Vagabonds

Have you ever seen the way old homeless men smoke? They caress the cigarette, loving it, consuming it, kissing it right down to the butt. They suck the happiness out of it until there is absolutely nothing left - swallowing its last breath.

Walking with their heads down, looking for lost change, they will pick up discarded cigarettes from the floor and smoke them. They scavenge the sidewalk like shriveled human shrimp.

I mean, what's the difference in currency between a nickel and a mostly used up cigarette anyway?

I think what bothers people about homelessness is the reminder that we are all one disaster away from being right there with them. It's why we avert our eyes when we see a bum asking for change. It is a mirror we cannot bear to look into. To meet his eye is to acknowledge his loss, to feel his pain and realize the difference between us is a frightfully small one. Sure, homeless people drink and do drugs and acquire or have preexisting mental illness, but I'd bet most of those habits were inherited in response to having their world crumble out from under them. I think I'd drink and do drugs too.

Oh wait, I already do!

But really, there's something about homelessness that scares us. I took a course in college that talked about monstrosity and what it means to be monstrous. What I took away from it was that for things to be monstrous they must resemble ourselves; ghosts, ghouls, beasts, zombies. We have to see the humanity in the thing to lend it credence. It must be equal parts us and equal parts other. Take The Exorcist for example. It scares us because we're susceptible to the evils of demonic possession; to our own passions and furies, jealousies and resentments. Why do slasher films frighten us? Because we might fall victim to a random act of violence ourselves, or, perhaps, become the perpetrator. We rubberneck at grizzly highway accidents because we understand it could have been us; horribly maimed, deformed, crippled or disfigured forever.

When we confront poverty we are confronting an aspect of ourselves. We confront our vulnerabilities and fears; of dependency, weakness, loneliness. They are unclean and unloved, doomed and afraid.

And so are we.