“Excuse me, Sir,” the man called out. “I’m starving. Can you help me please?”

Frank was out in the streets again struggling to move his broken body this way and that way as he pivot-twisted and zigzagged from curb to curb only to give up from exhaustion and wander right down the middle of the road, getting run over by humans in cars and trucks be damned and indeed goddamned. Spring 2018 in Seattle, Washington. Giant construction cranes hovered overhead like those gigantic Martian battle tripods in the 2005 War of the Worlds movie. The Emerald City, once the Jet City, has now become the City of Cranes, a muddy, noisy, chaotic mess of hope, despair, greed, beauty, boondoggles, and opportunity.

I shared this with Rockcatcher, one of my managers as I came into work thru the employee entrance. He earned the nickname for catching a large, softball-size rock bouncing down the mountain directly into his face when he and a few others were climbing over in the Olympics. Snagged the rock with both hands without toppling backwards down the cliff, too. Both of us, however, had encountered Frank plunging into traffic to declare his hunger.

“Oh, yeah, he’s the guy with the snot rockets,” said Rockcatcher. “One time I told him to get his ass out of the street before he got run over, too. Like, ‘Go home, Frank, go home before you get accidentally get killed out here.”

“Snot rockets?” I repeated. The term grossed me out enough I felt my guts clutch up. “Oh my god, don’t say that!” I said with a weird throb of cringe and giggle.

“Yeah, you know,” Rockcatcher said with a loopy grin.

Frank Dave is a disruptive reminder the Recession, the Great Global Recession that began back in late 2007, is still not over. Yes, the Great Global Recession still burns and smolders  even tho declared over years ago, the statistical measurements and opinionated pronouncements of economic pundits and financial wizards both left and right be damned. The sprawling metastasis of homeless encampments attest to the brutal divide in a financial system ripped by a bizarre duality where the economy improves and worsens at the same time. He is a homeless man. Been out on the streets for many, many years. He’s one of the dirtiest, filthiest looking humans I’ve ever encountered in my 50-some years. Unsurprisingly so, perhaps, as his limbs remain contorted in rigid yet elastic permutations. The man clearly suffers from neuromuscular degeneration as well as from psychological challenges. Sometimes Frank’s mind is sharp. Focused. A vanguard of intellect. Most of the time, however, Frank appears lost in a wildfire haze of cognitive impairment. He panhandles and wanders everywhere.

I first encountered Frank Dave over 10 years ago. Met him in the Cascade neighborhood of Seattle, the area gobbled up by billionaire developers and absorbed into South Lake Union. He asked the exact same question then as he does now in 2018.

“Excuse me. Excuse me, Sir. I’m starving. Can you help me please?”

The first few times he asked I shook my head no and moved on. Felt terrible about doing so, too, especially since my family and I had lost so much in the Recession. But what to do? Immediately, that is? One can say the man is out there by choice. Yet his choices and our perception of such choices are conditioned by the vaster economic-political-financial-sociocultural system we all abide within. Even if all food, shelter, clothing, bathing facilities, and health care were provided to him without charge, would he still choose to stagger around the streets of his maritime city? If so, would he be allowed to do so? As a danger to himself even if wild, deludedly free, and dependent on random handouts? Or as a shame no system even the most magnanimous is acceptable to the man? Then again perhaps such truly democratic socialist systems, once established, won’t ever produce more homelessness.

There is, however, a component of human nature, a component as contrarian as hell, regardless of how social a bipedal mammal we are, is determined to thrive free of all constraints. Such individuals cannot be restrained and tamed. They are wild. Such people serve as torchbearers and sages and crazy people and metaphorical mirrors. We are thus reminded we are the ones behind bars, and we put ourselves there. Frank Dave may be such a man. Even so, for our society and its human system to generate and allow for such mundane inhumanity, a inhumanity worsened by the despair and helplessness of those such as myself who have attempted to help others, have agitated for political reform and economic revolution, have voted for policies to help people such as Frank with serious health challenges, is a damn horror worse than shame. What disturbs you more? Our homeless crisis, opioid epidemic, political corruption, growing income inequality, inefficient taxation, financial despotism, and other ugly things of our capitalist system, or me writing, “fuck” as in fuck this damn, stupid system” we all built?

“Excuse me. Excuse me, Sir, I’m starving.”

Ah, I was ready this time!

“I have some energy bars,” I said and dug around in my daypack. “Here, have an energy bar!”

“I HATE energy bars!” Frank yelled, yes, actually yelled, and screwed his face up in disgust. There was no hesitation in his loathing.

