That ugly scepter need not return to rear its head, for it has been dissolved in the greater reality of authenticity and community. And, as Kelsey Chapman pointed out in one of the podcasts, Eden in Babylon has evolved accordingly, in a way that parallels my own personal transformation. According to Kelsey, earlier drafts evidenced a protagonist who himself stood separate from the culture with which he was concerned, and who felt a false sense of empowerment that he could fix the situation from a detached, single-handed position. It’s possible I was a bit like that myself. In any case, the new protagonist – the new Winston – is a person who, like his creator, now merges in an even way with his community.

So the picture of the tortured Artist who ten years ago sat beneath a Starbucks awning in the dead of night while homeless, conceiving a scene in which his main character was subjected to torture in a psych ward, is no longer the prevailing picture. The Artist is no longer tortured by same.

The workshop was more than a mere musical workshop, for it awakened the desire deeply driven into all of our Actors to display how each of their characters represented a greater principle at work in today’s society. In that more holistic view, Eden in Babylon ceases to be a statement about the mental health industry or even about homelessness, for that matter. It becomes a statement about classism — and how it fosters the abuse of authority and power — as seen through the eyes of those who lack power the most.

Please donate to Eden in Babylon.

In the Greater Picture

It was a few weeks ago when I told Ashley Peterson of Mental Health at Home that I’d have this blog post ready soon, and just yesterday that I got it done. It still only says about one-third of what I’ve felt is needed. But that’s a good thing. There will probably be a couple sequels.

Much as I hesitate to draw from immediate personal experience in order to support any greater social theories of mine, I can’t help but have noticed how the events surrounding my difficulty in getting my thyroid medication point to a larger phenomenon. In this case, I’m going to forego my usual hesitations, on the basis of reasonable suspicion that my hesitation could be lifelong if I don’t speak up at some point.

Besides, the “larger phenomenon” to which I allude may have a lot more to do with my personal development than with anything universal. So if I focus on how I personally have been affected by certain perceptions and expectations of the medical industry, I can only speak my truth at this time. How my personal truth may reflect a greater reality is a matter for one’s searching. I can’t claim to know – only to search.

The Story

When I received my retirement income, I noticed a very nice package combining two forms of insurance: MediCare and MediCaid. At the time, I was also somewhat disappointed with the treatment from the local low income clinic (where the doctor I had was only a P.A. – a Physician Assistant – not a full-fledged M.D.) It occurred to me a while later that the low income clinic was geared toward those who may not have any insurance at all, and that maybe now that I was more fully insured, I ought to find a small family practice center, and hopefully a more knowledgeable doctor.

While I believe I did find an extremely knowledgeable, experienced doctor, I have noticed over the past few months that the people at the small family practice center seem more stressed in general. Waits are much longer, which one might think would be the other way around. While they still smile and try to comport themselves professionally, one does not get the feeling that they enjoy what they are doing.

Often I waited a very long time, and sometimes the doctor himself seemed hurried when he did see me. But when it seemed to take a lot longer than it should have been taking for me to receive my levothyroxine, I returned to the low income clinic to see if I could get a quick scrip from the previous doctor.

As I entered the clinic, I was immediately greeted with the warmth of familial recognition. They shouted out: “Hey Andy! How’s it going?” There was something distinctly genuine and caring in their vibration. They weren’t just smiling because that’s the professional thing to do.

I quickly got a hold of the doctor there, who wrote me a prescription after a single meeting. Then, ironically, when I went to pick up the prescription, it was blocked because the doctor at the family practice center had finally filled the prescription two days beforehand. I not only had received no notice from either the pharmacy or the doctor’s office, but how was I supposed to believe that the prescription would even be filled at all, if this had been going on for over two weeks?

While the wait at the low income clinic’s pharmacy would have been less than five seconds, the wait at the Walgreens where I had been getting meds from the family practice center was well over an hour. Also consonant with this theme is that no one at the family practice center other than my doctor himself ever learned my name, even though I’d been going there for months. The people at the low income clinic remembered me even though I haven’t been going there at all, and in fact went there as infrequently as possible, when I did go there.

Throwback to Homelessness

What this all flashes me back to is an experience I had when I was homeless, which recently has been on my mind because of developments in the musical — things that Kelsey and I have been trying to illuminate in the weekly podcasts. The experience was that of having found a nice “wellness center” in a low income district in Oakland CA where almost all the patients were African-American and where I was treated very kindly — with true caring — despite long waits and a generally congested staff.

At the same time, if I showed up in the Emergency Room in the hospital in Berkeley, and it was known or determined that I was a homeless person, I was given distinctly less preferential treatment than the person who lived indoors. Sometimes, the medical problem I came to Emergency for was overlooked completely, as they proceeded to give me all kinds of printed information on where the shelters and services were — as if I wouldn’t have known all of that stuff already.

So naturally, my mind has drawn a parallel. I’m not homeless now, but I am low income. My insurance isn’t exactly Blue Shield – it’s the kind people have who are elderly or disabled. Family practice? I wondered if I even belonged there. My mind began to imagine what they might be saying about me:

“We’re a respectable family practice!! This guy doesn’t have a family, he’s just a transient, there’s substance abuse on his medical chart, he’s probably just passing through town . . .”

Of course, they probably weren’t thinking that. The point is that my experiences would be such that I would even think that they would be thinking it!

A Theory in the Making

It seems that there are institutions populated by people who are naturally compassionate and even empathetic towards those who are down and out. There are also institutions where such people are given lower priority. This present situation may or may not exemplify this phenomenon, because it could easily be a function of the two individual organizations I have described. That specific family practice center may be particularly understaffed or otherwise swamped due to the pandemic, and this particular low income clinic may happen to be expanding, and gaining more personnel, and apparently State funds of some kind.

Still, the thing that intrigues me is that, whether or not the recent experience exemplifies a larger phenomenon, it was brought to mind in my interactions with the people involved. There could have been a kind of confirmation bias going on. But if so, what exactly is the theory I am trying to confirm?

Only bits and pieces of this “theory” are in place. That’s why I haven’t been writing. But I am beginning to believe that my intellect alone is insufficient to piece the entire theory together. And that’s why (if this makes sense) I finally am writing.

What is being brought to light in the podcasts is how, when we were homeless, we were not in the position to be able to distinguish, among all the authority figures and “pseudo-authorities” in our midst, who were the ones who represented benign agencies whose role it was to assist us, and who were the ones who represented more-or-less adversarial institutions designed to investigate and incriminate us. All these “higher ups” were relegated into the box of our “observers from inside” – and thus it was difficult to distinguish them, one from another.

