Meditation: On Home -lessness

The language does this to them and to us: they are homeless (or bums); they shit; they suffer mental illness; they steal; they make their choices.

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"'I'm not calling them homeless,' [Diamond Head resident Scott] Ballentyne said. 'They're bums. They'll scream and shout at the moon. They leave trash and (defecate) all over the place. Cars have been broken into and they've broken into houses, including mine.'" (SA, 7/26/15). "People make choices," a soccer dad said to me during one of my daughter's matches, as his wife and I were talking about homelessness on O`ahu.

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According to the OED, the word "lessness" means "The quality of being less; inferiority." It's a noun. The suffix "-lessness" is more complicated, however. Homelessness, powerlessness, joylessness, agelessness: these words suggest more than lack; they also indicate a state of being. Less is more. Lessness lasts, because it refers to time. To say that someone is "joyless" is not to remark that you saw them for a brief moment, but that they exist within a state of lacking joy. There's an aggregation to loss, an addition that makes loss last.

Samuel Beckett's "Lessness" (1970) is the last quotation in the OED entry. It's a noun, but Beckett's prose piece is also verb, folding in and back on itself, suggesting infinitude. There are very few words in "Lessness," very few sentences. Yet these few words recur. As Philip H. Solomon notes,  "Lessness contains 769 words (each of which will appear twice) but only 166 distinct lexical items. They make up 120 sentences divided among 24 paragraphs varying in length from 3 to 7 sentences each. Beginning with the thirteenth paragraph, each of the 60 sentences of the first twelve paragraphs is repeated—randomly—in the second group of 12 paragraphs." The more words recur, the more the reader recognizes that endless sentences could be constructed out of these words. "Lessness" could go on, and on, and on, rather like a Beckett character.

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We hiked Diamond Head with family (and hundreds of tourists) the other day. The reward for this easy hike is a gorgeous series of views at the top: an expanse of blue ocean and a large swath of the leeward side of O`ahu, from Koko Head to the airport. On one hike a year or two back, I noticed a graveyard of hats beneath the look-out; it seemed comical that so many tourists had lost their caps, their floppy hats, their brims to the wind, and that these hats had come to rest but a few feet below us. This time I noticed something else. Closer to the road below than to the look-out were a series of camps: tents, blue tarps, nestled in summer's brown foliage (Diamond Head is only green in the winter, when it rains). A belt of homeless camps was ringing the old volcano. (See the photograph above.)

As we drove back down Kapahulu toward the freeway entrance next to the university, we saw a line of tents across from Foodland, under H1. Beside the tents, one of which features an American flag, we noticed bicycles, folding chairs, and other evidence of human settlement. All of these tents--and those in the triangular area across from Kapahulu--are placed on cement. The homeless have already been kicked out of parks, out of Waikiki entirely, and now live on this sidewalk edge beside and underneath heavy traffic. But the expansion of the notorious "sit-lie" provisions means that the precarious physical edge of the sidewalk is not nearly so precarious as the temporal edge. They could get "swept" at any time, and the provisions could be expanded to make their current "homes" illegal.

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"He will curse God again as in the blessed days face to the open sky the passing deluge. Little body grey face features slit and little holes two pale blue. Blank mind." (SB)


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"A 56-year old homeless man who would give only his first name, Oliver, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he used to live at Diamond Head but left because the other homeless people 'were too hard-core.' Instead, Oliver ended up at a rapidly growing encampment across from Market City Shopping Center after the city's 'sit-lie' ban forced him out of Waikiki about three months ago." (7/26/15) On page A16, where I read these very few words uttered by a homeless man--are they three words or four, if you take out the hyphen?--there's also a picture of a homeless man and a woman inside a tent, holding her dog. Above them is a larger photo of "Personal items scattered in the area of the Board of Water Supply property on the Ewa slope of Diamond Head crater near Collins Street [which] indicated the presence of a homeless camp earlier this month." In the photo, you see bike wheels, an old basketball hoop, a television screen, pieces of cloth on the ground, and items of clothing hanging from low trees. In other words, you see "trash."

