Sheila's Prayer

Yesterday, we went to visit Oscar and Sheila, two of the recyclers in Redemption who play a somewhat smaller role.  I first met the two of them back in April, wandering around some industrial facilities in West Oakland.  At that time, they were simply looking for a decent place to sleep.  Where they might find adequate shelter and warmth in that area, I had no idea.

For the last several months, though, they have apparently established a “home.” Tucked at the end of Ettie Street in West Oakland you will find a small area of huddled shopping carts, covered in tarps, with a few blankets in between them.  Scattered underneath the carts and around the blankets caked in filth, you will find all kinds of odds and ends: a piece of an old sofa, a plastic container with a half-eaten bagel, a suitcase filled to the brim with Oscar’s cherished books.  In the farthest corner of their little encampment is their bathroom, which is anything but private.  The edge of their camp is against a fence which blocks out the area beneath the freeway to public access.  This fence serves as one of the “walls” of their bathroom, the other of which is one of the tarp-covered shopping carts.

To use the bathroom, they squat against this fence, and defecate into a bucket or an old Folger’s coffee container.  To keep things relatively sanitary, this material is discarded into trash bags which are kept on the other side of the street until the time comes to remove them.  The city doesn’t service these trash bags, of course, so they must walk a few miles to dispose of their own waste.  This is sadly ironic in some ways, because just behind their fence is a human waste treatment facility, its powerful engines constantly purring.   

In spite of all this, we arrived to find Sheila sweeping the sidewalk surrounding her encampment.  She gathers all the dust and dirt in the area into little uniform piles, and lifts them up into one of her small trash cans.  It’s a fairly surreal experience – nothing out of the ordinary, were it not for the extraordinary and dire living conditions she had been placed in.  Considering her position, it’s somewhat remarkable she finds the motivation to clean the area in the first place.

We had a fairly quick interview with Sheila, as Oscar never showed up.  Sheila says he was out to purchase some of the medicine to help him cope with his cancer, which includes pills that cost about 20 dollars apiece.  A monumental price for almost anyone, but especially for people who have to gather some 100 pounds of glass just to make 7 dollars.  She gave us a tour of her home, and we asked her what her most treasured possessions were and where she kept them.  “The blankets.”  She responded.  “Because when it gets cold out, they’re the only things that are going to keep us alive.”

Before we left, she asked me if she could have a little money.  Though I know Sheila is prone to cocaine use and alcohol abuse, she had been so helpful in the interview that I felt obliged.  I gave her a mere two dollars, not necessarily a great honorarium for a two-and-a-half hour interview.  I thought to myself that some celebrities, just as prone to self-destruction, would be paid thousands for a similar grace of their time, and indeed might even be said to be “winning.”  I can’t justify Sheila’s actions, and I can’t say for sure how she ended up spending that two dollars.  But isn’t her life more valuable than that?  Isn’t it obvious that the paltry offering I gave her was far too little, that her story and her time should be considered useful and wanted?

I hope that Sheila will be one of the lucky ones who can get into rehab and change her story, but realistically even that probably wouldn’t be enough.  To break the stranglehold of poverty found in this corner on Ettie Street, there would need to be a comprehensive, creative, and patient effort on many different fronts, an effort that I doubt many Americans are willing to give or even pay attention to at this particular juncture.

We call ourselves the greatest nation in the history of the earth, but how does greatness allow this?  How does greatness turn a blind eye to this?  How does greatness view itself as helpless to overcome this, or simply too busy or too indifferent to engage this?  The short answer is that it doesn’t, and the long answer needed to break this cycle of poverty and ensure our national greatness is much more complicated.  But that answer is indeed needed – that discussion is needed.  The first step is to accept that this aspect of greatness is left wanting, and to see to it that we do our part to remedy it.

When we left Sheila, I gave her a hug and she kissed me on the neck – as far up as her tiny body could reach.  That expression of love and faith alone was worth far more than the two dollars I gave her, and far more than I can hope to achieve by having this interviews with her.  Even if it’s too late for Sheila, her time and her kiss are now her prayer – a prayer that others won’t have to live like her.  A prayer that others will have a home, and a security, and a community to foster their spirits and salve their wounds, and love them, and appreciate them, and confer dignity upon them.

I can only hope that I can help be the messenger of Sheila’s prayer.    

Cheers to the Fighters

The following is the single greatest poem I have read in a long time, and the only thing that makes it sweeter is that it was written by the single greatest person I have ever met.  No ado is necessary, as the poem speaks for itself, and single-handedly surpasses anything I could write in response.