In a corresponding way, it was difficult for those who lived indoors to discern from among those who were outside who was a legitimate candidate for genuine assistance, and who was of a criminal bent. Those in the latter camp often feigned a need for assistance in order to gain benefits. They were also often very good at it. Whatever the case, I can assure you that I didn’t look much different than any other person on the streets — at least not at first glance.

Unfortunately, that first glance often seemed to be the only glance I got. Even if the glance became a stare, or a series of stares, I felt like I was being observed with an ulterior motive. I felt as though people were watching me, just waiting for me to somehow screw up and incriminate myself. Years of living with that feeling seem to have led to years of trying to find a feeling to replace it.

So I still resort to ways of dealing with feelings that don’t differ widely from how we approached the matter when we were homeless. How does one, after all, deal with the inner feeling of being dismissed, overlooked, disregarded? On the other side of the coin, how does one deal with the feeling of being embraced, respected, and accepted — especially if one is not accustomed to it?

When we were homeless, we lived with eyes in the backs of our heads. We couldn’t drop our guard long enough to process difficult personal feelings. So instead, we looked for the larger phenomena that they might represent — and we analyzed, and drew conclusions about society. We conducted such conversations vocally, publicly — encouraging others nearby to join in. We were a lot more powerful that way, and much less vulnerable, or at risk.

In a way, this doesn’t seem like all that bad a thing to have been doing — in the greater picture.

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Talking Shop Part Six

Andy Pope · Talking Shop Part Six

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Talking Shop, Part Three

Here’s the sequel to Talking Shop, Part Two, in which the character known as Winston Greene is further explored. This time we talk about how the misconception that a person of Winston’s considerable privilege ought to be a rescuer of those not so endowed is no longer applicable to the kind of person that Winston has become. 14 minutes w/intro & well worth a listen imo. Some of it may be a bit esoteric — but you can always buzz me with any questions.

Andy Pope · Talking Shop Part Three

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Talking Shop, Part One

This Wednesday’s podcast is an excerpt from a long conversation involving myself, Kelsey Chapman our Artistic Director, and Cooper Knutson our male lead in the ongoing workshop of my new musical Eden in Babylon. If you’re interested in my personal story involving wealth, poverty, and homelessness, you probably don’t want to miss this one. Toward the end, it fades after revealing the connection between my own story and that of the main character in the musical drama, whose name is Winston Greene.

Andy Pope · Talking Shop Part One

The song referenced by Cooper, called “Hunted,” involves Winston’s arrest in the second Act, which precedes his attempted assassination. An instrumental version of it may be found here.

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The Challenge They Overlooked

I’m doing a five-week series on homelessness for Spokane Faith and Values. While I don’t like to work on the Sabbath, I figure it’s not too much work to paste each column in the series here on five successive Saturdays. The first column was published last Wednesday on this page, and a verbatim transcript of it follows below.

I recently came out and identified myself as a person who lived largely outdoors throughout a 12-year period of time in the San Francisco Bay Area. Being as I was fortunate enough to escape the situation where a one-bedroom apartment rents for up to $3,000, and alight upon beautiful Moscow, Idaho where my current one-bedroom apartment rents for $481, I consider myself to be in the ideal position to express what homelessness is actually like. That is, from the perspective of those of us who have lived it.

Being an introverted artist-type, I was naturally overjoyed to find myself in the year 2016 to be a person who had now attained to quiet enjoyment of residence. One of the first items of indoor convenience that I found myself extremely thankful for was something you might not expect:

Finally, I had my own power outlet. In fact, I had several.

When I lived outdoors, it was a constant struggle to find a power outlet where I could plug in my laptop. Outdoor power outlets were scarce, and when I found one, I dared not use it very long. The thieves and vandals who roam the outdoors would have eventually found me. In fact, five laptops were stolen from me in a three year period of time in Berkeley and Oakland alone. Two of those thefts were the results of strong-armed robbery.

No longer did I have to worry about any of that. Nor did I have to be worried about being kicked out of coffeeshops, either because of a two-hour time limit in the crowded Bay Area, or because I was “one of them.” No longer did I have to face the situation of somebody refusing to serve me because I was a homeless person. Though often they let me in, at other times they did not. There being many thieves on the streets, I can’t say that I entirely blamed them. On the other hand, I was not one of those thieves. I was only an artist, trying to do his art.

“A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is His delight.”
— Proverbs 11:1

All of this points to a “false balance” — what I call an inequity. There was an unusual schism between those of us who lived outdoors, and those who did not. So, when I finally achieved the power outlet that I had been praying for, I set about to delineate these inequities for the good of those who still live inside. I did this in a spirit of conviction, knowing that many are losing their homes these days, and even more so during the current economic crunch.

I pinpointed seven inequities — instance of imbalance, or of injustice. Seven disparities between the way the world is seen by those who live outside, and those who live indoors.

The first of these is couched within every word I have thus far written in this column. We who lived outside knew that our main day-to-day challenge was to deal with all the unusual features of outdoor living. Those who had not yet lived outdoors invariably thought that our challenge was something else.

In other words, people wanted to know what had made us homeless. In the process, the reality that we simply were homeless was often swept aside.

I can assure you that in the past five years in Idaho, I have done everything that would have “made me homeless” in California. And guess what? None of them ever made me homeless.

This stigma interfered with all our efforts to find dignified, indoor living. It was assumed that we were criminals. Surely we must be drug addicts or alcoholics. Or simply losers, with no work ethic.

At best, we were thought to have serious mental health disorders. If so, the stigma against those with mental health conditions also came into play. We found ourselves morally judged for internal mental conditions over which we had no control.

As a result, we were often directed toward living situations that we found worse than staying outdoors. Since we “couldn’t take care of ourselves,” we were referred to board-and-care homes. Since we were “drug addicts,” we were referred to rehabs. Since we were “crazy,” we were referred to psychiatric facilities. And since we were “criminals,” we were handcuffed and thrown into jails, often at the slightest of pretexts.

By no means am I trying to suggest that those elements do not entail within the realm of the many different sorts of people who live and sleep outside. The National Coalition for the Homeless has estimated that roughly one out of every four people experiencing homelessness is drug-addicted. That’s a pretty high count — but what about the other three-fourth?

It is also estimated that about one-third of people enduring homelessness have serious mental health disorders. That’s a lot of people struggling — but what about the other two-thirds?

Not to mention, what proportion of criminals live inside? White-collar criminals who get away with it? Employers who screw their workers out of wages? Addicts who can afford the designer drugs, and use those substances quietly behind closed doors? All of these play into the biggest difficulty that we had in communicating with those who tried to help us.

