Rainy Morning Homeless Meditations

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain

Scene 1

It’s 5:12 in the morning. Rain falls. Elmer the husky and I walk through the neighborhood. It’s Tuesday—garbage pickup day. All the refuse/recycling bins stand at attention on the sidewalks.

Across the street, I see a woman with long hair (no hat) carrying a large plastic tote. She moves briskly from each recycling bin and digs out returnable cans and bottles. She clearly has a system in place. I hear rattling in the tote as she advances. She’ll have it filled in two blocks. Then what? I sense a ride is waiting for her not far away. A two-person Tuesday canning team. They’ve got it worked out. The early bird gets the can.

Scene 2

Rain falls. I tug Elmer out of the car for another morning walk, this one at 7:30 in a forested park, frequently populated with unpleasant dog owners. A battered, duct-taped gray, sagging sedan from the 90s pulls up alongside me. No license plates. It’s a homeless domicile for sure. They all have the same look. A tall, younger and bearded man emerges from the sedan. He’s vaping. He’s exuding an unmistakable homeless vibe. He opens a rear door and out bound two short-haired mutts. One is missing a back leg. Both are wearing sweaters. He doesn’t leash them up. They romp to a tree, take a piss, then start roughhousing with each other. The man and I make eye contact. He nods. I say GOOD MORNING. He sort of grunts a greeting. Elmer wants to join the dogs but we move in a different direction.

I consider: this homeless man with two dogs, drove to a park in the rain and had them wearing sweaters. To me, this dichotomy offers hope.

Scene 3

I’m sitting in a coffee shop across the street from my dad’s assisted living center. Rain falls at nine in the morning. I’m writing about the homeless in longhand and I look out the window and observe a homeless man wearing multiple layers of clothing skateboard down the sidewalk carrying various possessions, including what appears to be a toilet plunger or a pogo stick. I can’t quite make it out. He’s wearing a seat cushion on his head; it’s tied up like a bonnet.

Scene 4

A few minutes later in the coffee shop, I look out the window and see a young homeless man across the street striding down the sidewalk. He stops and bends over to tie his shoes. He can’t do it. His hands are in the right spot but he can’t tie his shoes. He keeps trying and failing. He keeps at it for a minute then give up, straightens up, and continues on his way in the rain.

Scene 5

Thirty minutes later, a homeless man wearing a safety vest steps in front of an abandoned storefront. Rain falls. He stares at a large window. He obviously sees his reflection because he acknowledges it. I watch him start a conversation with the refection, which is either himself or a version of himself. Maybe he sees someone else entirely, a ghost or some Dorian Gray thing. This sight comes to me as I sit in my car, stopped at a four-way intersection. No one is behind me so I idle and watch. Is his conversation coherent, practical, delusional, cathartic? A car appears behind me. Time to move on.

Oregon Tavern Age: Afternoon Images

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

Rain falls on a weekday winter afternoon. I sit in OTA country drinking a well gin and tonic and collecting my thoughts.

A rerun of a a Portland Trail Blazers’ loss plays silently on television. This NBA franchise is totally irrelevant to the cultural life of Portland, and all of Oregon for that matter. I can’t believe anyone pays money to attend their games. And to think I wrote a book about the Trail Blazers. That seems like a millennium ago.

A U2 song from the 80s plays. It just doesn’t pull me in like it used to. I’ve lived long enough to see rock become totally irrelevant as a social force—rap and hip hop, too.

Three OTA men sit at the bar. The talk is low. An OTA man enters with a pit bull puppy who greets the other men with gusto and practically takes a seat on a stool! Get that beast a beer and make it dark one!

Man and his dog. An old story. Maybe the oldest one of all, older than creation or the flood. It has always baffled me that the Bible doesn’t contain a single story about a dog. Surely Jesus had one following him around.

A homeless man walks in the joint. He sets his worldly possessions near the entrance. He barely moves across the carpet and takes a seat at the bar. He slumps over. He looks spent or dead. The bartender puts a can of beer on the counter for him.

