WORLD OF THE HOMELESS

I was not too far from being a full fledged 'Homeless' person myself upon 'graduating' or practically booted out of the Green Gulch Zen Center. Fortunately I got a job as a sweeper at H&H Ship Services. I was squatting with my friend Joshua on haight and Ashbury after i left Green Gulch and it was Josh who got me the job. With my salary i was able to move into a cheap Hotel in the Missions and thus began my life among the Homeless.

The Westman Hotel was locate on 16th. and MIssion and was owned by an Indian family and it reaked of spicy cooking. My room was located way in the rear of the building overlooking a parking lot on one side and some rootops of the other. I felt like I was crawling out of a hell hole of my life while i was at this Hotel.

I still had my dreams of making it as an artist despite my set backs at the time and was planning to make a rebound through sheer dreaming and wishful thinking. The sketchbook kept me from going insane with despair.

Down on the ground from my window on the second floor of the building was the parking lot where at night drunks, drug addicts and prostitutes carried out their norturnal affairs and every so often i shared their sordid moans and groans as they mad it in the dark corners below me.

I found support through my friends like Josh and the guys at Green Gulch and later those at work to keep me from drifting into oblivion and made an all effort to find a proper space to live out of. Loking for rental apartments was the order of the day and from having to do it i learned an aspect about the City that not too many knew about unless they were like me in dire need of a place to live.

The City can be very unfriendly to those who were not of the right color or demeanor and looking for an apartment was a Cahllenge as well as a psycho-emotional experience.

All I had to my name was my old army jacket and some artworks in a portfolio that I had carried with me eversince I left Green Bay, Wisconsin. A few shirts and pants and my room was the size of a prison cell, it was my cell.

In some ways i was elated from the factt that i was in such a bind that the only way to escape was through using my own wits either that or perish into God knows what.

I have been humbled to my knees on on many occaisions throughout my life by events that had placed me at the mercy of what life had to throw at me and this was one of those times in mylife; I was staring at becoming a Homeless Person in San Francisco.

Everytime i got the chance to i would walk the streets and blended in with the crowd tasting their lives as they went about eking out a living doing one thing or another. The shop keepers behind grilled windows, the street peddlars and musicians, the Mission was never a dull place.

There were all kinds, the Whites, the Blacks, The Latinoes, The Chinese, The Indians and the Tourists and they all filled the street with life.

Sometimes when it got cold at night was when I really felt the chill of suffering among those who had no place to park themselves and there was like a silent pain written in the windows as the unfortunate stood staring into the darkness and cold outside.

A cup of hot coffee made to stretch for as long as possible so that one can justify for sitting at the tables taking shelter from the warmth of the place. One wonders where or what the mind must be dwelling at.

They came from all over to seek the thing that City had to offer whatever it was just as i was and they too had their stroeis to write most probably when their term was over in that phase of their llife.

Getting to know them it was a surprise sometimes to learn that they were no different from you, that they too were seeking for that which gave life some form of meaning, or simply trying to escape from one suffering into another drifting like a leaf in the wind.

Most Homeless Persons I met were those who had cut off every bridge of existence behind them, they had no way of falling back upon any hope for assistance from family or friends. These were the hard core Homeless, the despair and the down trodden, drug addicts and drunks the lost souls.

Most that i had the opportunity to talk to were far from dumb or stupid for they were the true seekers most of them willing to take the risks and forsake comfort for the sake of living free from being dictated by any form of system or institutions.