spider (update from 5/28, 7/25, & 8/31)

"Don't smoke in the room, and do not--under any circumstances--urinate on the carpet." I asserted this in the most earnest, authoritative voice I could muster. And with that I shut the door behind me.

It had taken two-and-a-half hours for Alicia and I to convince Spider to stay indoors last Tuesday night. We, along with several others, had worked hard over the previous month to reinstate his disability payments, and now the money was available for his use. But as deplorable as Spider's life on the sidewalk was, the trauma of moving from the known degradation of the street to something so radically different and unknown cannot be underestimated. Even a move so clearly advantageous involves loss.

After hours spent cajoling him from his alcove and into the vehicle, we had to drive around downtown San Jose looking for a place for him to stay. We were spurned by a couple motels until eventually landing a room at the relatively swank Ramada. However, part of our deal was, if he agreed to sleep in a motel for the evening, we would get him whatever he wanted for dinner. Plus, his jeans and shirt were covered in feces; if he were going to sleep in a bed, he would need new clothing and adult diapers.

After getting him situated in the room, I told him I'd be back in an hour, and then left to drop off Alicia and fulfill my promises, not really sure what I'd return to.

An hour later I arrived back at the Ramada; I held my breath and put my hand on the door handle.

Pushing open the door, there was a frantic energy in the room ... but in that first instant everything looked normal. Then I noticed that Spider had the telephone receiver to his ear and was blindly punching the key pad. He hadn't yet realized I was back. That was the first peculiar thing I beheld. "Spider, I'm here."

Startled, he cocked his head and slammed down the handset. "What took you so long!" The anger in his voice was tempered only by a barely audible note of fear.

"I'm sorry, Spider," I said, "but I'm here now, and I've got Kentucky Fried Chicken, new clothes, pull-ons, and Brut, by Faberge."

His tone shifted completely: "Oh?" And with that a smile emerged from his stormy looks. "That will be sufficient," he said, expressing his fondness for this particular men's fragrance.

"Okay, first of all, let's get you set up for dinner." I set his drumsticks and mashed potatoes with gravy on the desk, arranging the packets of salt next to his plastic-wrapped spork.

"I want a cigarette!" he suddenly demanded, wheeling himself like an assault vehicle through a chair and waste paper basket on his way to the desk. A bit alarmed by his his sudden ill-humor, I looked to the desk, and that's when I saw it: a glass half-full (I'm an optimist) of urine. And floating there in what could have been ginger ale, were two cigarette butts. I glanced instinctively at the sign posted by the door, reading, "This is a non-smoking room. $100 fine for smoking."

Pushing through me, he began feeling impatiently across the desk for his smokes, and I quickly snatched the mashed potatoes and gravy from his hands' destructive path, only to watch--as in slow motion--his arms and elbows thrash inexorably toward the glass of golden sunshine.

"Spider, no!" I yelled in vain, just as his left forearm tipped the tepid liquor from its chalice and across the polished desk, over the once-sanitary spork, onto the binder titled, What to Do When You're in San Jose, and down into the luxurious emerald shag.

The stink of urine-soaked ashes wafted quickly through the room's fusty air, and in the midst of the pandemonium, Spider turned toward me sharply and growled, "Where are my cigarettes!"

This was all I could take. Turning from him quickly, I grasped my hair in both fists and went through the motion of pulling it out. I paced rapidly back and forth, ignoring Spider's dictatorial demands, and was for a moment given over to despair. "This is never, never, never, never going to work," I kept repeating to myself. A tiny piece of soiled toilet tissue lay timid and forlorn on the rug next to the bed, and ashes were scattered all over the bathroom tile. "What have I done? I knew this wouldn't work."

After a moment I snapped out of it. I collected myself, grabbed a towel from the bathroom, and began mopping up the sooty vinegar. Spider had by this time finally laid hands on his dampened tobacco and was making his way out the door. He situated himself just outside the room and began puffing away while I cleaned the desk. It had occurred to me earlier to bring some latex gloves, so donning those I worked boldly. I wiped, rubbed, patted-dry, then tossed out the sopping visitor's binder; I sponge-mopped the lamp; and last of all I blotted the water-logged carpet. The entire room then received a baptism in Brut. I surveyed the place, and well-pleased I felt a renewed hope for Spider's success.