It was very often thought that if we could solve all those other problems, we could solve the much huger problem that is homelessness. It was very seldom thought that if we were to solve homelessness, we would be in a better position to solve all those other problems. And it was rarely thought that few of those problems even applied.

I have six other inequities to describe before this series, God willing, is over. But first and foremost, the biggest inequity was this: It was often thought that we were homeless because we had failed in some other area. It was rarely thought that we were homeless because we had failed to sustain a home.

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Won’t They Ever Learn?

The fool says in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt; their acts are vile.
There is no one who does good.
The LORD looks down from heaven
upon the sons of men
to see if any understand,
if any seek God.
All have turned away,
they have together become corrupt;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
Will the workers of iniquity never learn?
They devour my people like bread;
they refuse to call upon the LORD.
There they are, overwhelmed with dread,
for God is in the company of the righteous.
You sinners frustrate the plans of the oppressed,
yet the LORD is their shelter.
— Psalm 14:1-6

Gratitude List 1637

(1) Great meeting with Kelsey this morning on Zoom. Interest in the project was revitalized after a lull over the holidaze. We touched on a lot of good stuff and she’ll be working with Cooper on Friday. Thankful for her — I am certain she is the right person for this job.

(2) Had a nice three mile run. I’d have gone four miles as usual but had to be somewhere. It was good I could fit it in between Zooms.

(3) Counseling went well today. I had a lot to talk about, because the PTSD was triggered first thing in the morning and I was pretty disoriented. But it’s good to have talked it through. This is the first time since we’ve been doing the weekly sessions that I was actually upset about something at the time of the counseling. So naturally it was the best place to be.

(4) Unearthed this speech I gave in 2018, because it came up when talking with Kelsey. Aside from that one would think it natural that the speaker be angry about what they’re speaking about (in this case), I want to express gratitude that I am not as angry a person today as I was 2 1/2 years ago. Also, I’m truly grateful to have unearthed the speech, because I think it says what needed to be said. I forwarded it to the group thereafter.

(5) Rough morning, and I thought I’d never recover. But I’m grateful to have had things to do today on a strict schedule. It distracted me from the trigger, and when I was able to talk about in therapy, and it was helpful. Grateful for my life.

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The Unforgiven in the Eyes of Man

I found this “plea” in my Zoho Docs folder, a folder I rarely open. I had long ago forgotten writing this on March 18, 2016. I was homeless at the time, and had been homeless for quite a few years. Little did I know that my exact plea was to be answered, four months and nine days later. Not only did I receive the “lock on the door, window, and power outlet” for which I was pleading; I even received the “community of like-minded Artists and visionaries” that I was hoping would replace my homeless community. So I cannot help but post this plea — verbatim and unaltered, in all its raw and fervent appeal. The only thing that has been changed is that the words now appearing in italics were once in caps, since it was written on a Facebook timeline.

I apologize for my recent mania. Although — I’m thinking. What exactly is wrong with mania? What is there to apologize for? People tell me I “exhaust” them. But to me, almost everybody else seems to be moving in slow motion. Is it morally wrong that I think and move so quickly? Of course not. But I begin to develop a chip on my shoulder. I do not know how to express this dynamic clearly or articulately, or in a manner that would be persuasive of my case. My “apology” — such as it is — is placed before your eyes in order that it may be held distinct from the mania that was placed in another venue. I am banking on your objectivity to help me to believe that I can find words to express my position in such a way that will incur the empathy of the powerful.

This is because I, despite an empathic nature, despite an articulate presence, have been robbed of my natural power by a set of conditions and circumstances that have persisted far past the point of the conscious choices that initially set them into motion. That set of conditions and circumstances is called, in a word, homelessness. It has been going on for eleven years now. I do not know how I have made it this far. But I do know that I am not going to make it much farther without real help from someone who has the power to help and who cares to help. So: let’s get real.

I cannot live outdoors any longer. I mean – I can, but we may expect my life to end within the next two years at best. From eleven years of Homelessness I am finally breaking down. I, even I. No one can take the overwhelming conditions of homelessness for long without breaking in some way at some point. That I have endured this long is miraculous — especially in combination with the fact that every single person who is homeless understands my issue completely – whether they can articulate it or not – and every single person who lives indoors believes that my issue is something other than what it is.

Initially, this dynamic fascinated me. It fascinated me on an academic level, sociologically, as an item of analysis. But it has grown to disgust me. Not on an emotional level — but on a revolutionary level. Let me articulate my issue as clearly as I can. I know you love me – and I know you have had your own overwhelming issues. And I am proud of you. But please hear what my issue is. Every homeless person I know will echo this issue. I might as well speak in the editorial “we.” I speak on behalf of the Homeless People of the United States of America.

Our issue is that we feel unloved.

Much as I know that you love me, much as I know that my brother loves me, much as I know that my best female friend loves me – and if I have a remaining male friend who has not rejected me totally, he probably loves me too, whoever he is — I do not feel loved. None of us do. We feel unloved because it is not possible for us to grasp the disparity between the love that we see in the eyes of those who profess it – the love that I hear in your voice and in the voice of my brother and of my best female friend – and the other side of that dynamic, which is that none of the people who love us so will let us into their homes, much less agree to rent rooms to us, even in exchange for good money that we promise to pay. This is a universal homeless phenomenon.

Apparently, it is thought that we do not bathe. That our clothes are filthy. That we cannot manage. We will do something horrible in your house. If this were not the case, then why are we not in houses of our own? Although we know that the demand for affordable housing far exceeds the supply – in America – we still feel somehow blamed for the fact that we are the one who got left without residence. It’s as though we’re all in a competition, we are the ones who lost the game, and the booby prize is homelessness.

Rather than look at us as “losers,” why not view us according to reason? Because of high demand and low supply, somebody had to get left. It just happened to be us. We feel like lepers. We are the ostracized, the rejected, the pariahs, the untouchables. We are the perennial round pegs who did not fit, despite ourselves, into the square holes of the society that has discarded us.

We feel unloved because we do not understand how all these people who love us are permitting us to persist in a pattern of life that we have pleaded with them to help us to escape. For some of us, those pleas have been sent out for years. In my case, for eleven years. During that time there have been brief oases of residence that have lasted in some cases as long as six or seven months or more, before — before what? Something happened, and we are out in the wilderness once more.

