Guest Column by Anitra L. Freeman

This is Anitra, Upon Whose Kitchen Floor Wes Has Sometimes Slept. Wes has a bad cold right now, which he says is my fault (because he's sleeping closer to me than the kitchen floor these days), and therefore I have to write his column for him.

Wes says I am starting out very well, staring at a blank white computer screen. He then gave me a tip to get started:

[insert column here]

Wes has just left the room, leaving me clear to talk about him with Cindy, Muse of Few Words. I ask Cindy, "I want to structure this column like Wes does, in the form that I have called a Wessitur: an apparent sequence of non-sequiturs that sneaks up behind a political subject and bonks it on the head. How do you suggest I start?"

Cindy says, "Say something about Wes now."

Wes was skinnier when I first met him (he also says that this is my fault, in spite of the fact that he does most of the cooking.) We were both homeless at that time, in October 1995. Wes attempted to teach me the use of acrylics, at StreetLife Art Gallery.

He still attempts to teach me math. I retaliate by singing sea chanteys at him.

Soon after I started going to StreetLife Gallery, Wes drafted me for the Real Change Editorial Committee. I retaliated by starting StreetWrites, to help more homeless and low-income writers develop material for publication. Wes said, "Okay, I'll attend, but you have to do the work."

How am I doing, Cindy? "At about this point, Wes says something else."

Speaking of something else, last week I attended the Seattle Police Department's first organizational meeting attempting to put together a Homeless Advisory Council. I was unhappy to see that I was the only person there who was a "community member" (still counted as low-income and formerly homeless) instead of a service provider or public official-- and I was only there because Timothy "Editor-God" Harris, Director of Real Change, was in production crunch on the paper. Tim made me feel a bit better by explaining that invitations did go out to SHARE, WHEEL & HOP -- but they went out very recently. Membership-driven grassroots organizations need more lead time to make decisions than top-down structured organizations. Adding in that the strongest memory most homeless groups have of such advisory councils is the sensation of having one's butt turned to rubber with the raised words "Whatever You've Already Decided" lettered on them, then pounded up and down -- and caution lengthens the lead time.

Speaking of caution, caution lengthened the lead time in the relationship between Wes and I. Within weeks of meeting each other we were spending large amounts of time together -- we were both officers of StreetLife Gallery, both writing for and editing Real Change, and we just hung out, because we made each other laugh, we sparked ideas for each other, I could say one sentence and he instantly knew what I meant, cutting my tendency to discourse at length and earning the undying gratitude of thousands.

But first, I was staying in shelters and he was Camping Out on Fern Hill (the exact location of which he still keeps secret in case he might have to use it again.) Then I got housing but Wes didn't; he could only visit me three nights a week at The Union Hotel, where he really did sleep on my kitchen floor, and we talked for several hours each night like kids at a slumber party. It was July 21st, 1997, at 4PM (I got the date and time from Wes) that Wes walked into the Real Change and handed his last pack of cigarettes ever to Tim Harris because I had mentioned that I wouldn't get intimate with a smoker's mouth. Then he didn't sleep on my kitchen floor any longer.

Speaking of lengthening, we were both divorced. Wes had a history of severe child abuse and suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I had a history of relationships disrupted by my bipolar disorder (manic depression). We were both used to being prejudged, misjudged, and making bad judgments about others. A lot of reasons for caution on both sides. We're now regarded as the happiest couple in the Union Hotel, mainly because we come in about 3AM each morning laughing manically over such things as the application of the policy of Harm Reduction to late-night transit.

Maybe homeless people and the SPD will someday be cracking jokes together, working comfortably side by side, hanging out together. Also the physically disabled, and those with mental health / chemical dependency / developmental issues: other groups that the SPD is hoping to have new Advisory Councils for. If there's enough common ground; enough support; enough patience. If someone gives up their cigarettes, or whatever other habits are in the way.

How did I do, Cindy? "You left out poetry."

Haiku for Wes

He sleeps on my kitchen floor
while I check my email.
I need no Valentines.

