I'll get back to the party later

This is going to be a really poorly placed post. Following the apology for a party and the final pieced together bits I am still collecting (that alone proving it was a thing of excess), I am going to write about those with the excess of nothing.

I read the blog Gods and Ghosts religiously. The writer is eloquent, homeless, and a heroin addict. She owns a little piece of my spirit and if I still lived in Portland, where street kids crashd in my house, she would always have a place out of the cold. You can't judge her till you have read the wisdom and poetry she puts forth. And I love that you'll get to know her for her mind before you dismiss her on the street. Her latest post is a little off her usual subtlety and a little more right there in bold face type socially conscious. Perhaps that's why I'm writing on it. I haven't had a serious topic in a while. Well, that and I didn't want to write an extensive piece in her comments.


Thanksgiving is a weird time to be homeless, not necessarily because of the emotionally fraught potential of the occasion—one which more than any other emphasizes gathering to family, hearth and home—but because it's somehow turned into the designated kickoff day for Let's Think About The Needy season…
It's a weird time because Average Joes and Joans drop their guard, allowing holiday-influenced bonhomie to inspire them to volunteer in some sketchy place downtown they Google Mapped, nervously parking the car around the block and hoping no one takes a piss on the paint job.

It's a weird time because for a few days, I'm not invisible.

Thanksgiving is a weird time for humanity.
The season finds people in working at shelters, the USO, and drinking in bars. And most of these people have families. A lot of them are escaping.
Even I have put time in at the USO and the bar. I've never worked at a mission. Sure I took clothes (when we out grew them) or food (when my family had it) because that's all I felt they really needed from me.
As I got older there were lots of everyday situations that I was more useful in. Bagging my cans separate and hanging them on the dumpster. I could live with out the deposit and someone else could live without having to dig thru' my garbage. Change, food, books (at first it was shocking how many were pleased with a book or pen and paper), but most often just a word or 2. Answering a question about how to get a new ID or where to go for a coat.
Yes, I realize, I am patting myself on the back a bit and I'll stop.
When I read her post I wanted to tell her “When someone tries to give you something unsolicited, please take it”. I find it is sometimes hard to approach someone, especially unsolicited. They could have even asked someone else but not me and I hesitate. And in the moment of hesitation I feel the shame that I am crumpling a bit of his or her pride and maybe taking a bit of humanity just because I want to, or think I can, help. I know I have no right to ask, but could you give me the gift of receiving.
But in reading I began to wonder if maybe the receiver really is letting someone off the hook that way. Do the givers feel then they don't have to do anything else? But I am I hopeful, young and naive. I want so badly to believe that it will maybe make them aware of how much they haven't done or that each time it become easier to do next time?
I don’t have the answers. I use to think I had some of them. I believed in the (use gruff voice here) “Hand up not Hand out”. I use to find assistance, jobs, training and education. I was helping THEM to make a difference in their own lifes. But after 7 years I left the Rehabilitation Service industry. By then I was glad to go. I loathed it when people asked me what I did and responded to my answer by saying That must be a very fulfilling job . I wanted to scream. NO, No it’s not! I felt dirty. I was too human for the job. Some I could help, some I couldn’t and it seemed more and more wouldn’t help themselves. I found myself going from wanting to help, to wanting to scream, to apathy and resentment. My life wasn’t much less desperate or complicated than theirs. I was petty and wanted someone to hold my hand sometimes, tell me how to solve my problems, pay for my education, find a way around the system for ME.
Do I give because I gave up on the pig picture fix, because it eases the guilt of that, because I have it, because you need it more than I, because it's easier than any other alternative? Like I say, I don’t know.
Maybe there are millions of people feeling this way. Maybe it happens this season because it is the time they give to their family. Maybe there are old values they remember from their grandparents about taking care of the community. It is too bad that they don’t think of it more often. It’s too bad they voted for tax cuts instead of for programs.
I just cant help but hope every season changes someone. You can't think your way into a new way of living—you have to live your way into a new way of thinking.

I have lapped up your words freely. I have given you nothing and yet you thank me. Today I am the receiver of your generosity. Perhaps it is the season of receivership and not the season of giving as society proclaims.