Dumping all the fouled evidence into a garbage bag I had thought it prudent to bring, I headed to the door to make peace with my nemesis. Stepping onto the threshold I arrived just in time to see another pint of acrid water running from Spider's lap, over the gleaming metal complex of his chair, and onto the walkway. I looked to my left, where two doors down the hotel manager sat behind a wall of glass with only the distraction of a phone call keeping him from glancing our way. (For an instant I allowed myself to take moral refuge in the fact that there was, truth be told, no sign prohibiting this practice, no fine attached to the behavior.)

I made haste with Spider's nasty glass to the restroom, filled it with water and returned to splash it beneath the wheelchair. I did this three times, and pleaded with Spider to empty his bladder into his goblet and then pour it into the toilet.

But in response to my aggravated pleading I received a pair of the saddest, most defeated eyes I have ever known. "You don't know what I've been through," Spider rebuffed me mournfully. And it's true: I didn't.

I put my hand on his shoulder and took a deep breath. "It's going to be okay, Spider," I said, as he again urinated at my feet. "It's okay, Buddy. It's okay,"

I slept fitfully that night, knowing that Spider was doomed not only to urinate, but also to smoke in bed. I wrestled all night with what I had done, examining and re-examining my own motives. What if he dies tonight? That was all I could think of. A horrible death, burning in the bed I had convinced him to sleep in. This had been a terribly conceived mistake.

I woke early the next morning and headed to the Ramada before work. I hurried to the door, fumbled with the key, and on opening the door, stood looking at Spider, blissfully sleeping in the king-sized bed, his radio on the pillow next to his head.

please help me

He was in hysterics. Part of his lip was pink and dewy, as though a segment had been carefully sliced by a scalpel. "Why are they doing this to me!" He was shrieking. "What do they want from me!" He was kicking up dirt and smacking his hands against his head and my heart was pounding and I was at an utter loss. There were cracked and blistered abrasions on one of his arms, and as he labored for breath, tears muddied his jaw. Looking wildly and directly into my eyes, he pleaded, "Make them stop!"

The whole ordeal started earlier this evening when I stopped at a light getting off the freeway. It was about 5:00PM and a man stood downcast on the side of the off-ramp with a black backpack at his feet and a cardboard sign in hand reading, Please help me. 

I rolled down my window and spoke with him for a moment, and as the light turned green, I shook his hand and learned that his name is Joshua. But after pulling away from him, I decided to turn around and go back. I circled and found my way into a parking lot, then got out of the car and joined him on the side of the road.

He seemed glad for the company and the conversation, and as we talked, he related an incoherent story, making it that much more heart-breaking. He was in his late twenties, polite, soft-spoken, homeless, hungry, and in all likelihood, schizophrenic. 

As near as I can tell, Joshua has been sleeping beneath an overpass for the past six months. He gets his food from the occasional soup kitchen, from Sacred Heart, and from the few dollars he can scrape up in alms. 

But not long into our time together, Joshua's dialogue turned to relating how, standing right where he was, he had recently been struck by a car. I tried to figure out when, but he never could get around to telling me--my guess is that it had to be within the last couple days. He lifted his shirt at one point and showed me the bruises. I asked him if the driver had stopped, and he said he didn't know--he was thrown from his feet with the wind knocked out of him, and that's all he could say. He described how when he landed, the pain welled-up into his chest (and here he made a grand gesture to emphasize the gathering of the pain), and how at the time he could neither scream nor breathe. His face was knotted in anguish as he described the incident, and he seemed to be struggling to relate the magnitude of his pain. I asked him if he had gone to the hospital, and at that question he just shattered.

"I know they're listening!" he yelled, his arms beginning to tremble while his face stretched toward mine.

"Who?" I asked, taking a step back.

"They're testing me, to see if I'm faking!" He flung his sign and began to pace. "I-can't-take-this!" he screamed, the blood vessels bulging in his neck and face. "Get me out of here!" he called to someone unseen.

"Joshua, I'm right here," I said, failing to soothe.

He picked up his hat and began to yell into it: "You can kill me! You can kill me!" 

This tortured display went on for a few minutes, until finally his volume dropped. "I'm so scared," he said, having spent his energy. "A car drove by after I was hit and said, 'Did you like that, Joshua? We're watching you!'" And at this he seized my hands: "Why would he say that?"

I couldn't see any use trying to reason with him. I simply asked, "Joshua, could I come visit you a bit later? I'd like to see where you're staying, and maybe we can talk some more."

He wiped his eyes and nodded. He pointed to the overpass, described where he slept, and explained how to find his spot.

At about 7:00PM I went back to find him.

I walked along the side of the road, against traffic, and eventually, as the road rose, I stepped off the asphalt and into the wilds that grew up along this particular stretch.