The dog owner brings the puppy over to meet the homeless man, whom he apparently knows. The puppy rousts the homeless man and he resurrects and engages with the dog. He talks to him. He pets him and scratches his back.

Dog heals ailing man. An old story I know something about.

My 60th birthday has arrived. I feel better physically now than when I turned 50. As for my creative mind, it feels stronger, too. Perhaps nearly dying eight years ago had something to with that. I got stronger on the comeback.

Earlier today. I searched for my homeless friend Mark to share the good news that I’d arranged for an outreach worker to meet him on the streets and possibly move him into housing. After almost three years of trying, this is the closest we’ve come. I want this for my friend. He’s going to die soon if he doesn’t get into housing and he is ready to get off the streets.

Mark’s a year younger than me.

The federal government may or may not shut down. I believe I’ll live long enough to see a major political party go the way of the Whigs. The Whigs went away incredibly fast and I sense that will happen to the Republican Party as well.

The homeless man slumps over again. The bartender leaves him alone.

My thoughts are collected. I finish half the drink and leave.

Oregon Tavern Age: The Caregiver

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

It was 10:30 in the morning on a weekday. Rain and gray dominated the landscape. I sat inside an OTA joint, not far from where my dad resides in assisted living, drinking a Guinness.

Should I really have been drinking a dark beer in a dive bar on a weekday morning? Well, it wasn’t my fault! I was reading back issues of the New Yorker in the library but parents would not contain their snot-nosed, booger chomping, ass digging, screaming brats in the library so I had to leave 15 minutes after I arrived. Not a single librarian said anything to the parents or the brats. Those kids and parents needed a good tongue lashing from an old school, blue-haired librarian from the halcyon days of quiet libraries where everyone whispered. The kids also needed a good country lickin.’

I was sitting at a table facing the slot machine and writing in my journal. A young woman wearing day-glo orange scrubs played one of the machines. I recognized her as one of the caregivers from my dad’s facility and had spoken to her on several occasions. She had previously told me Dad is her favorite resident because his room is always ship shape, he always treats the staff with respect, and doles out free candy bars.

My most recent conversation with her had occurred several days before. Dad and I were in his room discussing my encounter with a bicycling homeless man in the early morning under a full moon while walking the husky. It was such an indelible moment that I had written a poem about it (see previous blog entry to read the poem) and was discussing the nature of it with Dad, a fine poet himself back in the day.

As Dad and I talked, the caregiver poked her head into the room and said, “I just had to tell you that you two have the most interesting conversations and that sometimes I listen to them from the hall.”

Far out!

I laughed at her remark, smiled, and briefly recounted the full moon rider story. She said she wanted to read the poem. I told her I would provide a copy.

So there the caregiver was playing slots and I surmised she was on a break from work. She was not drinking.

I see this sort of thing all the time in OTA country.

She stood up from the machine and turned my direction. Her face lit up with recognition and she walked over to me.

For the next five minutes we talked. She indeed was on her break. She had another 20 minutes. Once again, she told me how much she liked Dad and then asked me if he had any memory issues. I said absolutely not and asked why. On Valentine’s Day she had found him crying in his recliner and went up to console him, asking why he was crying. He told her it was my step mother’s birthday and always a special day for them over the 30 years of their marriage before she passed away in 2020. The caregiver wanted to know if that was a real memory and I said indeed it was.

She had to get back to the game and I told her much I appreciated her caring for Dad and other residents. I said her wages should be tripled and I wish I could tip her, but the rules prohibited it. She thanked me anyway and left.

I wrote for another five minutes and barely touched the beer. I got up to leave and then made a quick detour to where the woman was playing. On my way over I fished out a $20 bill from my wallet and crumpled it up.

She turned to me and smiled. I said I’d just found a $20 bill on the floor and that she must have dropped it.

I gave it to her and she nodded. I walked out into rain and went home.

Full Moon Homeless Rider

NSP Meditations, Poetry

It’s a full moon, five in the morning.

