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Time goes from present to past. - Dogen Zenji 
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Feb 11.
Despite all this, I had never told
Jaimee about what happened to me in the before-time. I had tried
once before, and found I couldn't even begin the first sentence.
She said that I would tell her when I was ready to. No need to
force it out.
After the events of the past week,
I decided that now it was finally time to tell her.
"I think now's the time ..."
Jaim's eyebrows arched slightly at me in amazement. "Wow, at
long last, your 'life story', eh?" We turned to face each
other, bookended by glass window and Folsom Street.
Once again, I had trouble beginning ...
no words were coming. I searched,
trying to find the beginning. But it wasn't happening
... it's as if the door to the birdcage has been opened, but
the bird just sits there, unwilling to escape into the night air.
But I'm determined to tell Jaimee this story. This is bullshit,
I'm tired of harboring it, especially with Jaimee --
Rip-san knows, and I want her to know too. I'm going
to push the words out, just start somewhere, anywhere.
A sentence gets thrown together in my head; I draw a breath to
begin speaking --
"'Scuse me, hey, you see that??"
Jaim and I turn our heads in unison,
both surprised. The homeless woman, wrapped
in a thick dusty blanket, shivering, standing next to us,
quietly came out of nowhere.
She told us of how she had been cleared
out of the alley she was sleeping in by SFPD and the Mayor. I
looked at Jaimee, then down the street where the woman was pointing,
puzzled. "The Mayor himself? He was out here with the police?
At this hour?" The woman nodded. Jaimee looked at her watch
-- it was 1 am.
I thought about it; then theorized flippantly
that the Mayor must have some weird hang-up about the homeless,
to feel compelled to personally kick them off the street corners
and alleyways. At 1 am!
The woman ranted, telling us how it
made her feel, how unfair it was, how she was just released from
a shelter, and had started having her seizures again. That word
washed through my skull: seizures. My God, she has to go through
this on the street. My heart sank just a little bit.
"Did you tell Mayor Brown about
your condition?" She said she tried to, but he wouldn't listen.
The rest of the 3-way conversation
was a blur, Jaimee took most of it, both of us giving her our
full attention. The woman was thankful we were kind to her and
willing to listen -- she mentioned something about being called
"nigger" twice today. She apologized for smelling like
urine; Jaim and I didn't think twice about it. We asked her if
we could give her a ride somewhere; she politely refused.
we asked her where
she could go; she mentioned shelters and houses down here in the
SOMA that would take her, including one that would keep her and
feed her indefinitely if she helped out with volunteer work in
the house. She mentioned a one-time fee that she had to save up
the money for. We asked her how much it was. Seven dollars.
Jaimee gave her twenty, telling her
to use it to buy extra clothes. The woman was so taken aback at the
amount she almost refused it. I flash-thought of how that was
more than perhaps I would give, but I wouldn't even think of vocalizing
it right there and tarnishing such a generous gesture. It would
be like one parent countermanding the decision of another in front
of the children; you just don't do that sort of thing ... you
horribly confuse the child that way. Jaimee also gave the woman
some smokes so she could warm up -- she was shivering badly.
I think we both wanted to give her
a hug as we said goodbye but sensed it wouldn't be appropriate
-- the woman was scared and cold, and just needed to be in her
own skin right now. You could see in her eyes though, how much
our listening to her in her time of duress meant to her.
"Keep talking," I said. "People
won't know what you've been thru if you don't keep talking about
it." Jaimee concurred. "Keep telling your story. You
gotta keep telling your story."
She thanked us again; we watched her go.
Jaim and I turned to look at each other,
and took a moment to let the encounter sink in. We were angry
at the callousness of the Mayor; saddened that she had to deal
with her illness so harshly; flustered that she couldn't be left
in peace.
As we walked back along the darkened city street toward Jaimee's
Jetta, I pondered the timing of what just happened.
"That was too spooky that she cut me off right on cue like
that." I thought of chapter one of The Celestine
Prophecy, the one that discusses what it calls the 'First Insight'.
"I don't consider that coincidence, that I was stopped from
even beginning one sentence. There was a reason for that."
Jaimee nodded in response to my observation -- after
all, she has experienced it too: events that seemingly are 'coincidence',
but feel too strong to even remotely be coincidence. That woman
somehow knew to interrupt us. Maybe she wasn't aware that she
knew ... but she knew. And what that woman put in place of
it had a message all its own, both separate from and linked to the
purpose of the interruption.
And along with what the woman had taught
us about the Mayor, about how she struggles, about how a little
genuine help goes a long way ... Jaimee also taught me something.
Something I noticed in her interaction with the homeless woman
that burned into my brain, something I never would've thought to
do before.
The image of Jaimee giving
her the money, as I have done countless times before ... but
this time Jaimee, as me, putting the money into her hand and then
gently saying, "get some clothes".
A wish into action, along with the offering.
Respectful, supportive, more than a cold donation.
A gift along with a gift.
Extraordinary.
I shake my head gently in response without looking at her,
along with a polite smile directed sort-of her way.
The auto-responder.
Inside the Jack-In-The-Box, I look
back over my shoulder as my order is made. She's playing listlessly
with a large grey dog, lashed to the railing by a leash, obviously
hers from the happy attention it gives her. Lone Grey With Grey Dog.
They hand me my food as I'm checking
my wallet. Two bucks. I exit the restaurant and come up behind
her, rain pouring out on the street. "Hey, this is for you."
I give her the money, placing it in her hand. She smiles a
thank-you at me
as I pat the side of her shoulder reassuringly. "Find a shelter and get
warm, ok?"
She opens her mouth as if to start
a sentence, then halts, changes gears. What was she about to say?
Instead she tells me how cold it is with all the rain, then begins her
story -- about how she's been here 2 months, from Massachusetts,
just trying to get home. It's so hard tho, Greyhound won't let
you travel with a dog.
It was so easy. A gift along with a gift. So easy, and
makes so much difference.
The bus transit terminal was just across the street. It was like First Street was this big chasm framed
by two cliffs, her on one side, the bus station on the other. Looking for that certain rope to make her way across.
The nighttime street corner of 9th
& Folsom is illuminated by chatter between me & Jaimee,
as we gaze in the window of a furniture store, marvelling at 60's
sci-fi retro style wagging their tails at us, looking for a good
home. Jaimee's like that long-lost playground playmate from kindergarten,
the one you sat in the sandbox with under a sunny afternoon, both of you
gleefully tossing sand up into the
air, laughing and squealing as it came raining down around you.
Not a care in the world. The sandbox-playmate image is how I describe
us; her description is of that invisible T-1 connection between
our brains, knowing all that we see and feel in common, sync'ing
up thoughts and views, transmitting and receiving faster than language can
allow. True best friends, freed of race, background, gender,
roles, belief systems, and geography. Two minds in its purest, most
distilled form. The second time in my life I've found such a friend,
Rip being the first.
The next evening, I'm briskly walking up 1st Street from work searching for some dinner.
A downpour has brought out all the umbrellas, turning downtown pedestrian traffic
into a sea of
vinyl domes. The deli I usually go to is closed; a
nearby Jack-In-The-Box is my last resort. As I walk up the handicapped-access
ramp, I pass a tall form in an almost-black parka, drenched from
the rain, its hood obscuring the dirtied face inside. The voice
is young, healthy, but low on energy. "Any change to spare?"
Wish them something good after you give them your gift. They'll find a way.