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.

Restaurants I've been to in SF

The Deli Pub restautrant sits at the top of the hill at Cortland Avenue as you come up from the Mission Street towards Bernal Heights. It was ran by my Lebanese friend Imad Yais and this picture was taken when I had a solo art exhibition here. The picture is of my son with the 'Chief' and His grand daughter Tracy.

At Just Deserts in San Francisco, cant remember on what street it was.

At Toni's Restaurant on Cortland Ave where I often had my breakfast when I was living on the same street.

Capturing people while they are eating or simply lost in a converstaion over a drink at restaurants has always been one of my favorite pasttime. I prefer to do portraits of people when they are not aware of me doing it and I do not know who they are.

From coffee shops in the rural areas in Terengganu to the places like the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, people seems most relaxed when they are involved in a quite sharing of thoughts and feelings over a cup 0f coffee or tea.

The Round Table Pizza Restaurant on San Bruno Avenue is another of those places you would havefound me hanging with my friend 'Buddha'Ron and his Mom Estelle. The boys working at the place before were mostly Indonesians and so i had a good rapport with them not to mention extra special services.

The Hunan on Haight, a Chinese restaurant was the Chinese restaurant for me when I was living in the area of Haight Ashbury, later on Stanyan and 2nd, Avenue. The food at the Hunan was spicy enough to my Malaysian taste and their service was next to excellent as i was a regular.

It is intriguing to watch couples having no conversation whatsoever as they sat there facing one another for an hour or so like they are lost for words or ran out of things to say to eachother over the years of sitting and facing eachother.

The Clarion Restaurant changed hands a few times that i was frequenting the place while living out of the Eastman Hotel a block from it on 16th. and Mission. It was hard to figuire out what to eat as the manu kept changing from Western to Chinese to Yuppie to Italian or was it Greek?

San Francisco is inundated by the Chinese Mom and Pop restaurants and these do well because of their budget prices and plenty to eat. For one who grew up in the East the food would have been considered expensive by Asian standards considering the ingredients used to make them. But the Honkies and the Blacks and Chicanoes , they dont know this. All they know it is 'One Ton soup' and the Emperor's fried wings... some spicy...with flied lies.

You find all kinds of interesting characters sitting in the restaurants and coffee shops in San Francisco and they each have an air of sophistication about them,like this Lady with the baret. I thought she could have passed for a writer or a Russian spy.

'THe Blue Muse' on Vallencia in the Mission District was often full of a younger group of clientele who would sit jibbie jabbering away over a cup of cafe late for an hour or so. If they eat it would a large salad of one kind or another just to be more in the 'Muse'.

Sometimes you ran into restaurants that have real out of the world paintings on the walls like this restaurant on Haight and Cole called the Double Rainbow.

When I sat and watched these three Chinese characters going at it in Cantonese at the counter I found myself lost for a while, I was back in Malaysia!

When you eat in any restaurant in the Noe valley, Castro district you feel like all the guys are not altogether guys and all the girls were not altogether girls. it was kida strange feeling for me when I first began exploring the Bay Area.

The 'Bouncer's Bar' was my watering hole when I was working on the water front at H&H on China basin. The Bar was decorated like a naval museum of antiquity catering to the dockworkers and seamen who frequented it. "Willie", the owner was a character worth to visit the bar for if you wish to learn about the history of the San francisco Water front.

The Mask we wear..

Acting is like a Halloween mask that you put on. River Phoenix

As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask. Erich Fromm

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask? Graham Greene

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. Oscar Wil

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
- George Bernard Shaw

Often the wounding goes so deep that we create masks and walls to hide behind as protection against further pain while we struggle with overcoming insecurity. So we become the persona that we are prepared to show, and hide the real self away.

Many African societies see masks as mediators between the living world and the supernatural world of the dead, ancestors and other entities. Masks became and still become the attribute of a dressed up dancer who gave it life and word at the time of ceremonies.

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. Jim Morrison

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation. Kahlil Gibran

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask. Victor Hugo

A mask of gold hides all deformities. Thomas Dekker

Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Joseph Conrad

The freedom to connect to the world anywhere at anytime brings with it the threat of unscrupulous predators and criminals who mask their activities with the anonymity the Internet provides to its users. Mike Fitzpatrick

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. Oliver Wendell Holmes