I, however, felt dumbstruck. My jaw even dropped. Whoa!

“You must not be all that hungry then,” I mumbled and hurried by on my way to work.

Truth was, and is, he really does appear to be starving. The man’s all skin, bones, and rags. He clopped around in broken shoes and matted hair. Body and clothes all seem to blur into the same color of a wet, grey, muddy construction pit.

On this April day in 2018, I nod hello to him as I feel a mix of grotesque repulsion and heartbreaking compassion. He stagger-jerked in and out of traffic excusing himself and announcing his hunger. I walked towards him but headed straight for the back entrance to work.

Even if I were to take Frank home and feed him, he wouldn’t stay. He may not even like or want what I had to offer. He might take something he saw and desired without asking me if he could have it. He would jerk-stagger back outside into traffic to declare he’s starving to the next person. Some one might accidentally drive over him with their little Prius or their big ass SUV, and then as I was the one who had invited him in then let him leave on his own accord, long-lost relatives would pop up and sue the hell out of me. All these are fears and prejudices, of course, burdened with woulda-shoulda-couldas and blame games and the corrosive moronic stupidity inherit in our quarrelsome culture.

Frank represents the lack of health care for all as a pillar to honor and buttress our society. Uh…health care? What health care? Oh, as a public service without charge? Including mental as well as dental? Yes, health care for all, please! Instead we allow ourselves to get worked over ideologically rigid arguments over terminology from the 18th and 19th Centuries. The notion of what do we do as human beings to integrate our individual liberties and our social responsibilities rarely makes a dent in our anger and self-righteousness. If more of us, not even all of us, practiced the practices of kindness, forgiveness, acceptance, compassion, and love without attachment, gosh, what may be possible? People such as Frank and the people who get angry upon seeing the homeless are both ticking time bombs. They tock and tick and eventually will explode in the bowels of an otherwise glowing economy bereft of health care for all and based upon greed, exploitation, and ignoring what isn’t pretty or nice.

Today I heard him deeper. I didn’t exactly hug him with elephant ears, however, as I marched across the street between cars.

“Excuse me,” Frank called out. “Excuse me, Sir, I’m starving! Can you help me, please?”

I chose to ignore him this time. Again. I strode forward as if into battle with a gaze so steely my eyes hurt.

“Hey! Excuse me, Sir,” he called out again.

I kept walking. Seconds felt anchored down by years.

“SIR!” he yelled out in a mix of disbelief and rage and hurt.

Shit. Haven’t heard him blurt out with such anguished intensity before. Ohhh, man. Damn. I kept on walking. Wasn’t gonna let myself cry. After all, my pain and discomfort were nothing, nothing at all, compared to his. I meant the man no disrespect. I’ve written him off, I realized.

Just as Frank Dave wrote me off. He turned to the next person, an oblivious hipster dude with scarves as baggy as loose snake skin twirled beneath his beard around his neck. Frank’s beard, however, overpowered all like a Moses gone to Hell and back with burning bushes gripped in both fists.

“Excuse me, Sir…”

Seattle was already full of newcomers and more crowded in. In the corner of my eye, I saw the young bearded guy with the snaky scarves stop in consternation, pivot, and flee. Sooner or later, however, as Nick Hanauer, an outspoken blend of venture capitalist and liberal progressive from this same City of Seattle and one with an equally rare mix of heart and vision, likes to warn his “fellow plutocrats” the “pitchforks are coming.” There may well be a zombie apocalypse of sorts, except all of us will be the zombies turning on each other in polarized rage, blame, and vindictiveness. We can choose otherwise, however, and to succeed we must choose to work together. None of us will do so alone. Eventually the loneliness kills.

Every time we make excuses to abandon our fellow human beings, we still abandon them. Each time we abandon our fellow humans, we abandon more and more of our humanity. The more we do so, the more we abandon ourselves and abdicate responsibility. What steps do we take as a species to address our global challenges here? One on one may be great for two, yes? Is such truly a step forward towards solutions, however, or another example of the notorious shortsightedness of our species?

 

William Dudley Bass

Saturday 7 April 2018 – Saturday 16 February 2019

Seattle, Washington

United States of America

Earth

Notes: The names of the characters including Frank Dave and Rockcatcher were changed to protect their privacy and dignity. Mr. Hanauer is a well known public figure who warned the rich about those pitchforks back in 2014 in the wake of the early Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter.

Copyright © 2018, 2019 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we humans establish our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.