Remarkable

September 4, 2017

Greetings from where I remark,

The sun hinted at a dramatic morning, slowly lighting the shape of the Wasatch mountain range.

The city is clean, the streets are lighted and well laid out in grids.  It has dedicated bicycle lanes.  It invited me to run through it and explore.

I had already sectioned the downtown area near my hotel and run with a group through Salt Lake City.  Skirting the walled compound of the Morman’s Temple Square, weaving through the canyons formed by tall buildings, out into the neighborhoods.  I knew most of the area within a day.

The second morning I ran to a small park I saw on the map, somewhere I could run without thinking about the few cars that were on the road in the predawn hour.  A block square, this patch of green holding in mature trees and low shrubs, pretending the city of glass and concrete wasn’t there.

The first time around the perimeter I saw a young man sitting on a bench.  “Good morning.” I said, giving a wave I incorporate into my natural cadence.  He said nothing.  I ran along the edge of the rectangle, and in the dim light I could see people sleeping in the grass.  I counted a dozen. 

They were wrapped in sheets and blankets, the ends twisted over their heads.  Wound like human tortillas in the grass.

I had crossed paths with the street people during the day.  Homeless people with roller bags.  With grocery carts.  With baby strollers.  Carrying whatever they had in plastic shopping bags or cardboard boxes. 

Someone said to me at dinner the night before: “I guess the homeless are becoming a problem.”  I know what he meant; some were becoming more aggressive in panhandling, some showing up in groups near the convention center, or where tourists would be found.  I know what he meant; but he said more than he meant.

None of this is remarkable.  Every city, any collection of people of any size in our civilization has a similar tableau.  People end up living on the street at the end of a many long stories.  The story with drug addiction, the one with mental illness, the one with abuse and numbing poverty.  The one that has all of those chapters.

On the second time around I said good morning to the man at the bench and this time he looked up.  Said nothing.  My eyes we adjusted to the dark under the trees and now on this time around I counted two dozen bodies nested in the park.  Tucked against a transformer, under a shrub, at the base of a tree. 

There is nothing remarkable about homeless people scrabbling to survive a block away from incredible wealth.  It happens.  We know about the reasons, we know about the myriad of choices and consequences and accidents and injustices and just bad luck.  It is not always fair, it is not always a question of fair.

The third time around I said good morning to the man at the bench and he said “Morning.”  Now I could see he had a bundle of clothes he had been using for a blanket.  He leaned on his knees and rested his head in his hands.  I cut into the park on a sidewalk that split through the middle.  I ran past more than fifty people sleeping in the grass.  Fifty.

I rarely feel fear running through strange cities, even in the dark.  There is not much to gain from bothering someone like me, and frankly there are not many people who could catch me if they wanted to.  But for a fraction of a second I felt unnerved.  This image of four dozen walking wounded rising up from the grass and surrounding me flashed in whatever part of my brain that says I should be afraid.

The moment passed, but it left me with the question of how we would respond to being asked for spare change if it was a group of fifty that was asking. 

I came to the other side of the park and stopped at a corner and watched.  Some of the people sleeping on the ground had moved to the playground and were taking seats on the swings.  Some kind of morning meeting, in an almost comical setting.  Several men, a few women, their blankets draped over their shoulders, gently swaying on the swings, a few leaning against the poles.  Starting their day.  Not strategizing, not organizing.  Not rising up against the powers that ignore them.  Just getting through the morning so they can get through the rest of the day.

I said good morning and a few looked at me and responded.  It was a strangely intimate moment.  I had forgotten about judging anyone, guessing if they drank too much or didn’t believe in God or stole something from a widow to buy crack.  I forgot that I was a capitalist and that they might be casualties of the free market system.  I didn’t wonder what political party put them where they were, or kept them there.  The thing we had in common was the empty park and our empty pockets. 

In the city near me there are homeless people. There is nothing remarkable about that.  They have no power, no voice, no leverage.  They are not organizing, not hiring lobbyists, not marching in protest, not testifying before congress.  They have enough problems to occupy their day just surviving.  Finding food, getting a place to sleep, eking out an existence that is one cold night away from no existence.  

What is remarkable is that it is not remarkable.

Hope this finds you giving them a hand,

David

Copyright © 2017 David Smith