America’s Movable City
September 1st, 2010 by Robert McDowell
A fire broke out in Ashland, Oregon, last week. A neighborhood was evacuated and eleven homes burned to the ground. Amazingly, no one was physically hurt.
A day or two later, investigators determined that the fire was probably started by a homeless man who’d been using an abandoned shed in the area for shelter. Who knows what he did, exactly. Was he cooking something? Smoking? After the fact, it doesn’t really matter. The loss and the trauma last, and probably some anger, too.
Some of that—the anger—is misdirected. I know some neighbors who are angry that the homeless man was in the area at all, and some of them blame the man himself for his condition and his carelessness. Homeless himself, he became the instrument of creating homelessness.
I see it a little differently. Thinking of that hapless fellow person, I think of the many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, across our land who are sleeping in their cars tonight, if they’re lucky enough to have them, or sleeping on the cold ground, or in abandoned structures like that ticking time bomb of a shed in Ashland. I’m thinking of the many who won’t be able to sleep at all tonight, who will just wander. Who can begin to imagine what they’re thinking or feeling?
I see them as a vast, new, movable American city, perhaps only the first of more to come. More will come if we can’t figure out how to express our compassion with more creativity and constructive success. As a government, as a people, we need to build homes for the homeless, even if they’re just safe, sound rooms with a bath down the hall. We need to open our arms wider, embrace with more ferocious love, and invent new ways for people to support themselves and those they love.
I’m imagining all of us slowing down a little to dream this and make it so, just as I’m slowing down thinking of this and talking to you while I mourn the death of the poet, painter, playwright, actor, editor, publisher, and social activist, George Hitchcock, one of my dearest, most cherished friends and teachers. Thinking of him not so long ago and missing him, I wrote the poem that follows.
Reminder
I remember running into his house on Ocean View,
Full of myself as usual, chattering on and on
About all of the important things I’d done that day.
George sat in a red wingback chair and listened,
Never interrupting, like a man serenely waiting out a storm.
When I ran out of things to brag about he said,
“Today I planted a single row of beans.”
I felt so warm and foolish as he smiled.
I felt calmer, centered, good!
May we all slow down, take a fresh look at who and what we are, and may we fearlessly open our arms to the wide world.
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