Write On!
© Anitra Freeman 2002

Rocks Are Hard Dirt

I want to tell you all to stop controlling my mind. I tell you dirt is nutritious. You are trying to stop me from knowing that, by focusing contrary brain waves on my truth receptors. You are wrong to do that. Smart people like me, who read, know eating dirt is good for you. Ask any smart person like me who reads, like Jesus or Moses. (Moses used to read stuff on rocks.)

Did you know that rocks are hard dirt? Yes, it’s true. It shows you how much God loves dirt, that He wrote the Ten Commandments on a hard form of it. Praise dirt. (It is also highly nutritious.)

I don’t know if this has anything to do with dirt (?), but this week the Seattle Times reported that Kate Joncas, a human, said that establishing two hygiene centers downtown was “right”. She said that it can’t be good for a neighborhood “to concentrate that many needy and damaged people in one place.”

I agree totally with that, which is exactly why I steer clear of neighborhoods where I see too many television antennas on the roofs.

So I was very sorry to hear that Kate Joncas, also Downtown Seattle Association President, said she was sorry to have said what she was misquoted saying. Because it was so true. Homeless people and people like me who have been homeless are damaged. By homelessness! That’s why we don’t like it! “Duh!”

Speaking of duh, I’m reminded of the Third Man Theme by Anton Karas, which has no words, and was originally performed on a zither, which has a sound that is extremely difficult to reproduce vocally.

So when I “sing” the Third Man Theme, it sounds like this: “DUH duh duh duh DUH, duh duh, *dum dum*, DUH duh duh duh DUH, duh duh, *dum dum*, etc. What a great movie theme! It rocks!

So what does this have to do with dirt, you ask? Well long ago, between the first time I was homeless, and the second time, I spent four cool days in Vienna, or as I like to call it, the Third Man Theme Park. (The Third Man was a movie that was made in 1949.)

I went there precisely to see all the sights from the movie. I wanted to see the street (Stiftgasse) where Harry Lime (Orson Welles) was run over by a car according to the porter in the movie. I wanted to see where the porter lived. I wanted to see the Mozart Cafe. I wanted to see the Bahnhof (train station), I wanted to see rubble left over from World War II. I wanted to see a small scary man holding a puny dog.

And I did! It was great. It was all there, and I got to see it, all the while thinking to myself, “DUH duh duh duh DUH, duh duh...”

Well almost everything was there. There were no underground tours of the Vienna sewer system where Harry Lime (Orson Welles) took that fatal bullet from Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten). I really missed that, and I’m hoping that Vienna’s city council or whatever they’re called will eventually get with it and offer tours of the sewers, preferably with zither music piped in.

But all the best stuff was there. The high point of my trip was my visit to the Prater, where, on the ferris wheel, Harry Lime (Orson Welles) almost shoots Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten), before he finds out that Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten) has already told the police about him. While I was in the Prater (http://www.wiener-prater.at) it was very crowded, not like the movie, but at one point I passed a man with one leg who looked liked the balloon salesman in the film. I thought, “Cool! The Balloon salesman! DUH duh duh...” and then an old woman started shrieking at him in German.

She screamed how dare he appear in public where so many tourists could see him. She shrieked that he was disgracing Vienna and Austria by exposing his shame (his missing leg) for all the world to see.

At first I thought, “COOL! Anna Shmidt’s (Alida Valli’s) landlady!” Then I thought, “How wonderful it is that I live in a country where we don’t hide our damaged and disabled, where we actually do what we can to help our most injured to live full healthy public lives, where we care about people themselves and not about how they appear.“

That thought made my trip to Vienna the perfect fantasy! Thank you Vienna! Thank you America!

Questions For A New Millenium

Recently a satisfied reader plied me with questions about the year almost ended. These are my answers.

Q. What did you do with your life this year?

I abused it, as usual.

Q. What was the biggest mistake you made this year?

Waking up.

Q. Did you meet any of your goals this year? Which one(s)?

I said to myself on 1/1/99, lets see if I can't be flat broke by the end of the year, so that while everyone else is stocking up for Y2K, I can look forward to dying of thirst and starvation the first week of 2000! And it's happened!

