During my homeless year I practiced invisibility. Move quickly carry nothing. The longer I was out there the more modes of life amongst the houseless I found. Some were experienced old-timers. Once called Hobos. These moved from city to city. The hoarders. ...see above. A type of Hobo but sedentary. They establish territory and hid/took comfort beneath mobile found objects. Greenhorns. Like I was. Temporary citizens of the streets. Others middle term wanders. If they stay, they'll join the hopeless.
The hopeless: ...disturbed or addicted. They are also temporary as their mortality is the highest. The very young or with children are an entirely different nation of want. They’re the institutionalized houseless. They exist within the System. …from which there may be no escape.
Mind this is based on what I lived more than 10 years ago. It has since gotten far more complex, and dangerous. Unlike in my time. There are now Homeless Encampments the size of small towns. The Darwinian dystopian social order in these I cannot imagine and hope I never have to.
People's Park in Berkeley has become a permanent homeless encampment, rife with drugs and dealing. I try to avoid it, and always keep at least a street between it and me, preferring to avoid its environs altogether. To walk through it would be seriously dangerous, I think.
ReplyDeleteThat's not what the dream was, was it?
Z
No, my friend it was not.
ReplyDeleteBéla Tarr has also described "The Turin Horse" as the last step in a development throughout his career: "In my first film I started from my social sensibility and I just wanted to change the world. Then I had to understand that problems are more complicated. Now I can just say it’s quite heavy and I don’t know what is coming, but I can see something that is very close – the end."
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