Entries for June, 2007
9:37 pm; May 20
So we've been kicked out of our apartment with the clothes on our backs and some directions on somewhere to sleep. The forecast for tonight is below 40 degrees, and I'm now in a McDonald's with Allison and Kaitlin to get away from the downpour of rain. We've got a good long walk ahead of us, so the rain is going to be a problem if we want to stay dry. The people at the counter are beginning to give us odd looks, as we probably look like a group of homeless kids dragging a cheap sleeping bag around. Food and shelter, what used to be insignificant amenities, seem like they will become a problem. I've heard that there are a few local soup kitchens nearby where we could get some breakfast in the morning, but as of now, we need to get out there and find a dry place to sleep. I'll need to have the girls take off their wet socks and stuff their shoes with pages from a phone book we picked up, and I'll probably need to find a cardboard box to sleep under. How often I make that thoughtless joke - irony is great. More later, as the rain has let up a bit and we need to make progress when it's relatively dry.
Written by jihwan at 10:16 PM.
3:17 am; May 21
I would give my car for a warm closet in which to sleep. I've never been so cold before. I've got a useless wet sweater sitting next to me and damp socks that don't do anything but soak my feet. It's well below 40 degrees, and the wind and rain laughingly cuts through my flimsy cloth sleeping bag. My toes feel like rubber and I'm really beginning to get scared that I'll freeze to death soon. We've found a relatively dry porch to camp out for the night, and the girls seem to be warm enough in their sleeping bag on the floor, protected from the storm. Stupid male bravado and stubbornness kept me on the cramped, steel-grated bench for the night.
The novelty of actually being out of the street has not yet really hit home, I suppose. I can't imagine what it would be like to live like this every day, not having a place to sleep, not having a single dollar with which to buy food, to be thrust out into the reality of actual poverty really makes one think. As I sit here scribbling this with numb fingers, body shaking incontrollably from the cold, I'm beginning to realize how easy it is to overlook people like me; to passerby, I'm just a young man who's probably been kicked out of his house and am aimlessly looking for ways to waste by. How many others are out there like me, who, despite outward appearances and external circumstances, consider themselves to be worthy of conversation, of affection, of love? How many times have I walked past a homeless person without a single glance or acknowledgement of the humanity of that soul? What really makes any of them that much different from me or Kaitlin or Allison? This is the sixth or seventh time the sheer cold has awakened me. Pneumonia is a real fear for me right now. I just want someone to talk to. The night is too long.
Written by jihwan at 07:59 PM.
11: 37 pm; May 22
We have a roof over our heads. That's more than we can say for last night, and gratitude for the bare minimum is something I must ingrain deeply into my consciousness. Trying to digest all that we've experienced this past day or so and categorizing them into the neatly organized filing cabinets of suburban rationalization is seeming more futile the more I try. Talking things over with friends helps ground my thoughts somewhat, but I feel like I've jumped into this project with an idealized image of being the smiling face of the new, socially just generation of humanity that can change the world. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to offer some of these people a decent conversation untainted by middle-class condescension. Naivete is the word of the day.
People are lonely. They're tired, hungry, and cold. They're used to being ignored on the street and taken for something sub-societal. I spoke with various people at St. Leo's Hospitality Kitchen, and George the army veteran said something about how people think the homeless should be thankful the basic necessities of life and that anything else is greed. He said that even when you're living out of a single pair of jeans and your biggest concern is where your next bed is, the homeless still desire the occasional luxury - a juicy steak, a nice jacket, a warm bed that doesn't reek of vomit and mildew. These are people. They're real people with real stories and personalities and values and dreams and favorite movies that get crushed further and further into the corners of their ragged suitcases to make room for heartache and pain. Every time I walk past a homeless person with eyes mindfully averted, I'm quietly letting him know that he isn't worth my time, that because of external circumstances his value as a human being, like the soles of his filthy, penniless shoes, has worn disgustingly thin. There's a lesson in all this somewhere, and it goes beyond the sugar-coated "be nice to homeless people" shit. I need to learn what it is.
EDIT in response to Shriki:
I get a sense of fear because saying a greeting like, "Hi, how are you?", just doesn't feel right. Saying it might make him say something and he might do something and... it's probably a really stupid reason to not speak to homeless people but breaking the ice is so very difficult.
That's part of the reason starting up conversations with these people is so important. I learned that if you are willing to open up to them more, then you'll soon be able to see the humanity in each of them. You have to be one of the very few people who are willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of stepping out of your comfort zone and bridging the horrible gap between us privileged kids and the far less fortunate.
The idea of giving change to them is okay but how sure are you that he or she will not buy drugs with it or alcohol?
