Token Diversity

I was thinking this morning while riding the bus and MAX over to the car show this morning, and I was suddenly struck with a bunch of interesting ideas for poetry. You thought I wasn't poetic? I'm not, but writing for its own sake when in the mood is highly satisfying. Plus I want to inundate the Veridian this year. I'm hoping that I can displace some of the writing even worse than mine, which they inevitably have to publish because they can never get enough submissions due to their substandard publicity.

After my escapades with my social experiment downtown, I suddenly have this fascination with society's detritus: the sorts of wackos and homeless people that you kindly ignore on the bus and street. Among "normal" and "respectable" people, there is an extremely strong tendency to try to ignore the very existence of all these people. When you are young and encounter panhandlers or homeless nuts ranting about Jesus and the apocalypse with your parents, they always make sure to quietly murmur something like, "Just ignore him, dear." So, you grow up behaving precisely the same: ignore them at all cost. And maybe that's socially the best option. By acknowledging their existence, you are implicitly validating their panhandling, ranting, etc. This type of behavior is not socially or economically desirable. Furthermore, most panhandlers actually either make a substantial amount of money or use their earnings to buy drugs. Regardless, the point is that we have an entrenched form of conduct in these situations.

This morning, I was sitting near this old guy on the train who possessed an extraordinary scent of urine, and I thought about our social convention. There was a rather sketchy-looking character reciting Revelations from the Bible to his fellow rider, who appeared to writing furiously. By the simple virtue of the fact that these people live either on the street or in some kind of equivalent squalid condition, they probably possess very interesting life histories. Not interesting in a positive way, but still quite compelling. It seems very difficult to make informed decisions on social issues without really knowing the circumstances that lead to problems like homelessness and drug use in the first place. I can make a bunch of suppositions about socio-economic background and education, but these explanations are grounded in common sense, not real observations. I think next time I have some time to kill and am in an appropriate situation, I'll share a few words with these seedy people. Thankfully muggings are rare enough in Portland during broad daylight that I doubt there's more than a shade of possible danger.

If nothing else, it will be a good primer in the street smarts I will desperately need to gain if I ever end up at U Chicago. I'm the kind of person who would be target practice for the gansters of the south Chicago ghetto.