Q. Are you further towards some of your goals this year than you were at this time last year?

I am exactly one year closer to my goal of dying of extreme old age.

Q. What were your successes and failures?

I survived a trip to Cleveland.

Q. What did you learn?

I learned that I am allergic to Cleveland.

Q. What do you have still to learn?

Why did you take so long to ask? I have so much left to learn I will need another millennium to find all the answers:

What are the names of the Brady Bunch? Why was it called the "Rocky Squirrel & Bullwinkle Moose Show", when Bullwinkle was clearly the star? How may I withdraw $200 at a time from an ATM, even though I have no bank account and no credit cards, without being caught? Suggested by my ex-wife: could I be any more stupid? How many barking dogs does it take to change a light bulb?

How may I hotwire a 747? What day(s) is(are) garbage pickup? What is the song "Louie, Louie" about? Instead of making two-ply toilet paper, why don't they just make toilet paper that's twice as thick? Who actually watches Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee? Is there really a two-pack-a-day Barbie? Is that two packs of beer or two packs of cigs? Why? What does "Jedi" mean?

Compare and contrast: the production of maple syrup in Vermont, and the times you've been kissed by your aunt. How many words rhyme with "purple"? What does "mean" mean? Why were there four musketeers? What does cat toe-jam look like? Why don't cats want you to look between their toes? What do they have to hide? Are anarchists out of control or what?

Will English ever be spelled fonetikly? Iph naught, waigh naught? How many eyebrows does Brook Shields have? Did Monty Python have legs? How auld _was_ auld lang syne? Who was the first guy who ever said "I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest, baddest, m*f* in this whole valley of the shadow of death"? Why doesn't everyone just shoot "chartreuse" in the head?

Can you tell me the way to San Jose? What does chicken taste like? What is a dash of pepper? A dash of hippopotami? How many smidgeons make a pinch? Did Whitey really respect the Beave? How Tricky was Dick? Was it really easy to dance to, or were they just joshin'? Whose brilliant idea was poodles? Dachshunds? Irish red setters?

Compare and contrast: Brazilian hand-puppets, and a performance of Leonard Bernstein's Candide. What was Paraguay's finest hour? "I fought the law and the law won." What, exactly, did the law win? What would Palladin have done for a living if he ever lost his gun? Quick, what do you get when you cross Captain Kirk with a female alien elephant? Too late...

What happened to 001 through 006? Were their licenses revoked? If I were a little tea kettle, that wouldn't be my spout, would it? What was the strangest thing Mick Jagger ever did with his lips? Was Keith Richards involved? Was there a chihuahua in the room? Were lawyers for Taco Bell alerted?

Q. Why couldn't you have written this column entirely about Y2K?

I could have, but it wouldn't have made any sense.

WTO Sucks Before It Happens

I hate ongoing events.

Everyone’s been wanting to know what’s my take on the WTO conference.

How can I have a take on the WTO conference? I’m writing this before it has happened!

Therefore I present you with a dozen or so things that haven’t happened yet at the WTO conference, but that would have really sucked by the time you will have read this:

Mayor Schell created an international incident when he performed his Charlie Chong impersonation for the benefit of the Ambassador from the People’s Republic of China.

The bad news: with motorcades of officials criss-crossing Seattle for five days, traffic became a nonsense word. The good news: now everyone knows what life under I-5 is going to be like in years to come.

The worst traffic jams occurred in Redmond, of course, as thousands of rented Mercedes Benzes clogged the streets on their way to the seat of the local government, in the hopes of cashing in on some Free Trade chips.

For no apparent reason, WTO officials announced in the middle of the conference that the WTO’s official name would be changed to the “Windows 2000 World Trade Organization”, for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, during a vote-gathering tour of the city, unleashed Sandpoint dogs urinated on Al Gore, expecting that he would be environmentally friendly. Instead, he kicked them all in their tender spots, thus permanently losing the support of the SPCA, ALF, PAWS, and PETA.