The idea of giving change to them is not only okay, but is necessary. Of the many, many people I met on the street during the past couple weeks, I found that at least 8 out of 10 of those people were lucid, intelligent, and extremely unlucky. Not only unlucky to be in the situation they're in, but unlucky in that they don't have friends or family to fall back on. At all. In order for you or I to become homeless, we would have to fall through so many cracks in the system - relatives, friends, who would be willing to take you in. Many of these people, please realize, have no one to think about them or care whether they live or die. That's heartbreaking. And are you really afraid that they'll buy drugs and alcohol with the money you give them, or is that just a convenient excuse to not care? The addicts and alocoholics need just as much, if not more, care and attention and love. You and I have to start showing them that people DO care. It's hard, but it's essential.
And one question that always bothers me, why isn't it that a homeless person can have the ability to "start fresh" and attain a job or something? Is it impossible?
And yes, for many people, it's extremely difficult to get out of homelessness. It's hard to get a job when you don't have a mailbox or phone or home address as reference. It's hard to go into a job interview with dirty, smelly clothes and an unshaven face. It's even hard to get Social Security money because most of these people don't have access to, or simply don't know about the resources out there to help them get back on their feet. They live from day to day, from meal to meal, and they find it very difficult to plan ahead about things such as medical appointments for illnesses, job interviews, transportation to and from work, and even getting to a dry bed in a homeless shelter before they all fill up. And if they happen to land a low-paying job and secure someplace to live, they're only a step away from losing that job due to illness or transportation issues or rising living costs. Then they're back on the street. Many homeless people aren't perpetually homeless. They're stuck in a cycle of low-income poverty that they're out on the streets periodically depending on whether or not they made it to work that week.
I don't claim to know everything about it. But I did learn a lot from my experience. Most importantly, I am learning to love people as they are and not because they fit a certain socio-economic standard of life. The situation is very discouraging. But hey, it's got to start somewhere, and I learned that it can, and should, start with you and me. Hope that helps.
Written by jihwan at 08:38 PM.
Packing up the house for my parents' move to Korea is a veritable palette of uncomfortably juxtaposed emotions.
On the one hand is the liberating sense of sudden unhinged-ness, of a quite instinctual push from the nest, so to speak. I face the exciting vastness of having my school, my car, and the bounds of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans within my reach with no obligations to a place called 'home,' because simply, I will no longer have one. An intellectual vagabond, one may say.
On the other hand is the strange fact that my parents are now relinquishing their ties to myself and my sister after some twenty years of parenthood. Their days of changing diapers are over. They won't ever have to bus us around to little friends' birthday parties. Their days of kissing away our boo-boos [or, in my mom's case, yelling at me for stupidly impaling myself in the face with a whaling harpoon while playing in the sandbox, then glancing over her shoulder to make sure I wasn't REALLY dying] are long past. I'm going to miss them. I really am.
On the other hand is the reality of packing away all my belongings into neat little cardboard boxes and putting them away into storage for years to come. My second-grade report cards go into the box labeled MEADOWBROOK GOLD 3-Ply Bathroom Tissue. My Junior High Yearbooks are stacked in a box with the words A&W Hinged Hot-dog Container. My tiny trophies and ribbons from various competitions in which every little tyke 'wins' are left to collect dust in a box labeled CRAFT AMERICAN CHEESE - Keep Refrigerated Until Displayed. My childhood memorabilia and American consumerism: BEST FREINDS 4EVA LOL.
Forced observations of sappy reflections aside, I've come to the realization that there's only one real lesson to be learned as I write this entry.
I have three hands.
Written by jihwan at 04:27 PM.
It is silently breathtaking, yet indescribably frustrating, to read a work of literature that has captured a rare sliver of the human spirit within its pages.
Allow me to explain.
Breathtaking:
Through the infinite possibilities of language, a thin thread of humanity becomes an exquisite case study of the essence of man. A work may delve deep into the recesses of the human psyche, from the raging inferno of maddening hate to the verdant springtime of rapturous love. It may but lightly brush upon the subtlest shades of human emotion - a wintry flash of jealousy, an ever-still pond of contemplation, that wistful twinge in adieu. As the story slowly unravels with each soft crinkle of the page, the writer artfully pens into the reader's heart the kaleidoscope of radiant human experience.
Steinbeck's East of Eden. A book that changed literature for me. A writer whose language necessitates patience, quiet, and an ability to paint with one's mind. He opens the book with a meandering portrait of the Salinas Valley. He breathes lush meadows into the pages and trickles silver streams in between the black ink with the unhurried drawl of one utterly in love with the hue, fragrance, and texture of his world. Nestled within the "brown grass love" of this valley are the Trasks and the Hamiltons, whose lives present to the reader the consummate spectrum of human emotion. Steinbeck pours disparate experiences of humanity - love and hate, acceptance and betrayal, jealously and adoration, guilt and absolution, good and evil - into each and every crystalline drop of color in his work.
Frustrating:
..why can't I do that?
Written by jihwan at 01:56 AM.