As the area beneath the overpass grew close, so did the deplorable signs of inhumane habitation. Strewn across the dirt and dried grass were at first two water-logged books and a spoon, then a pile of ruined pants, shirts, and socks, a broken box spring, and a torn suitcase, a tire, and finally a pitiful pair of underwear, tissue-thin, spread out delicately across some thistles.

I paused at the steps hewn in the rocky earth that led down and under the road. Balancing just out of view, I noticed a tent about a hundred feet away, but just then my footing gave way and I barely caught myself before sliding with the loose dirt and gravel toward the bottom of the severe incline. 

Steadying myself, I called out, "Joshua?" No answer. "Joshua?" Nothing.

I bent down to see into the cramped quarters beneath the bridge. There didn't appear to be anyone there ... but there were a number of darkened niches that I couldn't make out, so I announced myself again. I stood still for about a minute, straining to detect any movement. Then, compulsively looking back over my shoulder, I stepped down and underneath the massive structure of steel and cement.

And there I was, standing before Joshua's home: a concrete platform where the under-side of the overpass met the side of the ravine, laid-over with a mildewed futon and a couple of sleeping bags. Cars and trucks rumbled only five or six feet above my head as I looked around, wide-eyed, taking in the squalor. There were ghostly images in soot that covered segments of the walls and ceiling, and filth was everywhere. I imagined the terrors Joshua must face down there, having to make it through each night all alone with no one to comfort him, no one to tell him that everything would be alright. 

On the mattress was a small pillow, covered in dirt and ringed with water stains. Joshua.

september 11th

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was commuting on light rail from my home in Mountain View to my job in Campbell. It was about 6:00AM when I boarded the train--still gray outside and fairly chilly--and there were two men huddled next to each other listening intently to the single earpiece of a 30 year-old transistor radio. In the entire year prior, I don't recall a stranger ever once offering me a piece of news, but on that morning one of the men looked up at me and said grimly, "a plane crashed into one of the twin towers." At that moment I recalled reading of a military plane having crashed into the Empire State building some decades earlier, and although it was certainly terrible, I thought nothing more of it.

But as I progressed toward my destination, an air of pain and panic began to grow thick amidst the gathering commuters. Whispered comments and gasps ran throughout the train as riders came and went; soon there were tears, and not long after, genuine terror as people gasped, covered their mouths, and frantically tried to call loved ones.

We all recall our personal whereabouts that morning eight years ago, and we are all still caught up in its devastating effects. But this year we as a people united decided to steal back the legacy of that fateful day. Instead of allowing it to persist as something ugly, destructive, and poisonous, we joined with others all across the country in recognizing the first annual National Day of Service and Remembrance.

On September 11th, 2009, we at Sacred Heart launched a new strategy in our efforts to realize our vision, an approach that takes our work directly into the neighborhoods and homes most affected by poverty and involves bringing the general public together to work side-by-side with our low-income neighbors in building a stronger, more just community.

Specifically, we brought together some 150 students, politicians, seniors, business professionals, members of faith communities, and people living in poverty, and spread out into low-income neighborhoods to install raised-bed gardens. Working shoulder-to-shoulder in small groups, these disparate members of our society joined one another to do something beautiful, something compassionate, something full of hope and purpose.

Now, as you might imagine, bringing off something like this is quite a logistical feat. Trying to organizing all of the volunteers, the materials, the tools, the transportation to 18 different sites was not easy. And there were some challenges.

Shortly after sending the volunteers out at about 9:00AM, my cell phone began to ring. "Um, Todd?"

"Yeah?"

"Were we supposed to have shovels?"

And then things got a little out of hand. My phone wouldn't stop ringing. "We don't have enough screws." "Can you bring us a drill?" "I thought we were going to have wood--how are we supposed to build the wooden planter?" "There's no one home." The calls came tumbling in, one after the next like row upon row of a malevolent marching band.

But in the midst of this onslaught, the teams really pulled together. We sent out drivers to borrow tools from groups that had already finished using them and to transport them to the teams without. Others rushed to hardware stores to buy more supplies. When I arrived at a site that was without a functioning wheelbarrow to move the huge pile of soil from the front yard to the back (their wheelbarrow's tire was completely flat), I found the family matriarch on her knees scooping dirt with her bare hands into an old paint can, and from there into a garbage can perched atop a skateboard that acted as a make-shift wheelbarrow: not only an amazing act of ingenuity, but one full of the sort of determination that we see every day in the faces of those we serve, the determination to keep struggling because giving up carries with it too high a price. And after all of this back-breaking work, this mother of two hurried herself into her kitchen to make the entire team enchiladas.