In a surprise visit to the proceedings, Muamer Qadhafy got no further than 4th and Cherry. Awe-inspired by the depth of the brilliant ideas of Mark Sidran, amazed by Sidran’s keen analysis of the reactionary behavior of improperly-indoctrinated masses, Qadhafy rushed back to Libya to teach his people his new understanding of the value of civilty, “Starbuck’s style”.

The admiration apparently being mutual, Sidran surprised no-one by declaring, “to hell with Giuliani, from now on I want to be thought of as the Muamer Qadhafy of Seattle” and began appearing in public in high heels and long dresses and encouraging others to do so. “It’s just one more way we can instill a lady-like respect for public decency and decorum”.

President Clinton’s unscheduled meeting with the Pope next to Rachel the Pig in the market ended in disaster when the Pope was struck by a stray airborne salmon. Fortunately, the world’s free trade was not significantly harmed, as the volume of Pacific Northwest fish exports to the Vatican has been negligible up until now.

In a sharp moment of public empathy, Deputy Mayor Tom Byers recalled that he once wore purple bellbottoms and wide belts and got yelled at by his dad for growing his hair long. “Therefore”, he said, “I really understand the problems that you people face on the streets.” Then he said, “No, seriously, you can have your tent city during WTO-- NOT!!! Ha ha, ha!”

The WTO determined that, henceforth, Boeing could only sell as many 767’s per decade throughout the world as the number of Taiwanese suspenders that may be sold per century in Des Moines, Washington. Luckily, since no reporters were allowed to learn about the decision, no one got their shorts in a bunch about it.

Wasn’t that massive earthquake awful? 9.9 on the Richter scale, who would’ve expected that? I hate being dead don’t you? Thank God for tent city, otherwise nobody would have survived!

And who would’ve believed that the apocalypse would have waited for the WTO conference? Wow!! Well, hey, now that it’s happened, what do you, my readers, think? Was it worth waiting for? How ‘bout those locusts? And are you satisfied that the rough places have been made plain? I sure am!! But please, let’s not do it again!! My rough places are raw!!

All this talk by our city council people about giving the homeless identification numbers to keep track of them has me experiencing roaring mathematical flashbacks of the third kind. Assigning numbers to entities -- how functional! We may soon be able to establish a one-to-one correspondence between Seattle's homeless and an American ton of rubber chickens!

By further applying Pascal's triangle (in reverse!), we can stack both the homeless and the rubber chickens in two dimensional piles (provided we neglect their thicknesses), then stand back and watch them keel over! More fun than blowing up the King Dome! (Remember kids, don't try this at home.)

Speaking of dead French gamblers: when all the homeless in Seattle have their own personal numbers, just think how much easier it will be for them to play the lotto!

I'm hoping that the numbers passed out will include fractions. I don't think fractions get enough attention in our post-modernistic fast-paced internetted digital world. A lonely, neglected fraction is a vindictive fraction. You've all been warned.

But I know that won't happen, because everyone is so keen on the idea of using these numbers to count the homeless, and everyone knows you don't use fractions to count anything, right? You have to use counting numbers, right? That'd be 1, 2, 3, 4, and numbers like those, right?

Wrong. You don't need numbers at all. You need identifiers, and the means to know when to introduce new identifiers (when there is a new homeless person in the city) and the means to know when to retire old identifiers (when someone becomes formerly homeless).

The city of Seattle doesn't know that much. Our city officials can't tell when someone has become homeless, nor can they tell when someone has stopped being homeless. They don't have a clue.

So the "number" of homeless the city arrives at by passing numerical identifiers out is certain to be meaningless.

In our last issue our esteemed editor god, Timothy Harris, pointed out some immediate objections to what he refers to as Tag n' Trak. For example the fact that many will not want to cooperate with the system for fear that the police or the INS will be allowed access to the data.

So at the beginning it is certain that the city won't count everyone.

But then, after a year or two have passed, the count will become too large, as the city is unable to know when to retire numbers, because there will be no sure way of spotting those exiting the system.