 

Natalie, I love you.

Cheers to the Fighters

I burn our candle in hopes to burn time.

The batteries in the old clock will not be replaced

in an attempt to forbid my mind to count

the hours since we parted.

True love takes hard work,

hard work takes pain

I guess that's why divorce turns dreams into dust.

People keep on hoping.

I have tried hope.

It's a nice word, but is meaningless

without commitment, without strength.

Complaints benefit others, but never yourself.

They can keep complaining about love

and we will keep proving them wrong.

Cheers to the fighters —

Someday we will retire in paradise.

-Natalie Cole
(http://nataliemarie-nataliescorner.blogspot.com/2012/08/cheers-to-fighters.html)

First Days in Oakland/Berkeley

It has only been a few days since I’ve arrived in Berkeley to work on my friend’s documentary, Redemption, but I sincerely feel as though I’ve made the right decision to come here.  Not for any monetary reason (were it not for the generosity of my hosts, I would barely make enough money to scrape by here) but more fundamentally for the purpose of a good challenge, and a good story to be discovered.

Redemption tells the story of Oakland’s recyclers: members of an economic underclass who survive by redeeming countless bottles, cans, bits of metal, and other goods at local recycling facilities.  In our case, the facility in question is Alliance Metals.  If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you probably wouldn’t even notice it if you drove by its location in Dogtown.  Were it not for the ever-ubiquitous amounts of stolen shopping carts rolling to its gates, it probably would never be noticed.  

Amir noticed.  He’s the kind of guy who notices everything.  Every story, every person has something special to offer.  And he doesn’t just say stuff like that, he genuinely lives it.  Yesterday, we visited the recycling center for what was only my second time.  By happenstance, we arrived just as Miss K, a friend of Amir’s was finishing up her route for the day and trading in the recyclables she had collected.  Covered in filth, and with the general air of poverty around her, most people would brush off types like Miss K, but not Amir.  He gave her a big hug, and summarily introduced me to her.

He invited her to lunch, and we resolved to eat at a small Korean restaurant on Telegraph Avenue (she is originally from Seoul).  Miss K and I stepped out of the car a bit earlier than Amir, who was fumbling around with his keys and wallet in the car.  As Miss K walked into the restaurant and asked for a seat, the greeter told her she would have to wait.  Only moments later, as Amir and I stepped in, we were immediately offered a seat that was clearly vacant.  

The poor are invisible to us, because we do not want to see them.

Is it fear that leads us to stick our noses up at people in such a way?  Is it shame?  Or is it something else?  Does Miss K have the air of a bum or a drunkard about her, which leads us to refuse her service or our time?

When you get to know Miss K, she really is as personable as anyone else.  She makes small talk and asks questions about you just like any stranger would.  The only stark and obvious difference is her extreme poverty.  Miss K is old (nearing 60) but she has a certain resilience about her, a certain dignity, a certain beauty.  She is a sweetheart.  She is diminutive, but strong.  She has a cute smile.  

But would you have seen her?

Regrettably, I must admit to myself that, were it not for this experience, I wouldn’t have.  I would have passed her on the streets.  I would have never known anything about her story.  It’s hard to hear every story, or to make time for everyone, but perhaps even a smile and a “good morning” would have meant something.

I’m beginning to notice things out here I never could have possibly noticed had I stayed at home.  As an outsider to Oakland and Berkeley, I can’t say that I understand it yet, let alone that I know how to fix it or even address it.  This place is fraught with urban blight, cycles of poverty and injustice, and countless other issues to be sure.  Yet, at the same time, there is a wealth of spirit and energy just waiting to be cultivated.  Sometimes it hides, and other times it emerges from the ether, in the form of Miss K’s contagious smile.  I am beginning to sense this spirit.  I hope to embrace it and define it, at least a piece of it.

I am where I am meant to be, and I look forward to the new adventure each day brings.

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The Courier

**Disclosure: Much of the poetry I post here is in a rather raw form, and I'm open to criticism or whatever from anyone.  I may change it later if I feel I worded things incorrectly, but until then I hope the 3 people that visit this blog will enjoy it.  Anyway, here's a poem I just now wrote**

The Courier

Looking at your pictures,
I can't help but feel that
I'm trying to reach you in a
wholly inadequate way,

Like a Zealot trying to soften
the distance between he and Christ
merely by reading scripture.

Like any Holy text,
Your photographs and letters
Serve only as a reminder.