What is that happened? Why did we lose those short-lived residential sites? It is because we didn’t want to sell used cars for our landlords, nor trim their marijuana plants. The housemates didn’t like the way that we paced the floors, or perhaps we were possessed of an annoying tick or snore that kept them awake at night. When asked to put something in the microwave, we who were absent-minded put it in the broiler oven instead. When it was discovered that we had been homeless, that somehow explained everything in the eyes of the potential landlord, and those eyes moved on to the next applicant — the one who had references and a credit rating, the one who either had not been homeless, or else was remarkably good at hiding the fact that they had. If the latter were the case, and one would possess that depth of discretion (I, by the way, do not), then one would probably have been shrewd enough to have avoided homelessness altogether in the first place.

In my case, after seven years of struggling, I finally became homeless by choice. That choice was made long ago. Made gladly, as you know. The problem is that it is no longer my choice. But I am having the devil of the time acting on the new choice – which is not to be homeless – because the stigmata that is Homelessness radiates from my forehead like a scarlet letter, as though warning everyone who crosses my path that I, like the others, having dabbled in the darkness that is homelessness, am thereby marked and branded. I differ from Cain only in that I have not yet killed a man. But I am just as marked, living in the awful place of confusion wherein the love of God so fills my heart that I know I am forgiven, and yet I know not what it is for which one must forgive me. I know that only God has forgiven me, and suspect that only God can. For we are those whom Man cannot forgive: The Unforgiven in the Eyes of Man. Not only that, but we do not know what we did that they won’t forgive us for. Ask ten people, we get ten different answers.

Homeless? You must be lazy. You’re not? Then you’re a loser. You’re not? Then you’re a dead beat. You’re not? Well then, shall we say, scum bag? Dirt bag? Piece of shit – that’s it! You must be a piece of shit. No doubt you are seriously drug-addicted. Hard drugs, the kind that ought never be discussed, much less indulged. You must be an alcoholic. Or severely mentally unhealthy – yes, that’s it. You’re a wing nut. Homeless? What do you mean by homeless? There’s got to be a reason for it.

Well, yes there is a reason. By definition, a person is homeless because he does not have a home. Whatever those other problems are – and believe me, if you’re homeless for long enough, you’ll encounter them all- they certainly cannot be solved until the problem of Homelessness that preempted them is solved. Otherwise, they will only recur again and again, because Homelessness feeds them. They come with the territory. We not only are homeless, but we will always be homeless, and we should always be homeless. We not only will never have a place to live indoors again, but we should not ever have a place to live again. Through the impaired vision of America, homelessness is seen not as a temporary state of affairs, but as a permanent and insoluble, incurable condition of the soul.

It is not that I happen to be able to withstand cold temperatures and inclement weather. It is not that I sleep in thunderstorms without a bedroll, shouting “Bring it On!” and exerting mighty pelvic thrusts toward the stars with each successive lightning bolt or thunderclap. It is not that I have not worn a jacket since 1985, or that I ran my half-marathon PR in 35 mph gales high on LSD flanked by local city cops. It is not that I am gonzo. True – I got exactly what I asked for, and if my book on the subject, the book that has needed to be written for years now, the book that explains the conditions from homelessness according to an author who actually is homeless and not according to some detached liberal social worker or socio-economist or some other form of clueless ivory tower bleeding heart do-gooder – but from the card-carrying, gun-toting homeless bro in dick mode, the real homeless man, AKA Yours Truly. That book is being written faster than these words are being penned, however spontaneously. And people tell me I exhaust them? Ha! They ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

That I have pleaded persistently with people who do have the power to terminate this way of living for me and help me into dignified indoor situation – not a “shelter” – nothing to do with “services” – nothing to do with a “program” – nothing to do with agencies, facilities, or institutions, but an actual living situation that entails outside the realm of homelessness, that (unlike the others) does not simply lead the homeless back to homelessness. A dignified living situation, where it will not be assumed that I am a criminal, that I plot crimes when so visibly preoccupied – I do not – where my writings of music and text and script on all levels will actually be met with a supportive environment of like-minded Artists and visionaries, rather than with further attempts to transform the vibrancy of this particularly uniquely gifted Child of the Most High into an impassive robot clone who serves the purposes of a sterile society consisting of those whose claim to fame is neither to threaten, not to make waves, not to cause wrinkles in time or similar anomalies that would disrupt the deluded flow of a culture gone awry. I refuse to join the ranks of those whose brains have been suspended until further notice so that they no longer can think for themselves but only serve the purposes of the State and of spiritual wickedness in high places when I AM A CHILD OF GOD! I AM A CHILD OF THE MOST HIGH KING! I AM BORN OF THE UNIVERSE THAT IS UNFOLDING ACCORDING TO DIVINE DESIGN, and I HAVE A RIGHT TO BE WHO I AM!

And I’m tired. Believe it or not, I — even I — tire. I exhaust even myself. So I close.

These could be the words of an asshole. But they are not. They are the words of a person who has been chosen to receive a message that he will articulate with precision and persuasive power. It is a message that America needs to hear – and that the nation, yea the world, has not yet heard. It is not that the message has not been delivered. On the contrary, it has been submitted en masse. It is that those to whom it has been spoken either have not listened, or they have not needed to hear it. Who has not listened to the message? Those of you live indoors. Who does not need to hear it? The homeless people of America who, ironically, are the only ones listening to it.

I can no longer abide the fact that only other homeless people are hearing the message that needs to be heard by those who are not. Somebody somewhere please grant me a place to live indoors that contains three prerequisites:

(1) It must have a window. I will probably need air from the outdoors at all times.

(2) It must have a lock on a single door, and a hide-a-key under a stone outside.

(3) It must have at least one power outlet.

I will provide the rest. I will pay up to $460 a month. But no more, because I will need to have a grocery chain like Safeway deliver food to my door. If somebody wants to kick down a new pair of Size 11 1/2 New Balance running shoes, it will be greatly appreciated, but not necessary to the task. I need – obviously- to write.

To write – the Homeless Message to the Mainstream of Modern American Life. What we want – is to be heard. What we want – is to be understood. What we want – is to be believed. What we want – is to be respected. We could care less if you say you “love” us — because, we cannot believe that you love us, and yet never let us in your home to so much as take a shower in exchange for money. We will believe that you love us when you begin to listen to what we have to say.

It will take me approximately five months to finish the book which currently is outlined in a 12 – page single space outline in standard outline form which I will submit to anyone interested.

My daughter, I love you. And I am proud of you. My brother, my sister, all of you — I love you. But I have something to say and I am going to get myself into the position where I will be physically and technically able to say it. Somebody get me out of the situation where I have to spend 90% of my time searching either for outdoor power outlets or chump change for North Berkeley coffeehouses with attitudes.

Here is the ninth and of last of my speeches on the Homeless Phenomenon in America. It is called “A Parallel and Opposing Culture.” Please – don’t just listen to it. Believe it.

