I've passed him on the street often enough.

posted by jeremy on January 21, 2003

A ragged thin man perched on the walk, with his hat on the ground. Nearly every time, he says he's just trying to get enough change for a cup of coffee. He's the kind of man that you know is younger than he looks. His life's torn too many lines into his face far too early.

I'm fairly poverty-stricken myself right at the moment. Surviving somehow on $123. a week. My rent is $375. The math of this situation is not difficult.

I've been laid off from 3 jobs in the last thirteen months. First the Daily Grind, then the Pied Cow & finally, Chez Machin. I've received unemployment benefits thru all of this so I'm not complaining. I'm a lazy beast. All I have to do is make a five minute phone call every week & poof! Here's your check, sir. Allah bless limited forms of socialism.

But still, I'm in the tax bracket labeled Poor As Shit. I don't have much money to give away right at the moment. The unfortunate perpetuation of hard times. There's also Rule #457: I only give money to those that are old, sick, maimed, crazy or to those that humor me. (Hippies, druggies & squatter-punks can go find a Labor Ready or a normal job & get laid off & get UnEmp Comp like the rest of us Oregonians.) I've actually taken to spare-changing the spare-changers right back. This stratagem is highly entertaining if not usually very fruitful.

But this one particular & strangely sunny day, I pass this skinny man & he asks me for change & I'm so fucking broke I decide it's not going to destroy me to give him some. I pull out a dollar & hand it over. He thanks me & we start to talk. Actually, he starts to talk & I'm in no hurry, so I listen.

Rule #312: Most insane street-folk have meta-physical beliefs so thought out, so intricately engineered that they make most Catholic theologians look like amateurs & most of these same street-folk are quite willing to share these beliefs with anybody alive or dead. This man is no exception to Rule#312.

I listen, mesmerized, not by his words, but by the strange pattern of his facial hair, his incredibly intense eyes. He's slurring most of his words anyway, due to some missing front teeth. I occasionally manage to decipher some of the stories, parables, koans & riddles he's rattling out. God is testing him but god loves him. He's not a perfect man but he's learning. His wife or girlfriend or somebody doesn't understand god's ultimate plan. She didn't listen to him & that's why he's homeless now. God isn't always right though. She's not nice. God's a she but she's a he. God is god. God isn't god but god is. God is warmth. Do you understand?

& I'm thinking the cold nights would of course make someone's idea of god to include warmth. I'm wondering whether the cold loneliness has pushed this man into realm of ultimate abstraction or maybe he was insane before or maybe it's just the cheap booze. Maybe it was myriad factors piling up into the car-wreck that is this man's life. I can still remember looking into his earnest eyes & considering the near necessity of his insanity, his desperate theology. God is the last refuge of the completely fucked.

"You wanna know the secret to all of this?" He asks me. Of course I do. I tell him so. He looks at the ground, then the sky. His theatrics are good, I think. He loudly mumbles something. "What?" He repeats the mumble & then looks at me with the satisfied all-knowing smile of an ancient Buddhist sage. I can tell he's waiting for the knowledge to sink in. "Totally." is all that I can say. He immediately tells me that I must be from California because I said totally. I want to tell him I'm from Ohio but whats the point. It's about time to evacuate. I've been standing here for over half an hour soaking up this man's story & I'm ready to go process it. I've been in this situation a hundred times before & it's different every time. This easiness with which life stories, philosophies spill forth to strangers on the street.

He's still going on about regional dialects. He's asking me what else we say in California. "You know, what the surfer... valley... chicks... say. What is it? It's something like, two words. Do you know? They say it. Something...."

I tell him I'm sure he'll think of it. He can tell me next time he sees me. Been good talking to you & good luck, I say & then I walk away, all-the-while thinking that maybe he's right.... Maybe the meaning of this wretched-lonely-beautiful existence is something akin to a crazy yet passionate mumble on a crowded & uncaring street.