Scenes From An Urban Street: Redemption For $1

1) The sky is that odd mix of sun and rain, where you think you should be able to see a rainbow somewhere, but it must be blocked by the towering blocks of concrete and glass. The sidewalks are damp, the tiles of Powell Street seeming to float. The line for the cable cars is empty this evening.

2) A bundle of human desolation sits on the sidewalk, asks, "Does anyone have any change?" He says it into the teeth of a flood of conversation, cell phones, car engines, and it is lost.

You cannot expect to move the homeless and the panhandlers away from the tourist areas. When you live upon the charity/pity/guilt of others, you go where there are people. Basic survival law: if you need to acquire resources, you go where the resources are.

They are loafing along the sidewalks, long rail-thin pieces of humanity. I don't often give, because I don't want to. The signs that say "Why lie? It's for beer" are no longer funny, nor are they original. It is a low-percentage game for them, sifting through the crowds of people who are tired and want to go home, trying to latch onto those who have the emotional energy to make contact and give them money. But it is the only game they seem to have going.

Unless, of course, they are lying, and the money they get they put into a mutual fund. That would be disappointing.

You think I'm joking, and I probably am, but not entirely. I have heard reports of wealthy Marin County teens who drive into the city to play at panhandling on Haight Street.

I'll buy Street Sheet now and then. When I can, and when I want to. I'm more apt to give to musicians.

3) Speaking of, there is a cellist at the 24th Street Bart Station, exploiting the musical properties of tunnels. His music crests and drops like a wave at low tide, mellow and slow, a pleasant transition on the escalator up into the Mission Street twilight. I give him money, because it feels pleasant to listen to his music.

I wonder if the panhandlers get annoyed when there are musicians around. Maybe the panhandlers should unionize to protect their territory.

I give the cellist a dollar, which makes me feel all better for not having given a dollar to the people selling Street Sheet at Powell Street.

Ghosts

I woke up slowly this morning, hearing the stirrings from downstairs where Dad was building a fire. It was foggy outside the window--Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley had a fog advisory in place until 10 a.m., with the possibility of icy roads. I turned on the radio to Montana Public Radio for a dose of Morning Edition.

"An earthquake struck Haiti today--yes, we said today."

Another one, a 6.1 'aftershock.'

How much can one country take, really? This is a rhetorical question, because it isn't like they can refuse to accept and deal with whatever happens. But this, it is just so harsh. And it brings out the best and the worst of humanity.

It is up to us to help shore up the infrastructure of impoverished countries, Pat Robertson or no Pat Robertson--preferably none. Here's another good site for helping third world countries, one I've mentioned before.

But for all the pain that arises from thinking and reading about Haiti, it is a beautiful morning, snow and pine trees covering the mountains, and carved by the process of geological forces into the side of Blodgett Peak, I can see an Old Man of the Mountains, face tilted towards the sky. A herd of white-tail deer have been grazing idly at the frost-rimed grasses surrounding the house. When I walked to the end of the driveway to fetch the paper this morning, they idly watched me both coming and going, no sense of panic, as they have seen us every day.

To sit in a sunny living room, reading the paper and Neal Stephenson's Zodiac, listening to Morning Classics on public radio, is to forget for a time the stress of the world, a world of earthquakes and Tea Parties thrown by protesters who I don't remember protesting when the Bush Administration turned a budget surplus into a deficit.

Montana is full of pain and beauty. The Bitterroot Valley is the path Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce took in attempting to flee the army, trying to escape to Canada to be free. The first thing I saw while descending into Missoula, the first thing that made me feel I was home, was the hulking cluster of metal silos and buildings of Smurfit-Stone, the mill in Frenchtown. It was a day or so later that I realized this was the mill that had closed down, putting 400 people out of work. This was the same mill in whose shadow my first girlfriend and I spent one of our last weekends before breaking up; I haven't spoken to her in years, and I doubt I will anytime soon.

Montana is the home of old men with hearts of gold who nevertheless joke about never drinking black coffee on Martin Luther King Day, because they 'don't like that guy.' The home of men who will chop firewood for injured acquaintances, but whose church states that women must have men to vouch for them to get into heaven. Montana is mountain lakes so clear and cold that they catch the sun and hold the light for years in the memory of a child.

I can't tell whether or not this still feels like home.