Dragondog Media Arts

Featured Art of the Day: Drum Circle 1 - DragonDog Media Arts Conga drums in Sunday Night Drumming Circle. Portland, OR

Drum Circle 1 - DragonDog Media Arts Conga drums in Sunday Night Drumming Circle. Portland, OR

I often say that you don't know what a person's path was that put them in front of you. Hence my trying to approach everyone I meet as an equal. I try incredibly hard not to make assumptions about anyone even if I don't seem to ever get the same in return.

The houseless have many paths, many stories. I've noticed quite quickly that I don't have to ask what their path was that brought them to this tiny little half of a house on one of the roads that take you to the Oregon coast. The houseless are more than willing to tell you without provocation. Just looking at some, unintentional overhearing, and plain old observation is enough. There are times when it rips your heart out. At the same time, it fills you with anger at the indignity some have suffered after giving their lives to work, toil, blood, and sweat. Veterans who are still very proud to have served, officers included, living in vans and still treating each other as battle buddies.

Within the first week of being a part of the day shelter community, I heard a baby crying; it was the unmistakable cry of a newborn. I didn't hover like some to see that it was a life that was borno into poverty. For that child, their struggles had just begun. I sat in the corner and choked up for a moment wondering if this was the life that they would never escape and if people such as these I was surrounded by, even the two wonderful women who worked there, would ever be treated as human beings.

Nick is full of stories. Long drawn out tales of drinking and camping and girlfriends and pets. Going on even if I was out of earshot or looking off into space. Every now and again, he takes a fatherly approach (despite the fact that I am 18 years his senior) when dispensing advice. He told me the three rules to being street:

1 - Trust no one.
2 - If you want to keep it, keep it with you.
3 - Never, ever tell anyone where you are.

If you listen to the life stories of the houseless, you quickly learn how easy it is to end up that way, where the showers and the food boxes are, the approximate locations where folks you haven't met (yet) are camped out. The biggest bit of information that is useful to me amongst the rambling stories is where to park at night. Although I am well familiar with many out of the way places to park and blend in, the forests with their logging roads, I never quite have enough gas to get there and back into where I can make things happen.

It would be, in some respects, better to not have a tented pickup that sticks out. In this suburban environment, there are lots of parks and natural areas where everything you can stuff into your backpack, into the many pockets you're sure to have and your feet are all you need. But I'm a slave to a modicum of comfort and being able to get where I need to get when I need to.

I don't know why some people go on about their past adventures. Could be not having someone to talk to, could be mental health issues, could be the cheap 40oz beers that linger on their breath until they gather enough cash together for the next 40. Just to be clear, less than half of the people I have encountered have that scent of stale beer and despair; most just don't have the money it takes to afford a roof and walls. Some have a record, most not. There are the broken and the able bodied. There are very smart people and those that have an intelligence that can only be attributed to years of the experience of basic survival.

You begin to notice those you have spoken, shaken hands with, and sat eating the same lunch while waiting to throw your laundry in or take a shower standing and waiting to cross an intersection. You begin to notice things and people you wouldn't normally notice. The couple whose little car is packed solid grabbing their night time gear and hurrying into the woods. Not some strung out young couple, but people who look like the local elementary school teacher and her mid-management husband fallen on hard times that they never expected and weren't prepared for caught them off their guard.

One thing that I have not an abundance of. Easy laughter and people recognizing the simple blessings.

Ansel Adams weeps. No. Just no.

Trump made it a lot easier for oil companies to drill in national parks Happy 100th birthday!