As the false count piles up it will become blatantly bloated, & the city will have no choice but to resort to the obvious fix: anyone who doesn't try to use the city's services within a certain time period gets their number retired.

So people who have given up on the city will again go uncounted, and we will be back to where we started.

(Actually there are those in the city government, Tom Byers, Peter Steinbrueck, etc., who say that the purpose of all this is only to count the resources available to the homeless, rather than the homeless themselves. Why then they are not proposing just assigning the numbers to the resources, they don't say.)

At least the proposal only involves passing out finite numbers to the homeless. Because if they were going to pass out infinite numbers I would be really peeved, as the following recycled poem is meant to indicate.

A Finite Rant Against Infinity, in 23 Lines to Be Exact

1. Don't need no body telling me

2. 'bout the 'lleged beauties of infinity.

3. A concept invented for divinity

4. by people with neurotic affinity

5. for passive-aggressive duplicity.

6. Paradox pawned-off as lucidity

7. meeting challenges with contrived absurdity

8. exploiting riddles to extract complicity.

9. THEN there's mathematical infinity.

10. Borrowed tongue-in-cheek from theology

11. and harnessed to Fourier Anal-why-ticity.

12. Hey I got a goddamn math degree

13. so don't even think to try to impress me

14. with your grasp of Cantorian Mystery.

15. Mystery my ass! It's deliberate reductivity.

16. and the fact that infinity squared is infinity

17. has nothing to do with eternity.

18. It is a dodge, a sham, an escape from the complexity

19. engendered by the finite's quirky specificity -

20. a specificity that makes the finite number 23

21. an enigma all too often mistaken for simplicity

22. (and if you really want to make points with me,

23. let's hear you explain the number three).

Dear Copyright Doctor

Another satisfied reader writes:

Dear Copyright Doctor --

You know what's wrong with you poor people? You're poor!

I mean, what do you think? That you don't deserve it? You're exactly where Jesus flang you! You reap what you sow, and you must have sewn nothing but [deleted]! Why should anybody care about any of you!?

Since I know you're an artsy freak, I wrote an artsy freak poem to explain it to you:

You're a loser and it ain't no accident--

All your karma has come, and it has went.

You had free will

but ignored the drill,

so don't cry for me to give you a cent!

signed Billy "Biff" Pill (an assumed name).

Thanks Biff! I really love to hear from my readers, and I can't get enough of your poetry! .

Your letter also touches on a subject that is near and dear to my heart -- to what extent am I responsible for all the stuff people pile on me? Did I really bring it on myself? If so, should I flog myself, or should I seek help? If so, who would I know that's good with a whip?

That brings to mind Mike Riley, Superintendent of Bellevue Public Schools. Not the whip part, the piling on part. As has been widely reported, Mr. Riley is an educator with a vision, and his vision has entailed doubling the book load on middle and high- schoolers in Bellevue. Come to think of it, that does call to mind whips too, doesn't it?

So my question is, did the middle-school kids have it coming?

That is not a rhetorical question! If it isn't the kids fault that they have received this fate, why would the Bellevue Schools have passed rules depriving those same students the means they have of coping? I'm referring, of course, to the banning of extra large backpacks at several middle schools.

Let me see if I can understand this in terms of the Billy "Biff" theory that seems to be operating here. The school administrators see the students coming in with giant backpacks. They even know why the students are using the big backpacks: the immediate reason is that they have more books. The administrators know that the students are just dealing with the situation.

But, in spite of knowing that, the administrators conclude that the students are doing something wrong! They define what that wrong is by passing rules against the use of extra large backpacks!

So the blame for carrying too many books around ends up heaped on the students. Why? Because the additional books prove they had evil thoughts when they were six? Because anyone unfortunate enough to grow up in a district where a Mike Riley is superintendent must be working off bad karma from their last life?

Absolutely. Biff says so. That's how Biff's theory works.

You may not even have a complaint. You may be, for example, homeless but happy, just pleased as a pet pig in a butcher shop to sleep on public dirt and get rained on every night. You may have never even asked Biff for that cent he was talking about.

