Panhandlers:
One Day At a Time
by Kathleen Grassel
A meditation on the plight of the homeless
Recently in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where
I live, a panhandler was shot dead from a
parked car in a parking lot after asking for
money. The witness said the man fell back
with his face missing. The pair in the car
apparently high-fived each other and whooped,
"We got him," then ran over the
dead man's legs fleeing the scene.
Folks who used that parking lot knew
the panhandler as persistent but not aggressive.
A panhandler, so called from the resemblance
of the extended arm to a panhandle, is after
all rarely a dangerous person. The driver
of the car turned herself in after seeing
herself on TV, a parking lot video camera
having recorded the scene. What can be said
of the shooter who blasted the face off the
panhandler with a sawed-off shotgun? Police
have arrested the alleged gunman, a 17-year-old
boy. The two of them went to the car wash
to clean off what the police report described
as "high velocity blood spatter."
Then she went home and washed more of the
high velocity stuff out of her hair.
"A vicious response to a public
annoyance," so said a police investigator.
One can observe on a daily basis less vicious
responses to the omnipresence of panhandlers
here in the form of insults, studied ignorance,
and angry public demand that city government
"do something!" about these "vermin,"
making this event an extreme outcome of generalized
fear and loathing of a wholly marginalized
segment of the population.
I know some of these "public annoyances,"
although I prefer to call them people. On
my way home at a stop sign one of them asked
me for some change. It was Charlie, one of
our city's many homeless mentally ill who
manages one day at a time to stay alive in
the streets. I said sure and stopped to chat
for awhile. He was surrounded by the crushed
aluminium cans he'd picked up that day. He
counted the change I gave him, 82 cents, and
said thanks, that he hadn't eaten in three
days. There was an open half-full box of crackers
next to him which he says he will feed to
skinny dogs as they pass his way. Charlie
is 55, looks 75, and says often he hopes not
to see his 56th birthday. He asked me my name,
as always. He doesn't remember from one meeting
to the next.
He started talking about how he used
to be a history teacher in Texas. Everything
I know of Texas history is from Charlie. He
changed the subject to Vietnam and how he
killed thousands of people, at least he thought
it was thousands because his superiors would
report Vietcong body counts every morning
and it was always in the thousands. Then he
changed the subject to Jesus Christ, the only
one worth talking about, he says. The other
two-thirds of the Trinity could take a hike.
Two teenagers came along and asked Charlie
if he had any drugs. He gave over a pair of
pills he had in plain sight next to the box
of crackers.
I asked him if he knew the panhandler
who got shot. He didn't know who I was talking
about, but said some of those guys are worthless,
even dangerous. They'll steal your money AND
your aluminium cans if you don't watch 'em.
I said goodbye and pedalled off home. He waved,
said "thanks again for the change, sister."
He'd already forgotten my name one more time.
Texas history he doesn't forget. Starting
meditation that evening, I could not be the
person sitting alone on an impersonal planet,
that person who lets go of the planet and
then of herself to rest timeless in the love
and beauty of an immensity beyond experience
and thought. Rather I was stretched full out
in a dry wash among cholla cactus in the dreaming
place of bears, my cheek pressed flat against
memory of worn stone impressed with fossils
of long-dead fish who swam here when this
ghost ocean was covered with water, wishing
myself there in that pre-history before human
birth and its thoughtless cruelty. Unable
to unfasten myself from the earth, I was absorbed
into it, my heart too heavy and soft and bleeding
to outwit it. I sat meditation on the edge
of first lesson, watching. Those drops of
bliss accorded me were as from an intravenous
drip, God with the patience of stones, dribbling
into me what I could not gain for myself,
my veins running dry as the arroyo I could
not escape.
I suppose I think these people called
panhandlers are as worthy as anyone else of
God's favour, at the very least deserving
of safe passage, even while I know I'm not
in step with my Guru if it's true that He
says we further weaken these people by aiding
and abetting as I do their habits and way
of life. I asked a Zen friend, 80 years old
now, if he could make sense of no sense. He
never answers a question directly, but spoke
of the monks and nuns in other places who
beg for their daily food, the receiving of
which is not important, rather they provide
opportunity for passers-by to gain merit by
giving. I am not one to distinguish between
homeless persons and holy mendicants. I'm
not qualified to tell which is which. Who
knows, that panhandler might be the Christ;
God the Father and the Holy Ghost having long
since taken a hike. Sometimes there's nothing
left to do but go home and bake bread. I'll
probably take a loaf over to Charlie. Even
if the skinny dogs get it, I will have tried.
Kathleen Grassel lives in Albuquerque,
New Mexico where she works as a technical
writer, newsletter editor and graphics designer
at the Institute of Public Law at the University
of New Mexico.
This article was published in New Renaissance,
Vol. 7, No. 3 |