Elmer and I walk down a path of bark chips.

We spooked the old beaver in the creek.

The heron posed where he always does.

We’re taking a longer walk than usual.

Why not?

It’s a full moon and a sky so clear I can see the Sea of Tranquility.

I hear a crunching noise behind me.

Elmer and I turn.

It’s a homeless man riding

a black bicycle at breakneck speed.

Bark chips fly.

No lights.

Right toward us!

He’s bearded and wearing

a black stocking cap

and black duster.

I jump out of the way and pull Elmer with me.

I shout GOOD MORNING!

He says nothing.

The rider veers off to another path.

He leans deep into the turn

like riders do in velodromes.

I watch him cross a bridge

and pop a mini wheelie

under the full moon.

It lights him up like that scene from ET.

Only he’s on the ground,

going somewhere.

Walk This Way!

NSP Meditations

Elmer the husky and I set out for our third walk of the day. Destination on a bright and dry Friday: the grocery store to see homeless Mark from the Old Crow Book Club and buy a copy of the newspaper advocating for the homeless that Mark peddles for a few bucks a week.

As I walked with my new dog, it occurred to me that I was walking specifically to meet my homeless friend so he could meet my dog and derive some small cheer from that experience. It also occurred to me that my habit of venturing out to see Mark is in no way unique. Many people in Portland and across Oregon and elsewhere undoubtedly venture out alone, with dogs, or friends and family to meet a specific homeless person in their circle and help administer to their needs. This is a subject almost wholly unwritten about as far as my reading goes, but I seem to write about it all the time because it intrigues me.

We stopped at a red light. I heard screaming down the street and looked. A young homeless woman wearing a bra and pajama bottoms was weaving toward us and having a loud and angry conversation with the wind. She had apparently been wronged and was pissed.

Elmer sat down. He watched her as she passed and his ears stood at attention and his face appeared confused. As Mark once memorably told me, “Dogs don’t speak tweak.”

We rounded a corner and the entrance to the grocery store came into view. No Mark. One day, I’ll never see him again, perhaps sooner than later.

Elmer and I walked the sidewalk across the street from the store. I saw an elderly bearded homeless man with long black hair standing where Mark usually sits. He had to be pushing 70-75. An elderly homeless woman slouched in a walker next to him. She was eating a hot dog.

The man saw me and Elmer and broke into a big smile.

“Hey,” he yelled, Aerosmith said to ‘walk this way!’”

A homeless man quoted a lyric from an Aerosmith classic. He yelled it!

I waved and Elmer and I walked away. I just knew that man had seen Aerosmith back in the day, probably in 1978 during the Draw the Line tour at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland. He was on top of the world then. He held that lighter high in the air.

Prayer Group

NSP Meditations

Four white women in their 303 and 40s sit around a round table in a coffee shop in tony and liberal neighborhood. Their coffee drinks, phones and a big black Bible rest on the table. It’s some kind of prayer/scripture reading group. The Bible looks very King James version.

It’s a weekday morning in winter. The women just dropped their brats off at school.

I watch them from a distant table. They take turns reading aloud something from their phones, then closing their eyes, then one of them says a brief prayer.

There is a clearly a leader of the group. She’s running the show.

I’ve seen prayer groups in coffee shops for decades, all over Oregon. I’ve never understood why some Christians meet in busy cafes, with music playing, conversations going on, and coffee making sounds dominating the ambiance. Why not meet in a private home? Are they performing for the rest of us? It sure feels like it to me. Perhaps they gain moral courage by displaying their faith.

Jesus did say, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”

The group must have missed that declaration.

I supposes the same could be said about a group of Marxists meeting in a coffee shop (are there any Marxists left in America?), reading passages aloud from the Communist Manifesto and discussing how they’re more relevant than ever. I’d really like to see such a group in a coffee shop near me. I might even join them!

As I watch the women, I wonder what it would be like to sit around the table with them and participate. I know the Bible well. I’ve got my favorite lines, metaphors and stories.

Would they let an atheist join them?

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