Homelessness

I see two major cities every day of my workweek: Oakland and San Francisco.

I pass through their downtowns.

I see lots of homeless people.

Clustered in the dark doorways, around short brick retainers, leaning against fences, and sometimes just desperately prone against collapsed cardboard like a lost fight against a magnified gravity. Maybe behind a shopping cart. Maybe under a tattered blanket.

I saw a homeless man step onto an uphill BART escalator and within the ten second ride to the top, had urinated all over the side panels by the time he got to the top. It splashed all over the side walls, then dripped between the brush side stuff that I have no idea the purpose for, then disappeared amidst the steely jaws of the stairs. I was a good way down the escalator from him, and I wanted to say something like, "Hey, man, how's it going? Y'know, your pee right there? That's pretty disgusting, please don't do that. You make our public transit station smell like you. Oh, and it's pretty fucking disgusting."

But I held my words because:

1. I was not in a position to argue.
2. I was definitely not in a position to argue.

My immediate fear was that he would not only give no shits what I thought, but he would also flippantly divert his stream my way. And it's not like I can stop this guy from doing the same thing tomorrow. Practically every establishment downtown has a sign reading: No Public Restrooms, Please Don't Ask. Where else was he going to go? May as well use the escalator while it's bringing him somewhere... I guess... <shudder>

And so this dude pisses on the escalator. Brutal. I don't even want to know what he has to do to poop.

Anyway, right after he gets off the escalator, he's walking in front of me, meets up with a drug dealer, and they slap hands (exchanging their appropriate items) and smoothly part ways. I wonder if the drug dealer knows where those hands have been. So much dealing.

Well, it just bugs me. You might have a grand time of it, too. First off, ride BART and have fun on there. Then, I dare you to walk through UN Plaza and not be depressed at the sight of homelessness there. Right on Market onto Grove, sharp right at the big fancy City Hall, walk fifty paces, can't miss 'em.

I don't know what the point of this post is. I don't have any solutions. I don't even know all the causes of homelessness. It just bugs me, and I want to know how to create solutions and understand their problems. That's not going to happen by giving the same dude a dollar every day after work. Or telling the guy pissing on the escalator that there are other ways he can relieve his issues.

I want homeless people to not be homeless if they don't want to be, and I want the homeless people who don't give a rat's ass about other people to either grow up or go form their own homeless colony on the moon or in underwater bubbles. But how to make this happen is beyond me right now and obviously beyond the city and state and nation and society. Gosh blam it. Shit.

*UPDATE
This article came out the day after I wrote this post: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-takes-data-driven-approach-to-poop-5621384.php

I'm optimistic but don't color me shocked me if it doesn't work.

Which, I suppose means I'm not that optimistic.

The World's A Lotta Crazy

"I don't mind being the neighborhood crazy. I just wish people wouldn't think I'm the only one."

- Bathrobe-clad lady drinking something from a water bottle while walking down the street

I chuckled at the first sentence but paused at the second. I think it's actually a bit of drunken profundity.

I had just left the library after working on some short stories. I spent the afternoon trying to capture the Heisenberg-esque mind of a crazy person, and here it was delivered to me.

Her quiet remark to herself forced me to think about how people view themselves. We're always evaluating ourselves, whether we want to or not, and comparing to the others around. Assessment of others can be seen as an instinct. Gotta know if someone's a friend or foe, that kind of thing.

Naturally, we take notice of the people around us. For the most part in modern society, I'd say people are less keyed into the survival bit (highly dependent on your occupation... obviously). Anything thereafter can be considered character judgement. What kind of person is this? They look like they'd hate socks stuffed with pinto beans. I bet in high school, they could never compare oranges to apples in the cafeteria.

We'll all come to our own conclusions about what Bathrobe lady really meant. There's a lot going on in her words, much of it sad, truthful, and sincere.

The angles from which we consider one another are plentiful, and people would probably benefit from (at least momentarily) considering the angles of those around them.

The Glazed Wall

So in my "About jey" page, I say that I don't mind people texting while on the bus. And I don't. But I do think it's a hilarious new norm.

I'm a suburban kid. If I had grown up in the city, I'd have seen what riders would have done without phones and Kindles and headphones worth $5. It may have looked sorta like what I saw today, but I'll never know.

Just about every single person's face is glued to a phone screen. Almost literally (I wish though, because that'd be hilarious).

And if they aren't looking at it, they're listening to something through headphones that suck their minds out their eardrums. They just stare listlessly into space.

To be clear, even if they weren't doing these things, I wouldn't want to talk to any of them. That's just not my jam, talking to strangers on a bus after work. So I understand the reasoning behind it. The dude sitting behind me just wants to relax and watch slasher films on his iPad, screams busting out his headphones, while the girl next to me shifts uncomfortably and continues cooing into the phone with whomever on some other bus (Oh, so her face was totally glued to the screen, HAH).

I get it. They have other things to do.

Me. I bet they're making all kinda wayward judgements of me too. I'm sitting there, super awkward, because those chairs can never be comfortable, and I sometimes scribble in a notebook, or I'm struggling to stay awake and my face keeps zigzagging across my chest like I'm trying to draw a figure eight with a pen in my mouth. To each her own.

I do, however, enjoy the off-chance that someone wants to strike up a conversation with me. It's a rare thing but enjoyable; perhaps because of its spontaneity and scarcity.

I wonder how consistent this aspect of nature is, though. I hardly think it's a phenomenon of technology. I mean, if everyone were just sitting there, I wouldn't try and talk to any of them. I like to daydream and that doesn't require teamwork. There's a lot of hubbub (here is where I cite evidence that you believe) that technology is killing people's ability to actual communicate with one another.

Well, maybe for some people, but my mouth isn't in a constant state of motion anyway, which leads me to believe people weren't made to always talk to each other. They pick and choose. It just so happens that now they're choosing to do more entertaining things because they can. I think that's fair. No need to force it.

So, there's my spiel on human disconnectedness. It is what it is. If you want it, you can try for it, but you may get shot down. Oddly, I think that happened even before people had phones.