And whoever happens to have gotten to the bottom of this, if there’s a God in Heaven or Beyond, that Power will bless you richly.

AMEN.

Andy Pope
Berkeley, California
March 18, 2016

A Parallel and Opposing Culture

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Inequity (Part One)

When I made the decision to join an intentional homeless community in the city of Berkeley on April 15, 2011, it was widely assumed that I had become homeless due to having lived a completely mistaken life for 58 years prior.

In this light, I noticed that if a person were a conservative, and they had become homeless in that community, they were often told that they should be a liberal “because the liberals were feeding them.”

However, if a person were a liberal, and they had become homeless in that same community, they were often told that they should become a conservative “because the Salvation Army was feeding them.”

In general, no conclusions that any of us had drawn in all of our lifetimes prior to becoming homeless in Berkeley were regarded as being of value by anyone other than homeless people. You don’t know how many people came up to me in an effort to proselytize their particular brand of Christianity, without even bothering to ask me if I identified as a Christian in the first place.

Why should a person change all the conclusions that they had drawn throughout 58 years of living, only because they had fallen on hard times? If anything, my faith was needed more than ever.

The reason for this, simply put, is that it is widely assumed that a person becomes homeless due to some flaw in their character. It is almost never supposed that the person might have become homeless because of a lack of affordable housing. Yet, if that were not the case, I wouldn’t be sitting here today. A renter in San Francisco might be paying $3000/mo. for a one bedroom apartment. Here, I am paying $450/mo. for the same.

Yet the number of people who think that I experienced a total psychic change during a one way 48 hour bus trip to a low rent district in other State is staggering. Some people even insist that it was then that I “found God.” The fact of the matter is — and I hate to break to anybody — I did not change on that trip at all. As for having “found God,” the notion is equally ludicrous. I prayed more prayers to God when I was sleeping in that gutter than at any previous time in my life – and I’m fairly sure you would have too.

What I found was an affordable place to live. When will people listen to reason, and to the simple truth?

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Homelessness and PTSD

Earlier, when I created a talk on this theme, I did not believe I could capsulize my thoughts into a single blog post. So I talked for a half hour instead.

I’ve since changed my mind. It’s taken over a week for me to discover how to present these ideas more succinctly, in a logical order. The first thing I would like to address is that people are generally unaware that homelessness — with all its confusing, unpredictable, and dangerous components — is as much a breeding grounds for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as situations arising in combat or from having been physically or sexually abused.

PTSD is triggered when something happens to remind a person of past trauma, the memories of which are often buried. When the reminder occurs, one leaps into the context of the trauma formerly inflicted. And then, one begins to relive the entire circumstances involved in that traumatic event.

Severe abuse comes with the homeless territory. A person who is exposed, out in the open twenty-four hours a day, is a visible target. This person is made even more vulnerable when they are sleeping. When I was homeless, I was pistol-whipped, subjected to strong arm robbery, sexually abused, subjected to arson, and physically abused multiple times. Any one of those situations can lead to PTSD — let alone all of them in confluence.

Because the first of these traumatic events was a sexual violation that took place on a very hot day when I could find no way out of it, I have been triggered on extremely hot days when I was lost and did not have clear directions to where I was going. My PTSD counselor and I worked out a series of steps that I would take automatically if I felt that the PTSD had been triggered. I would stop and take a number of deep breaths while looking for a shady spot. Then I would sit in the shady spot, no longer moving around or looking where I might go, until the PTSD had subdued.

The reason for taking such steps is because I was reliving the horrific event of a sexual assault. When the horrible event was over, and the rapist disappeared, I was so freaked out that I ran five miles in 90F degree weather. That single event has affected my sexual attitudes for life.

But that was only a solitary example of numerous violations that were to ensue during the twelve years when I was homeless and “borderline-homeless” — by which I mean staying in motels, residence hotels, and other sketch indoor situations. The overall experience of homelessness carried with it its own set of triggers. By and large, these were based on two things:

(1) A sense of inequality with, and inferiority to, the people around me.

(2) A sense of being fully exposed in a context where most of the people were concealed.

An example of something that triggered me was the event of having a story of mine published on a news site that permitted comments from its readers. All of the readers had usernames and avatars. One of them referred to having known me personally — but I had no idea, nor was I able to learn, who this person was. This bore enough resemblance to the homeless context that I began to relive my homeless experience.

More information about PTSD triggers may be found here, for starts. An excellent article exploring PTSD among the homeless may be found here. And of course, further information on the Homeless Experience can be found all over this blog.

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Talks 2019 No. 2

I promised to get a new talk to you guys by 7:30 this morning, so here it is. The purpose of this talk is to describe how the conditions of homelessness can easily lead to a PTSD diagnosis, and what the triggers can be like. I hope you enjoy & gain from this.

The Perception of Inequality

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Tuesday Tuneup 53

Q. What are you doing here?

A. Waiting for you.

Q. What do you want from me?

A. Questions.

Q. Why?

A. Because your questions always lead to interesting answers.

Q. Like what?

A. Like what I should be doing this morning.

Q. What should you be doing this morning?

A. In my opinion, I should be staving off depression by hurling myself full-force into an artistic project.

Q. Why should you do that?

A. Because I’ve been doing it all my life, and it usually works.

Q. Have you ever considered facing the depression directly, rather than doing something to avert it?

A. Sure I have.

Q. And how does that work for you?

A. It usually only makes me more depressed.

Q. And then what?

A. Then nothing. Stagnation. Inaction. Futility.

Q. But if you stave off the depression through Art?

A. Then everything. Motivation. Action. Meaningfulness.

Q. Why then would anyone ever want to face their depression directly?

A. Probably because they deny it. If one is in denial, things don’t work too well.

Q. Are you in denial?

A. If I were, I wouldn’t know it now, would I?

Q. I don’t know – would you?

A. No, I would not.

Q. But do you feel like you’re in denial?

A. Maybe a little bit. Nothing serious, though. Nothing that would land me in jail or in a psychiatric facility.

Q. Where would your level of denial land you?

A. Probably on a piano bench.

Q. What do you mean?

A. When I start to suspect that something is internally amiss, I usually play it out on the piano and see what happens.

Q. What happens then?

A. I channel my feelings.

Q. And this is?

A. Healthy.

Q. Anything else?

A. Not off the top, no. Oh wait a minute – I’m going to be posting a new talk tomorrow. It will still be called “The Perception of Inequality” just like the talk I removed earlier this week. It will just be a lot more thorough, more purposeful, more academic, more informative.