But say the government passes a law that says that, whereas it is bad for your health to sleep on public dirt and get rained on every night, and besides it's public dirt and we don't want to see you sleeping on it, and besides we don't want you breathing our air anyway, therefore you're going to get a ticket every time you get caught, and eventually go to jail when you can't pay the tickets.

Biff's theory says that the mere fact that your means of coping has been ruled criminal proves that you had it coming.

People need to believe that sort of thing. Otherwise they couldn't possibly justify holding the homeless responsible for the natural consequences of their homelessness. They couldn't justify sending them to jail, just for doing what it takes to get by.

And you can see just how hard it is to stop people thinking that way, when

they apply the same kinds of arguments to innocent children.

Thanks for the illustration, Bellevue! And I hope you kids out there have all learned your lesson!

Cheesed Five-O

Well here we are again trying to make sense out of a world spinning into new-millenium madness, riding the grand ever-surprising baby boom crest on its way to that big Jimi Hendrix theme park in the sky that Paul Allen can only approximate here on Earth, in spite of all his riches.

That’s right. I hit the big Five-O this summer. I’m bummed. And that’s not a word I use lightly.

You want to know why I’m bummed? You want to know what’s really got me cheesed? Whatever that means? No? Well I’ll tell you then.

The library has got me down. The new librarian has a Vision of a homeless-free library. It seems that the homeless folks using the library are bad for the donation business, according to the new management, who just discovered that pretty people sell.

Now I could rant and rail about how unjust this is. I could point out that homeless people are citizens too, and have as much right to use the library as anyone else. I could note the absurdity of people saying all the time that homeless folks should apply themselves to improve themselves and their situations, and then try to discourage them from one of the best ways to do so.

But I won’t do that this time. Because what I’m bummed about is that I know that when they say they want to get rid of the homeless people, what they really mean is, they want to get rid of the people who look homeless, and that’s this old codger.

All those years of being homeless in the past have taken their toll.

We’ve already established the fact that the Seattle police cannot tell the difference between me, an old, currently housed, eccentric, impoverished nerd with a jones for old math books, from an actual homeless threat to the otherwise thriving, viable, Seattle downtown boom economy.

So what will happen to me when the Library Police start making their sweeps through the library rounding up the “transients” for deposit at the proposed Seattle Library Drop-in Center? What will happen to me is I’ll be swept into that bin with all the other housed and unhoused poor people who don’t look pretty enough to attract donations.

So maybe you’re thinking, how bad could that be? A nice newly built clean dry indoor day shelter, isn’t that what all you poor people want? A nice clean dry place to get in out of the rain, be with your own kind, maybe get to watch some TV, drink some coffee?

NO! If I wanted that I’d go to a damn day shelter! I want to be able to use the library!

OK, I didn’t want to be that recalcitrant without actually checking out a drop-in center. Maybe they’re great places. Maybe they have better math books than the Seattle Library. Sure, that’s possible, the Seattle Library sucks, almost anybody could have better math books than the Seattle Library.

So I looked around for an appropriate drop-in center to sample, and naturally picked the one closest to home. I checked out the Lazarus Center. Close and so appropriate, because it’s restricted to old geezers just like me. The age of eligibility is exactly Five-O.

Getting myself through the entrance was the hard part. I am, as I have tried repeatedly to convey here, depressed about being fifty. However, I am not depressed about being dead. Lazarus was dead. I am not dead. I do not feel the need to be revived from a state of dead-dom. I am not a Lazarus. I feel very strongly about that.

But I worked through those feelings, and achieved a level of resignation that permitted me to enter the place. Once inside I was pleasantly surprised. It was clean, dry, and out of the rain, of course.

There were not one but two TVs set to different channels. There were laundry facilities, coffee, a smoking room, a couple of computers that some guys were playing games on. I was surrounded by people who looked just like me.

And there was a “library” consisting of what looked like about a hundred Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

Can’t anyone out there feel my pain?