Here's something you might be interested in.
HOMELESS CONSULTANTS ON THE RANGE
I never really figured out what a consultant does, and there are lots of things about the homeless that are mysteries to me (like, how do they make it?). So why not get two for the price of one? Hence, Homeless Consultants. I’ve lived in Encinitas for ten years and on the coast in Carlsbad for six years before that. Each has its own sets of homeless characters. They’re not dumb, so they know how to avoid getting busted by hanging out in areas such as the undeveloped part of the coast where there are no complaints. I’ve noted that the homeless are by far scarcer on this coastal stretch on weekends, when more citizens come to the beach area. Where, I wonder, do they go then? Is there a secret homeless weekend getaway? A special, perhaps, on dense shrub hideouts? Maybe their union buses them to an inland holiday campground. This paradise would be replete with garbage cans full of recently expired foods and gently used sandwiches. The cans have signs like “DO NOT TAMPER WITH CONTENTS OF THIS CONTAINER! CITY CODE 54A 927-41C.”
The point of writing, for me, is self-discovery. I realize as I write this that my interest in/fascination with the homeless is that I can see how easily I could have been, or could be, one of them. There, but for lack of credit cards, go I.
In fact, when my car died just before Christmas about a year ago (God punishes Atheists around this time of year), I was mistaken by a homeless guy as one of his own: I had reacted to the sudden shock of carlessness with denial. Trying to John Henry my way out of the situation, I walked eight miles one day, eleven the next, and so on. Also, I was trying to include jogging. (I’ll be 70 next fall). After four or five days of this, I encountered a cheerful off-ramp entrepreneur who appeared to have made quite a haul from people exiting the freeway. He saw me walk by, exhausted, with five days of too much salt with the pepper growth on my face. I was wearing funky workout clothes and it was Christmas Eve. “Say, bro, there’s free dinner tomorrow at Cap’N Keno’s (a diner on Coast Highway), and I know I’ll be goin’,” he said with emphatic expression. “Thanks,” I said, and immediately went home and shaved as close as possible. However, I have thought of standing by a freeway exit with a sign that reads, “AFRAID OF HARD WORK.” Another might read, “HELP! I ‘M A RICH MAN TRAPPED IN A POOR MAN’S BODY.” I’ve heard from several sources (bus confessors do not lie) that one can make $20 an hour. On the other side of the ledger, I heard a young woman in a PT Cruiser yell at an off-ramp hustler to “get a job.” And it’s not necessarily easy to stake out a spot. The open-air business people usually operate in groups, with the back-ups awaiting their rotation. So a newcomer is outnumbered. By the by, you may challenge with, “Business people?? What are they offering in return for free money?” The feeling of moral satisfaction for helping out—that’s what. All things are in natural balance, no matter what we do.
I have a distinct sense that they (the homeless in a given locale) all know each other. This dawned on me when I saw some of them talking to each other in the library. I realized that I’m dealing with people who are “connected” when I saw the guy from the library walking around with the guy from the bus. The latter isn’t homeless, but was canvassing houses at that time to sell his painting services. He had a nervous, hostile, ditty-bop walk as he smoked (illegal) and paced at the bus station. He liked to tell fellow bus riders about how he had threatened to knock people out. I avoided eye contact. So when, a few days later, I saw him with the guy who had been seated next to me at the library computer bank, I rethought my game plan. At the earlier computer session I had asked the homeless guy, who affects a sort of wild man mien, if he needed to repeat aloud everything he read and wrote down. He stared at me with light blue eyes that betrayed no depth; he then shut up. But I was glad that they were across the street when I saw them. I don’t use the library computers much any more, for this and similar reasons (the Senior Center suffices). By the way, I did a much better wild man back in the day. But that’s another story.
Then there is the bag lady with multi plastic produce bags stuffed with newspapers. One time I saw her taking notes in a small notebook while standing by her mobile library. “Oh, no,” I thought, maybe she’s like me: I hoard my newspapers indoors—is that enough of a distinction between us? Is the difference of her from me that she hasn’t cracked The Reader publishing code, or else that she doesn’t bother, because she’s way too advanced for such quotidian pursuits? She uses the library computers, and, I do wonder, for what? She reads, too, at the library. It strikes me that she wants to connect with people, but that being near them will just have to do. Is there anybody out there who hasn’t gone to a coffee shop or public venue just to be out and amongst them?