I learned a lot that day: first, that I'm more of a big-picture guy--not so strong when it comes to details; second, that something remarkable happens when those on both sides of the economic divide come together to work toward a common vision; and third, that the low-income community is not simply a repository of deficits--that there is much in the way of assets within those weighed-down by poverty, and in many cases it is just giving people the chance to exercise those assets that will help them rise to a place of dignity and self-determination.

These gardens, only the first in what will be 100 planted by the end of the year through our La Mesa Verde program, will not only provide a supplement for families struggling to meet their nutritional needs in regions of the city conspicuously devoid of fresh produce, but also provide the impetus to community. There is something special about gardens in the way they can draw people together; we saw this already as neighbor helped neighbor in the construction of these planters, and we will rejoice when the harvest comes and the produce is shared, the yield being more than most families will be able to consume themselves.

What's more, the first harvest will coincide with Thanksgiving and Christmas, and many of the new owners of these gardens have expressed an interest in sharing their yield with Sacred Heart as we distribute holiday food boxes to the greater community. 

To all those who joined in this good work--and to all those who will do so in the future--Thank you.

the law of unintended consequences

With a face like rawhide, his silver whiskers looked like cactus spines spread out across his jaw. That, plus his cowboy boots and hat would have led me to take him for a Wyoming law man--except for his crocheted fingerless gloves and girlish dance moves.

I first saw him on the corner of a busy San Jose intersection, across from a Shell station, a Target, a Chili's, and a nail salon. The sixty-four year-old suburban wrangler pranced and frolicked to the pulsating beats being piped from his duct-taped Walkman. And in his hands was a huge green arrow-shaped sign announcing the availability of detached, two-bedroom homes. For all he was worth he swung that sign, spinning it, tossing it, and twirling it above and behind his head for every motorist to see. His feet stomped and slid as his hips swiveled and twisted to the inaudible rhythm of music and capitalism.

Earlier this evening as I approached him, he had just given himself a ten-minute break. I watched as he rolled his own cigarette and took a long swallow of pink vitamin water. He eyed me wearily from behind dark sun glasses, and when I introduced myself, he remained silent. I made an offhand compliment regarding his knit glove, which he had removed to work his tobacco, and I could tell I was losing him. He shifted his weight and began to turn away so I followed quickly with, "This seems like a pretty creative way to make money;" and to my great pleasure, he engaged me.

"If you want creative, you should go to Burning Man."

Okay, I thought. It's a start.

We ended up talking for about twenty minutes. He told me he worked five, five-hour shifts a week, being paid $10 per hour. I asked him how, at his age, he had so much energy, and he pointed to a plastic bag he had strung up in a nearby tree. It was filled with empty vitamin water bottles and an enchilada tin.

"How many of those do you usually drink per shift," I asked.

"Six," he replied gravely.

"Six!" I couldn't help exclaiming.

"The way I see it, I'm getting paid to work out," he said, taking a deep drag off his filterless cigarette. "You see here," he said, pointing to the labels: "Energy and focus. This is the perfect combination to help the music flow through me and keep me groovin' (I saw CD's by Pink Floyd and Celine Dion in his bag--not artists to which I would typically think of grooving). And it's perfectly legal." There's my law man, I thought.

"So this is your secret?" I said with admiration, eying the empties.

"Yeah. It has guarana."

"Guarana? What's that?"

"It gives you energy. It's all over the internet," he informed me.

"Where do you use the internet?" I asked.

"At the downtown library."

"I see," I replied, holding my breath for my next question: "And where are you staying right now?"

"I'd rather not say," he said cautiously. As a matter of record, the companies that provide these dancing sign-wavers their employment frequently recruit at homeless shelters. It's part-time, no-benefit work.

"Ok," I said, regretting my next question before I asked it: "Would you mind if I took your photo?"

His leather face sank in a taut frown and he exhaled in disappointment. "I'd really rather not," he began. "It may seem a simple thing--taking a man's picture--but I'm not looking for publicity (this from a man who for a living dances on a bustling intersection waving a huge sign). It's the law of unintended consequences, you see?"

And I pondered those words as he picked up the enormous sign and precariously mounted his ten-speed to go return the gaudy advertisement. Here was a sixty-four year-old man making a spectacle of himself in all sorts of weather, homeless, without health insurance, alone, spending 20% of his pittance on the energy it takes him just to get through his shift: are these the consequences we intended when constructing our society?