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The first quotation in the article is from Dean Harvest, vice chairman of the Wahiawa Neighborhood board, who took his wife to dinner "only to see a homeless man drop his pants on Wahiawa's main drag, California Avenue, and defecate on the sidewalk." Like Ballentyne (above), he alludes to his own disgust. Now, I don't know Wahiawa very well, as it's in central O`ahu, but if it's anything like Honolulu, there are very few public restrooms. Hardly any, if you don't count the restrooms on Waikiki Beach, an area out of which the homeless have already been pushed. "Where do they get water?" my husband asked, when I pointed out the homeless encampments on the dry edges of Diamond Head. Good question.

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"Flatness endless little body only upright same grey all sides earth sky body ruins, Face to white calm touch close eye calm long last all gone from mind. One step more one alone all alone in the sand no hold he will make it." (SB)

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I arrived in San Francisco sometime in 2006 for a conference, but stayed in an off-site hotel. I was at the door by 7 a.m. (damn Hawai`i flights), but there would be no room for me until 3 p.m. I'd had no sleep. So I started wandering around, and found the convention hotel. It was Hyatt or Hilton, I can't remember which, and took my breath away when I entered and was reminded of photographs of large stupas where skulls are stored from the Cambodian killing fields. I went to the back of a very large lobby and lay down on a black couch. I was there for a while, when a hotel employee loudly asked if I were staying in the hotel. I said no. He told me I was not allowed to sleep in the lobby and needed to leave. I walked out into the bright air of San Francisco and saw homeless men (mostly) sitting at polite distances from one another on nearly every downtown street. They were legion. Pedestrians were walking by, purpose in their step. Those seated on the ground looked at the pedestrians, but the pedestrians' eye level was higher, full of need to get somewhere.

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The median price for a house in Honolulu is 3/4 of a million dollars. Twenty two new condo towers are sprouting in Kaka`ako, which is the city's warehouse district. "Howard Hughes has also made clear their intentions to build luxury units that, at least in some cases, will raise the bar in Hawaii. One in the works is a penthouse property listed at $80,000,000 (yes $80M, not $8M), which will have its own heliport." Of course, not all units will cost $80 million; many studios will go for a mere $1-2 million. "Along with this smart development you get the best of nature's treasures as well. Soft, enveloping beach, the infinite blue ocean, wide green parks - they're all within your reach now. No climbing once again into the car every time you need to just get out for a while. Kakaako’s new development is built around easy access to every aspect of life."

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I stood on the corner of a street in a busy provincial city in Cambodia; across from my corner and down a side street a bustling market was buzzing with activity. I saw a monk in saffron robes doing his rounds. He entered the shops behind me, or was greeted by a shopkeeper who gave him some money. The system that supported him depended on his vow of poverty and the acculturated generosity of the retail class. They had their work, and he had his. I'm fascinated by the wandering mendicant, whether that monk or Francis of Assisi, who wandered Europe, unrooted and poor. Their poverty is chosen, but real. Theirs is not the idea of poverty, but the thing itself.

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“To love God and neighbor is not something abstract, but profoundly concrete: it means seeing in every person the face of the Lord to be served, to serve him concretely. And you are, dear brothers and sisters, the face of Jesus.”   (Pope Francis, Address during Visit at the Homeless Shelter “Dono Di Maria,” 5/21/13)

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"True refuge long last scattered ruins same grey as the sands. Never was but grey air timeless no stir not a breath. Blank planes sheer white calm eye light of reason all gone from mind. Never but in vanished dream the passing hour long short. Four square all light sheer white blank planes all gone from mind." (SB)

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How to reconcile a spiritual admiration for the poor with political rage against those who force people into poverty? How to love the mendicant but want to raise the tent-dweller into an economy where it's possible to have a roof over his or her head? How to understand the virtues of having no possessions (except the omnipresent bicycle, perhaps) with the evil of taking away the possibilities for living in some comfort? How to (re)create communities that care for their dispossessed citizens? In the Star-Advertiser article from which I've been quoting, the words of Councilwoman Kymberley Pine shine through, as she talks about her Ewa district, even as she creates her own "us and them" equation: "'Church members are involved, everyone's involved to lift them up and get them the help that they need. The people in my district don't treat them so horribly as elsewhere because so many residents have been there themselves.'" She even offers some analysis of the problem: "'Each time the homeless get moved hey get more violent. Their stress is high because they're constantly worried about where they're going to get food for the day.'"