She hangs out at the coast a lot as well, the bags never far from her. One Christmas a few years ago I slipped a twenty-dollar bill into one of her bags when she wasn’t looking. But no good deed goes unpunished. The following Ides of March (March 15th) she suddenly looked up from her solipsistic roadside soliloquy—it seems to involve numerical calculations—and smiled and waved her fingers daintily at me. I was creeped out for some time. Why on the Ides of March? Then again, I ain’t no Caesar. I try to avoid eye contact with her. Perhaps it’s because I want to distance myself from that which feels all too near. Certain people, though, both homeless and not, do converse with her. Granted, we’re talking few and far between—but some do. I hear that she is a decent water colorist, rendering coastal seascapes.
The closest connection to a Homeless Consultant encounter that I had was with “Johnny,” who actually had dinner at my digs in Frisco in the mid-70’s. He was my upstairs neighbor in a rundown building that was perched atop a dog wash. Already, he displayed eccentricities that were notable, even for the crowd of loony tunes that was cavorting its way through life in that hole. After dinner my girlfriend and I were prepping dessert in a back alcove out of the line of sight to the kitchen table. Next thing we knew, Johnny had vanished. He must have run through my bedroom and scurried up the fire escape back to his place. Forecast: communication atmospherics difficult to impossible.
Thirty years later Johnny is a denizen of coastal Encinitas. After many trepidations, I finally get up the gumption to approach him, sporting a modest smile as I get closer. He gives me the finger and curses me as if I’d knifed his grandmother.
Johnny at times is rather dapper, parading in vintage chic. He likes to talk to pretty girls. He was/is a top quality comic book artist. Guess this, along with the bag lady watercolorist, gives new meaning to the term street artist.
Some months after the cuss out, he’s by the coast again, mumbling to himself. As I pass, he hands me the broken stem from a pair of glasses and a dinner receipt. “Someone lost these,” he says, concerned. I assure him that I’ll take care of it and keep moving. On Christmas Day I toured First Street and encountered him sitting on the ground in front of a semi-circular stone bench with a serene smile on his face, blissing out. We greeted each other. The next day he was in the same spot, busily talking to an imaginary companion, so I didn’t interrupt.
The best consultants, I’m told, like the best gurus or the best shrinks, embed their answers in provocative questions. So as the homeless shuffle, seemingly aimlessly, from here to there, are they not asking us all (AKA Society), “Can’t we do better? Can’t we do better in solving the problems that create such misery? Can’t we?”
HOMELESS CONSULTANTS ON THE RANGE
I never really figured out what a consultant does, and there are lots of things about the homeless that are mysteries to me (like, how do they make it?). So why not get two for the price of one? Hence, Homeless Consultants. I’ve lived in Encinitas for ten years and on the coast in Carlsbad for six years before that. Each has its own sets of homeless characters. They’re not dumb, so they know how to avoid getting busted by hanging out in areas such as the undeveloped part of the coast where there are no complaints. I’ve noted that the homeless are by far scarcer on this coastal stretch on weekends, when more citizens come to the beach area. Where, I wonder, do they go then? Is there a secret homeless weekend getaway? A special, perhaps, on dense shrub hideouts? Maybe their union buses them to an inland holiday campground. This paradise would be replete with garbage cans full of recently expired foods and gently used sandwiches. The cans have signs like “DO NOT TAMPER WITH CONTENTS OF THIS CONTAINER! CITY CODE 54A 927-41C.”
The point of writing, for me, is self-discovery. I realize as I write this that my interest in/fascination with the homeless is that I can see how easily I could have been, or could be, one of them. There, but for lack of credit cards, go I.
In fact, when my car died just before Christmas about a year ago (God punishes Atheists around this time of year), I was mistaken by a homeless guy as one of his own: I had reacted to the sudden shock of carlessness with denial. Trying to John Henry my way out of the situation, I walked eight miles one day, eleven the next, and so on. Also, I was trying to include jogging. (I’ll be 70 next fall). After four or five days of this, I encountered a cheerful off-ramp entrepreneur who appeared to have made quite a haul from people exiting the freeway. He saw me walk by, exhausted, with five days of too much salt with the pepper growth on my face. I was wearing funky workout clothes and it was Christmas Eve. “Say, bro, there’s free dinner tomorrow at Cap’N Keno’s (a diner on Coast Highway), and I know I’ll be goin’,” he said with emphatic expression. “Thanks,” I said, and immediately went home and shaved as close as possible. However, I have thought of standing by a freeway exit with a sign that reads, “AFRAID OF HARD WORK.” Another might read, “HELP! I ‘M A RICH MAN TRAPPED IN A POOR MAN’S BODY.” I’ve heard from several sources (bus confessors do not lie) that one can make $20 an hour. On the other side of the ledger, I heard a young woman in a PT Cruiser yell at an off-ramp hustler to “get a job.” And it’s not necessarily easy to stake out a spot. The open-air business people usually operate in groups, with the back-ups awaiting their rotation. So a newcomer is outnumbered. By the by, you may challenge with, “Business people?? What are they offering in return for free money?” The feeling of moral satisfaction for helping out—that’s what. All things are in natural balance, no matter what we do.