Q. Has working on this new talk helped you to be less depressed?

A. Yes, it has.

Q. But won’t all the depression return as soon as you’re done with your project?

A. It might. It might not.

Q. What now?

A. Calling my friend Danielle in about ten minutes, as per usual. Waiting for the sky to get light. Lacing up my shoes, going on a run.

Q. And after that?

A. Planning on enjoying the day. God’s blessings are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.

The Questioner is silent.

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Is There Life After Homelessness?

Below the illustration is an excerpt from my personal diary.

I’ve thought about almost nothing but homelessness in Berkeley throughout the past five days. It’s a disease; it’s a disorder; it’s PTSD; it’s been triggered. So I thought I’d take the opposite tact as oft-advised. Rather than distract myself from the triggers, I would embrace the experience completely.

In that spirit, I created this talk, called It Can’t Be Forgotten. Later I judged this effort harshly. Not the fact that I did it — that I don’t mind at all. I was happy, thrilled, and thankful that I completed the spontaneously conceived task, exciting as it was to undertake it.

What I judged was its quality. Two glaring errors stood out. For one thing, while I spoke often of the “inequality” factor, I did very little, if anything, to back up how that sense experience was valid for those of us enduring the Homeless Experience. It could just as easily have been a reflection of my own individual inferiority complex as it was an alleged manifestation of a social injustice.

Secondly, when this issue of inequality arises in the speech, I adopt a tone of voice that seems excessively strident. This could make the listener uncomfortable. The stridency could be alternately interpreted as either anger or sarcasm, something of an almost bitter outrage enters into the vibration from time to time, and the whole thing can make one very uneasy. This is especially the case if one can only tune into the upset tone of voice, and figure this guy’s got some kind of ax to grind, and then never tune in to the actual content of the dissertation, due to the fact that the ostentatious style has stood in the way.

I just now listened to the whole thing for the first time this morning. I don’t find it nearly as objectionable as I did during yesterday’s listen, but that may be because as a listener, I’m simply getting addicted to the repetitive playing of an interesting piece, and I’m getting into the groove of it. But it also may mean that my original objections are not so objectionable, because to remove that element of anger as well as the component of vagueness as to what exactly made us all feel so unequal and so dehumanized when we were all together back then on the streets, would be in essence to assault the very concept of the piece. It is what it is. If it makes you uncomfortable, good. What does this say about you?

That question asked, the speech, on that level, succeeds. What might be a distraction from that success, however, is if a certain kind of listener jumps to the conclusion, based on early, as yet undeveloped information, that the piece is “about” Internet trolling, trolls, etc. But it’s not. It’s about homelessness, inequality, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The troll is only used as a device, to serve as a trigger.

8:06 a.m. – 2019-08-10

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Talks 2019 No. 1

It Can’t Be Forgotten

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How I Got Inside

Attached is a verbatim transcript of the first story I had published in my new column in the new Street Spirit. My column is called “Homeless No More,” and my story is entitled “How I Got Inside.” This is based on a blog post called Bigger and Better than the Streets, also written on request of Alastair Boone, the new editor-in-chief of Street Spirit. However, this version involves signature edits and additions. As such, it stands on its own.

Note also the illustration provided. The caption reads: “A drawing of Andy getting on a bus and leaving the Bay Area, soon to be housed elsewhere.” Outside of being an outstanding illustration in its own rite, the work of one Inti Gonzalez, portions of it are charmingly telling. Note how the homeless Andy is haggard, with a more unkempt beard, wearing a helmet, carrying a sack on a stick, eagerly boarding the bus for greener pastures.

And then, on his arrival! Suddenly his beard is trim, his hair short and styled – he’s even wearing a Hawaiian shirt – as he bounds into his pristine new place of residence with a shit-eating grin on his face. I see “white male privilege” reflected all over, which makes sense in the context of my having moved to a largely all-White State. But the white male couldn’t have felt too privileged a few weeks back, flying a sign on a Berkeley city sidewalk all those years.

In any event, here’s the text. You can see for yourself what I wrote on the subject.

When I was homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area, I relied to a large degree on the moral support of lifelong friends and family who were not. For one reason or another, it was not feasible for any of them to let me stay in their homes for any substantial length of time. Still, they frequently provided me with encouragement, and on occasion sent me money. While I was often upset that nobody was “letting me in,” I nonetheless was dependent on their emotional and financial support in order to endure the ongoing conditions of homelessness.

One of the reasons why I delayed the decision to leave the Bay Area for so long was because I was attached to my support group. I felt that my old friends and family members were just about the only people who knew that I was a competent guy who had landed on the streets as the result of a costly medical misdiagnosis. They were the ones who knew that a mistreated health condition had led to a mental breakdown, as my inability to properly manage a health condition threw me into first-time homelessness at the age of 51. They were the ones who watched in horror, as one by one I lost all my accounts, and could no longer keep up with the high cost of living on the S.F. Bay Area Peninsula. But still, they believed in me, and they did what they could to help me get back on my feet. Of course I needed their support!

The only thing they didn’t do was to let me stay with them. Ironically, to have offered me housing, even temporarily, would have been the only thing that could possibly have helped me to get back on my feet.

But they could not do this. They had their own concerns. Meanwhile, I watched while the sordid conditions of homelessness gradually transformed me from a naïve, overweight singing teacher to a scrawny fraction of my former self. Gradually, I got to be half-crazed from protracted sleep deprivation. Often, I became fully crazed from feeling that I was treated like a sub-human mutant, rather than an equal. Passersby sneered at me in disgust.

In order to cope with this massive sense of ever-increasing dehumanization, I turned at first to marijuana, though I’d smoked no more than twice since the 80’s. Then, during the last three years of my homeless sojourn, I turned to a harder drug. I used speed to desensitize me from the cold—both the physical coldness of temperature, and the spiritual coldness of the condescending mockers in my midst. One by one, my old friends and family members, with rare exception, abandoned me. One of them recently told me: “We were all just waiting to read your obituary.”

Finally, in June of 2016, I picked up my social security check and walked out of the city of Berkeley without saying a word. “If the drugs won’t kill me,” I told myself, “the thugs who dispense them will.”

For a month I wandered the other side of the Bay in search of a permanent answer. But nothing seemed to work. In a shelter, I caught a flu, and was kicked out for that reason. The hospital wouldn’t let me in, because if they let me in, they’d have to let all of us in. I got kicked off of the all-night bus for fear of contaminating the other homeless people, who relied on the all-night bus as a shelter.

In desperation, I got down on my knees. I told the Universe that all I wanted was “a lock on a door, a window, and a power outlet.”

