The Flawed Stone

One of the biggest things I've had trouble doing in this project is making sense of other people's experiences with the people I have interviewed, especially in view of additional information I find out after the interviews. You see, most of the people I interview, I am only with for perhaps an hour or two, and then I say, "This is their life story." During that hour I try to find out what brought them to the shelter, what was important to them in the past, what is important to them now and what do they hope for in the future. Usually we end on a positive note.

But I find that's not really how it works out for many of them. Some have addiction problems they didn't mention to me, some end up in jail and others continue to down slide. One guy just lied, period -- he was never homeless, he just wanted a drawing.

How should I make sense of this? Should I keep trekking on, knowing these flaws lace the whole project? Should I point them out to the reader, asking that the project be handled more gently, or will pointing out these flaws open the whole project to anyone's chisel, to be easily cracked open and finally crushed?

This project is never going to be a a cut-and-polished gem. It's not meant to be, although some parts of the stone will be polished enough to let the light into it's inner, flawed surfaces. It will be a stone to hold, to ponder, to peer at, to feel, to wonder at. And, I hope, it will also be a stone that radiates an energy from within. An energy that is capable of shifting mountains, values and valleys of darkness.

Families

Working with families has turned out to be difficult in ways I hadn't anticipated.

So far, I don't think anybody has really opened up to me -- nobody is talking from the heart. Everyone is guarded. I guess it's the mothers I'm referring mostly to.

I don't know what to do about that. Should I keep at it and hope something meaningful comes of it? Should I keep it up, knowing it's not going anywhere, but do it because of my commitment to the families? It's such an expensive project to do without any gains in sight. Each family, usually 4 people, cost me around $60.00 -- and that is money out of my own pocket -- and that is not even counting the time I spend doing the drawings or trekking back forth to the shelter, trying to find the kids in and etc.

I guess its harder to work with families than with singles because I stand to loose so much more. When I do a single person it's not that big a problem if it doesn't pan out, I just use the other drawings or interviews of other people I have done. But with families, I have to put a tremendous effort into drawing, interviewing and paying each individual and then there is all the editing that follows -- for something that may not necessarily be all that good. That's a hard lesson I am learning.

But why aren't the mothers open to me? Perhaps it is because they don't know much about me. When I arrive at this shelter, Genesis Home, I am certainly not met with the same enthusiasm that awaits me when I arrive at the other shelter, the Community Shelter for H.O.P.E. -- a shelter where I know people, where memories of other drawings I've done, of good talks and probably of easy money abound. These women just think their face, name and story will be in a book -- broadcasting to the world that they and their children are homeless. I guess its also broadcasting "Hey, we didn't do too well providing for our children or ourselves." Maybe its a lot different to be a single person and to admit you blew it, than a mother of 4.

Another aspect of their guardedness maybe the strong desire or drive they have to protect their children. What will be the long term effects on their children if they are part of this project? Being a mother myself I can understand that concern. And maybe I should respect that concern more. But it does leave me in a tough spot with this book.

Small Town, Big Town

These past few days, I've been trying to write a letter to a large gallery in DC -- requesting to have a show of "The Homeless People Project," in about 18 months from now.

I am a little stumped because I feel the people who are homeless in Durham aren't the same as the ones in Washington DC or the other large cities across the country.

In the letter I sound pretty preachy -- like I've captured the typical homeless person on paper, on audio tape and in text. It's like I'm saying; everybody come and see and hear the "homeless person". Study it, poke at it, figure it out. But in all honesty, I don't think I've really gone near the big city homeless person -- I'm scared of that creature.

I feel like the city people will laugh at us, me and my homeless people, because we are little and puny, not big, bad and ugly like theirs are.

Contradictions

I constantly ask myself, how trusting is it safe to be? What message am I sending in this book -- what do I live by? Are they the same?

I defend myself and I say -- I'm just writing their story, what they told me, I'm not making any statements on how they should be treated or trusted. But the questions I ask during an interview (both the conscious and subconscious ones) are not neutral questions. They do not come from a neutral, unbiased person. I want to understand their world, but I also know it's important to me that I can interpret that information and put it into the boxes I want, usually little positive boxes.

If they have dark sides, dark pasts, I want to attribute those qualities to people and events outside of them. In a way I see them all as victims -- not of a recent event but victims of an earlier event or circumstance. Born into the wrong family, into the wrong race, wrong part of town, etc.

Or maybe they're not victims. Maybe they just happen to be people who were born with the type of personality that would never fit in with the regular world. Personalities that can't take the stresses and responsibilities that we in the regular world heap upon ourselves.

My own life brings up these questions because one of my sons, is perhaps one of those people. He was born with a sunny, noncompetitive nature -- an artistic nature also. He doesn't want responsibility -- he doesn't mind if others do, he's just not interested. He's not into goals either, at least not ones I know about or can readily see. Maybe he will grow out of it or maybe he won't.

At any given moment he may be seeing the extraordinary light patterns a tree is making across our back yard, or maybe just totally enjoying the smells and sounds of wrestling with our two dogs on the living-room floor -- all of which I am too busy to notice. His goal is the here and now, mine is a humongous four year project.

Where does the money go?

When I paid John Thomas $5, I told him to use the money for something "good". But really, how much "good" can $5 bring? A pair of gloves? No. A knit hat? Yes. Dinner at a fast food restaurant? Maybe. What else?

Sometimes I wonder how much of the money that I paid people on this project went for buying more drugs or liquor. When I first started the project, I found that idea shocking; "The Homeless People Project" with all its noble aims, contributing to the drug market?! But I got used to that idea after a while -- I simply filed it under the "not explainable at this point" category in my mind. That file seems to get bigger and bigger the longer I work on this project.

Too Soft

Several weeks ago, I had lunch with Tassie. Our lunch was going to be a time when she would give me honest feed back on the manuscript (from this book) that I had given her to read.

She liked it a lot and so on . . .

But much of our conversation centered around a new job opening at Genesis Home -- the directorship. Tassie toyed with the idea of various staff members as well as herself, applying for the job.

The quality of being "too soft" was discussed at length. Tassie described another staff member and herself as being "too soft" for the job. This meant they had a tendency to believe everything anyone said to them and thus they would probably get "taken" a lot. Consequently, the wrong people would be accepted into Genesis Home -- people who would not make the most out of the privilege of being there.

Today it dawned one me that perhaps Tassie was trying to tell me that I was like that too, without coming out and saying it. Maybe by talking about other people being "too soft" she thought that I would understand that this whole project and myself included, were -- too soft.