I have a distinct sense that they (the homeless in a given locale) all know each other. This dawned on me when I saw some of them talking to each other in the library. I realized that I’m dealing with people who are “connected” when I saw the guy from the library walking around with the guy from the bus. The latter isn’t homeless, but was canvassing houses at that time to sell his painting services. He had a nervous, hostile, ditty-bop walk as he smoked (illegal) and paced at the bus station. He liked to tell fellow bus riders about how he had threatened to knock people out. I avoided eye contact. So when, a few days later, I saw him with the guy who had been seated next to me at the library computer bank, I rethought my game plan. At the earlier computer session I had asked the homeless guy, who affects a sort of wild man mien, if he needed to repeat aloud everything he read and wrote down. He stared at me with light blue eyes that betrayed no depth; he then shut up. But I was glad that they were across the street when I saw them. I don’t use the library computers much any more, for this and similar reasons (the Senior Center suffices). By the way, I did a much better wild man back in the day. But that’s another story.
Then there is the bag lady with multi plastic produce bags stuffed with newspapers. One time I saw her taking notes in a small notebook while standing by her mobile library. “Oh, no,” I thought, maybe she’s like me: I hoard my newspapers indoors—is that enough of a distinction between us? Is the difference of her from me that she hasn’t cracked The Reader publishing code, or else that she doesn’t bother, because she’s way too advanced for such quotidian pursuits? She uses the library computers, and, I do wonder, for what? She reads, too, at the library. It strikes me that she wants to connect with people, but that being near them will just have to do. Is there anybody out there who hasn’t gone to a coffee shop or public venue just to be out and amongst them?
She hangs out at the coast a lot as well, the bags never far from her. One Christmas a few years ago I slipped a twenty-dollar bill into one of her bags when she wasn’t looking. But no good deed goes unpunished. The following Ides of March (March 15th) she suddenly looked up from her solipsistic roadside soliloquy—it seems to involve numerical calculations—and smiled and waved her fingers daintily at me. I was creeped out for some time. Why on the Ides of March? Then again, I ain’t no Caesar. I try to avoid eye contact with her. Perhaps it’s because I want to distance myself from that which feels all too near. Certain people, though, both homeless and not, do converse with her. Granted, we’re talking few and far between—but some do. I hear that she is a decent water colorist, rendering coastal seascapes.
The closest connection to a Homeless Consultant encounter that I had was with “Johnny,” who actually had dinner at my digs in Frisco in the mid-70’s. He was my upstairs neighbor in a rundown building that was perched atop a dog wash. Already, he displayed eccentricities that were notable, even for the crowd of loony tunes that was cavorting its way through life in that hole. After dinner my girlfriend and I were prepping dessert in a back alcove out of the line of sight to the kitchen table. Next thing we knew, Johnny had vanished. He must have run through my bedroom and scurried up the fire escape back to his place. Forecast: communication atmospherics difficult to impossible.
Thirty years later Johnny is a denizen of coastal Encinitas. After many trepidations, I finally get up the gumption to approach him, sporting a modest smile as I get closer. He gives me the finger and curses me as if I’d knifed his grandmother.
Johnny at times is rather dapper, parading in vintage chic. He likes to talk to pretty girls. He was/is a top quality comic book artist. Guess this, along with the bag lady watercolorist, gives new meaning to the term street artist.
Some months after the cuss out, he’s by the coast again, mumbling to himself. As I pass, he hands me the broken stem from a pair of glasses and a dinner receipt. “Someone lost these,” he says, concerned. I assure him that I’ll take care of it and keep moving. On Christmas Day I toured First Street and encountered him sitting on the ground in front of a semi-circular stone bench with a serene smile on his face, blissing out. We greeted each other. The next day he was in the same spot, busily talking to an imaginary companion, so I didn’t interrupt.
The best consultants, I’m told, like the best gurus or the best shrinks, embed their answers in provocative questions. So as the homeless shuffle, seemingly aimlessly, from here to there, are they not asking us all (AKA Society), “Can’t we do better? Can’t we do better in solving the problems that create such misery? Can’t we?”