I cannot read my way into
your arms any more than I can
read my way into
the arms of God.

Your love,
His love,
All love must be lived.

Your truth,
His truth,
All truth must be sought,

With a hungry
and eager heart,
ready to bleed
in love's sacred name.

Your passion and his
resonate inside me
as one,

And I realize his true scripture
lies in you,
His Courier,

On whom He has written His sacred word.

A Strange Crossroads

I seem to be at some sort of really strange crossroads.  In parts of my day, I feel gripped by a state of intense apathy, searching for anything to escape the monotony of what I've been doing for ages.  In other parts, though, I am ensconced in an even more intense passion for everything around me; every sound, taste, touch, and sensation is amplified, and I feel as though a muse has put the very light of the Gods into my soul, and that my every action and utterance will produce seeds that edify and flower as I walk through the garden of my life.

These sensations are, to understate, fairly distinct.  And, strangely, they seem to originate from the same place: my collegiate experience over the last 4 years.

On the side of apathy, I feel tired of doing some of the same routines over and over.  I have written pages of meaningless work for many different professors, proving that I have the ability to write coherently and that I understand the material I've just read.  I have sat in on lectures concerning the same theories, the same ideologies, the same general difficulties of the years ahead.  I have poured through the busywork and have re-proven the basic competencies I thought I had shown mastery of in high school.  Yet, here I am, in my final semester, proving many of these same basic skills again.

Yet, on the opposite end of this spectrum, I have discovered incredible things about myself.  I found a love of international politics, and a desire to leave the world a better place than I found it.  I discovered student activism, which has been the hallmark of my time at university.  I found philosophy, and with it the treasure of a million unique ideas I'm only beginning to understand.  I found physics and chemistry, the sciences trying to understand the complex machinery of our world, and I found that the knowledge I thought I had is miniscule and in need of deep expansion.  I found poetry.  I even found love, real love, in the strangest of places and the furthest distance, but learned that such barriers are meaningless when surmounted by intense conviction, longing, mutual trust and purity of heart.

These final few months, despite my strange relationship with apathy and passion, I feel no ambivalence about moving on.  This chapter, as glorious as it was, is merely a prelude to the next story, which I intend to make as special, as unique, and as sincere in its passions as was my previous one, if not more so.  I indeed feel apathy for many of my tasks, but I also still feel the hunger for further knowledge, and the confidence in myself that I can bring big plans to fruition.

So, as this chapter closes, I'd like to pay tribute to everything that it was for me, and to offer a sincere hope that my actions here were for the better, and that any damage I may have caused along this path may in time be healed and overgrown with new joys.  I won't forget this time, and I won't forget those who sacrificed for me, or believed in me, and on the non-believers I wish no ill fortune, because I know that theirs is a part of the larger story as well.  The story that knows of no difference, and holds not to degrees or measures, but rather to the fullness and beauty of itself, which is eternal and unrelenting. 

Thank you, everyone, for allowing me to play my part.

Whisper in a Gale

My life may be a whisper
in a gale, but those same
winds that silence me will
carry my message farther
than any shout ever could.

-Zach Stickney

Protest of SOPA/PIPA

Below is a sample letter I sent to Rob Bishop, Orrin Hatch, and Mike Lee of Utah in protest of SOPA/PIPA.  (For more info on these acts, check this out: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/stop-the-stop-online-piracy-act) 

This letter is pretty slap-dash, but it gets the point across.  Feel free to copy it and edit it in any way you deem fit and send it to your Representatives in Congress.  This is how citizen-led democracy works!  Get involved- it only takes a few minutes.

Dear Congressman Bishop,

Today, as you may know, thousands of websites are blacking themselves out in opposition to SOPA and PIPA, two acts currently making their rounds in congress which threaten a free and open internet.  Despite their good intentions, these acts make it possible for website access to be restricted to American citizens.  In fact, many of the provisions in both SOPA and PIPA are reminiscent of the censorship laws used in nations like Syria, Iran, and China, 3 nations which severely limit their citizens access to information and, thus, severely limit the liberties of their citizens.

But the United States is not Iran, Syria, or China.  We are a nation founded on beliefs of openness, citizen involvement, and freedom of information.  The problems of copyright infringement are real, but the methods outlined in SOPA and PIPA are considerably worse than any current problems we have, and are very draconian in substance.

I encourage you to vote "no" to both acts, and to encourage your colleagues to do the same.  Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Zachary J. Stickney