Then I took action. I began googling keywords until I found a place in the Pacific Northwest that rented for only $275/month—something that would easily have gone for $900/month in the Bay Area. It was a tiny room in a converted hotel—but it would do the job. I called an old associate, someone whom I’d worked with long ago when he was a music teacher at a middle school. Hearing my story, he agreed to front me $200 for a one-way Greyhound ticket to a new life. After that, I told my story to the prospective landlord, whom I called while still in San Francisco. To my amazement, he agreed to hold the place for me until I got there.

Forty-eight hours later, I was sleeping in my new room. It had a window, two power outlets, and three locks on the door. Four days after that, I signed a one-year lease. Three weeks later, after years of being considered unemployable in the San Francisco Bay Area, I landed a part-time job as a piano player at a small-town church.

A part of me wishes I had made the decision earlier. It would have spared me the last three years of psychic hell. But had I made the decision earlier, I would have abandoned the bulk of my support group. For me, leaving my support system and moving out of town was what it took to lead me to housing. However, it is a common misconception that the homeless crisis would be solved if homeless people just picked themselves up and moved out of town. This is not always the case, nor is it always readily possible.

I was lucky to have found a sympathetic person who would front me the money for a one-way-ticket to another state and help me with an apartment deposit and a few other odds and ends. Not everybody can find such a benefactor. Also, we cannot deny the obvious fact that I am a white male brimming with the semblance of “white privilege”—even while living on the street—if only for the ability to decide to move to a state largely composed of other white people. While I obviously did not possess a whole lot of privilege per se, I looked as though I could conceivably be, or become, a privileged person. Let’s face it: Had I been Black or Hispanic, to show up in a largely white neighborhood would not have worked to my advantage.

So in a way, I had it easy. At the same time, however, I believe that there is a way out for everyone. Though the sheltered world does not know it, homelessness is not the same thing as alcoholism, drug addiction, or incompetence. It’s not the kind of thing where one needs to “change their ways” in order to overcome it. In order to overcome homelessness, what one needs is dignity. We are all created equal; we are all endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are all bigger and better than the streets.

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Tuesday Tuneup 41

Q. Where would you like to be?

A. In a place of greater efficacy.

Q. What do you mean by that?

A. I would like to be more effective.

Q. In what way?

A. In many ways.

Q. Such as?

The Answerer takes a breath.

A. Such as in my ability to help people. To make a difference in their lives. I mean, a positive difference — not a negative one. Sometimes I just feel like my influence, try as I may to be helpful, winds up being hurtful. I stick my foot in my mouth at some juncture along the way, and I wind up feeling — I don’t know. Like a failure, I guess.

Q. Are you a failure? I mean, objectively speaking?

A. I suppose that depends on what it means to succeed.

Q. What does it mean to succeed?

A. Very good questions, these. I think that success must mean different things for different people. And our notions of success must be somehow wrapped up in our ideas as to life-purpose. We have this American idea of success here — seems to be dwindling a bit — but it’s the notion that success is related to some kind of worldly advance in monetary gain, accumulation of property, or perhaps a surge in prestige, clout, power, or influence over others. I don’t know. A bunch of things that I never really think about.

Q. Then why are you thinking about them?

A. I lied. Who am I trying to fool? I think ahout them all the time. But usually, it’s with aghast exasperation.

Q. Aghast exasperation?

A. Yeah. I drop my jaw, and stand aghast at what they all seem to expect of me. I become exasperated — not because I don’t have those things (money, property, clout, etc.) — but because people seem to think I’m supposed to have those things in order to be “happy.” Drives me up the wall! How would you like it if a bunch of people were always telling you how “unhappy” you are, just because you don’t have all the things they have, even though you don’t want them anyway? (Not to mention, you’re probably happier than they are.)

Q. Why do you care what they think?

A. I don’t know. Seems I get asked that a lot these days.

Q. Do they care what you think?

A. Evidently not.

Q. Then why should you care what they think?

A. Again, I don’t know. Golden Rule, maybe? I mean, what is this modern-day hogwash about how we should all be completely indifferent to what other people are thinking? I get so tired of everybody telling me I care too much about what other people think. What am I supposed to do? Stop caring? That seems — unloving. Did Jesus stop caring when He went to the Cross?

Q. But isn’t there a difference between caring about them, and caring about what they think of you?

A. No! They ARE what they’re thinking!! Whether they think it about me, or anybody else, or the fencepost!!

Q. But do you KNOW what they are thinking?

A. Yes! It’s obvious what they’re thinking! They even tell me what they’re thinking! They do that all the time. How can I not know what they’re thinking? They’re always telling me that I’m this worthless, no good, lazy impoverished bum who made “poor choices” throughout this poor life, otherwise with his talents and abilities he’d be living in the frickin’ Taj Mahal, or in some big mansion like that one place where I lived a long time ago. As if I care to live in a mansion. I’m just grateful I’m not flying a sign and sleeping under an overpass with a boatload of tweakers.

Q. You once lived in a mansion?

A. Yes.

Q. What was it like living in a mansion?

A. Freaky is all get-out. My landlord had more money than he knew what to do with. He gave me this huge upstairs flat with a private bathroom and a marble floor on the shower. The guy had two Steinway grand pianos, recording equipment . . .

Q. Why was that freaky? Why not beautiful?

A. I don’t know. I just didn’t belong there somehow. The guy had a Jaguar, a Cadillac – expensive Belgian furniture you weren’t even supposed to sit on — I just felt like it was out of my league.

Q. And what, pray tell, is your league?

A. Wrong side of the tracks, man. Poor but thrifty parents. Neither of them left a will. Neither of them had anything to leave. I’ve gravitated toward poor people all my life. I feel a kinship with people who are impoverished, and I feel out of place among people of greater means and privilege.

Q. But why is that side of the tracks the wrong side? Why not just — another side?

A. Because of the very thing I said at the top of this whole page.

Q. Refresh my memory?

A. I said, I wish I could be more effective. And it just seems like, in this society, if you don’t have at least some means, at least some privilege, you’re not effective at all.

Q. But can’t you be effective in other ways? Like say helping a friend of yours with a personal issue? It doesn’t cost money to do that, does it?

A. But that’s my whole frustration! I don’t help people right. I say the wrong things. I get the feeling they should be talking to a professional, and yet — every time somebody’s told me that they couldn’t help me, and I needed a professional, I took it as personal rejection.

Q. Do you feel like a hypocrite?

A. Yes. If I feel rejected because a friend is telling me that my issues are “too much of them” and that I need “professional help,” then what right do I have to suggest that some friend of mine needs professional help, rather than to talk to me?

Q. But if they talk to you, won’t you just stick your foot in your mouth again?

A. Yes. And that very well could be the reason all those other people told me that I should see a professional. They meant well, but they didn’t have the facile or expertise to help me.

Q. Would you consider seeing a professional?

A. I already do. And I got a stack of bills higher than the ceiling.

Q. Andy – what is the bottom line?

A. You keep asking me that.

Q. Andy – what is the bottom line?

A. See what I mean?

Q. Andy – what is the bottom line?

Andy takes a breath.

A. The bottom line is that, for a variety of reasons ranging from my being a social imbecile, a dork, a clutz, an unemployable space case, disabled, scraping my nuts off trying to keep up with the rising cost of living, not being able to get around, not having a car, and just generally being a weirdo, I just don’t consider myself to be very effective. And I would like to be more effective.

A. So with all that working against you, how can you be effective?

Q. By doing one great thing before I die. By doing one great thing that will reach people — and that will make a positive difference in their lives.

A. Wow — do you have any idea what that thing might be?

Q. I know exactly what that thing might be! And by the way, so do you. Daylight’s burning. Time’s wasting. Money doesn’t grow on trees. LET’S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD.

The Questioner is silent.

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Rich Man Poor Man

The poor man pleads for mercy,
but the rich man answers harshly.
–-Proverbs 18:23

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Homeless and Huge

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Decision

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Tuesday Tuneup 26

Q. Where would you like to be?

A. In a place of greater confidence.

Q. In what areas do you lack confidence?

A. In many areas. But only one area is important to me at this time.

Q. What area is that?

A. It has to do with integrity, as we discussed last week. I lack confidence that I will be able to act according to my integrity, and not according to hypocrisy.

Q. Why should you ever prefer hypocrisy over integrity?

A. I don’t, in my heart. But at certain moments, I find myself choosing a hypocritical course of action, only because I lack confidence that I can find a way to act according to my integrity at that same moment.

Q. Can you provide an example of that?

A. Sure. Say I’m at an idle moment. I’m bored at that moment, and I don’t quite know what to do. I see before me a certain door. I am compelled to open the door, because on the other side will be people who will alleviate my boredom. But the only way that these people have ever been known to alleviate my boredom is that they provide me with an audience for the Entertainer in me. I will proceed to entertain them. They will laugh when I say funny things, and do comic imitations of people, and put on humorous expressions and mannerisms. And then, I will be gratified.

Q. Who are these people?

A. That’s a good question. They could be just about anybody, I suppose. In this case, they were a number of people I saw sitting behind the back door of the Recovery Center where I have been volunteering, that back door being made of glass.

Q. Did you then go inside and entertain them, in order to alleviate your boredom?

A. No, I did not. I turned and went next door, to a cafe where it was quiet, and I would find a way to alleviate my boredom, without having to entertain anyone.

Q. How did you manage that?

A. By doing what I am doing right now. I am sitting down at a quiet table in a quiet cafe, among many quiet students studying, and professors preparing their lectures. To entertain these people would be to interrupt their work, which would be quite rude. So instead I logged on my laptop to do my own work, and therefore blend perfectly into the atmosphere.

Q. But aren’t you still being an Entertainer?

A. How so?

Q. You’re entertaining me, aren’t you?

A. It’s not my intention.

Q. What about your readers? Aren’t they being entertained?

A. I hope not!

Q. And aren’t you still a hypocrite?

A. No!

Q. But what you’re doing right now – sitting in this academic cafe the way you are — isn’t this just as hypocritical as ever?

A. I think not! I’m not hypocritical at all right now.

Q. You’re not?

A. No I’m not! I mean – what makes you think I am?

Q. Well, you’re not a student are you?

A. No – not in the strictest academic sense, as in pay tuition, take classes, and all that.

Q. And you’re not a professor, are you?

A. I am neither student nor professor, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have work to do on my laptop.

Q. But by trying to blend in with all the academics. aren’t you trying to pretend to be one of them?

A. I see your point, but no I’m not. Plenty of people come in here to work on their laptops who are not students or professors.

Q. But still, you’re trying to look like a student or a professor — and isn’t this hypocrisy?

A. I don’t believe so, no. Even if I’m not an official student, I sort of feel like one. I’m always studying, doing research of various sorts. Especially, I research classism, and inequality, and poverty culture, and homelessness. This is who I am right now; it’s not hypocrisy.

Q. But haven’ you been an entertainer for most of your life? How is it hypocritical to keep being who you are?

A. Because I don’t think the Entertainer is the real me. The real me actually is more of scholar than an entertainer. Besides, a spiritual scholar is one who is seeking the truth. That describes me to a tee. But an entertainer? An entertainer tries to take people’s minds off of their troubles. In a way, the Entertainer keeps people from looking for the truth.

Q. But haven’t been there entertainers who also were spiritual truth-seekers. What about Dick Gregory?

Dick Gregory

A. What about him?

Q. Wasn’t he a comedian?

A. That he was.

Q. And didn’t he going on numerous hunger strikes, frequently fasting for forty days and forty nights for the sake of social justice?

A. That he did. But he was different. His comedy was about social and racial inequality. Observe:

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night.

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, “We don’t serve colored people here.” I said, “That’s all right. I don’t eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.”

Then these three white boys came up to me and said, “Boy, we’re giving you fair warning. Anything you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you.” So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, “Line up, boys!”

Q. Well then why don’t you do like Gregory did?

A. What do you mean?

Q. Why not use your social activism in your comedy routine?

A. I sort of do that already. Among friends, that is. But what I’m trying to say is that, I am not a comedian at heart. I’m not an Entertainer at heart? I’m a spiritual man, and an Artist — a man of integrity, at heart. The Entertainer is just a facade. It’s just that I lack confidence I can ever shed that facade.

Q. Why bother?

A. What do you mean, why bother?

Q. Just what I said – why bother? Isn’t the Entertainer a part of who you are?

A. Maybe. This is all becoming very confusing. And a wee bit annoying, I might add.

Q. But aren’t I just asking logical questions, spinning off the things you’re saying?

A. I suppose you are, but it’s still kind of irritating.

Q. Should we adjourn till later?

A. Probably. I really do tire of this.

Q. Well, at least you’re not bored anymore, are you?

A. Get out of here!

The Questioner is silent.

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Tag Archives: inequality

Gratitude List 1846

Talking Shop, Part One

Won’t They Ever Learn?

Gratitude List 1637

Inequity (Part One)

Talks 2019 No. 2

The Perception of Inequality

Tuesday Tuneup 53

Homeless and Huge

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Abuse of Authority

A New Life

Authenticity and Community

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The Story

Throwback to Homelessness

A Theory in the Making

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