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The mayor's spokesman wrote this to the newspaper about homeless encampments. Note the focus on optics: "'The city has been highly successful at removing encampments at a lot of highly visit places where there used to be a lot of complaints when Mayor Caldwell took office in 2013, such as along Kalakaua Avenue including at the old Hard Rock location, the zoo, the sidewalks, and more, along the Ala Wai Promenade, at Pawaa In Ha Park, at the Moiliili field, in Chinatown, in city parks all along the leeward coast, in Ala Moana Beach Park, at the Hawaii Kai Park and Ride, at Haleiwa Alii Beach Park, and numerous other locations all over Oahu.'" He adds that "many of the most visible areas have been successfully addressed."

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"Little body little block heart beating ash grey only upright. Little body ash grey locked rigid heart beating face to endlessness. Little body little block genitals overrun arse a single block grey crack overrun. Figment dawn dispeller of figments and the other called dusk." (SB)

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To be visible is to be a problem. To be invisible is to save the city from complaints, whether by tourists or by local residents. To be visible is to be dirty, a shitter, a thief. To be invisible means that "we" don't need to worry about any of that. This is a sorry binary indeed. But even if you "buy into it," in good capitalist metaphorical fashion, we've reached a tipping point. Invisibility is not an option; there are too many homeless/houseless people. Their "lessness" no longer denotes an individual lack, but a proliferation; their lessness is moreness. Beckett was right to highlight the endlessness of lessness (which works better in his translation than does the "Sans" of the original). But this is not simply a question of semantics.

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What is the median price of homelessness? of mental illness and addiction and the PTSD of veterans on the street? What is the median price of seeing the poor among us? or the median price of hiding them on Sand Island (one idea) or at the back of a valley somewhere? What is the median price of our semantics? or of our desire to get to the grocery story or the coffee shop without witnessing someone else's pain? What is the median price of our silence, either when we see a poor person on the street or when we permit passage of legislation making it illegal to sit or lie on a sidewalk? What is the median price of sidewalk?

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To be "responsible" is to be accountable, to do the right thing. I try to be responsible as a teacher, a parent, a citizen. In the absence of functional institutions, responsibility feels more difficult these days: national and local governments abdicate their responsibilities; the university is an increasingly chaotic place to be. While some institutions are falling apart, others grow like cancers (prisons). We can try to push our institutions from within, demand that they bend toward responsibility, but that effort involves more patience than most of us possess. So I'll take the word apart and start there. The first two of the word's four syllables are "response." Our responsibility is to respond to what we witness. There is no act of witness without our believing this to be a first political act. Where we go from there is too often a mystery. But let's begin by turning our ear toward the voices we need to hear. You won't find them in the newspaper (the headline reads "Too Close for Comfort") You'll need to get closer than that.



Notes:

Samuel Beckett, "Lessness." http://www.samuel-beckett.net/lessness.html

My testimony before the zoning committee of the Honolulu City Council

I stand in opposition to Bills 42, 43, 45, 46 & 48 [those that would criminalize homelessness]

On Oahu, you have the right to be rude to the homeless (we saw that in action at the Civil Beat forum), but you will not have the right to refuse shelter from the persons being rude to you.

On Oahu—as elsewhere—you have the right to be rude (it's called free speech), but if you're homeless, you do not have the right to “bad behavior.” As the head of IHS, Connie Mitchell, said to the Star-Advertiser: “We just think that supporting the bill sets the standard for public behavior. It isn't laws that criminalize people, it's people's behavior that criminalizes them.” As a friend of mine says: “It's not guns that kill people, it's the organ damage and blood loss from gunshot wounds that kill people. If we just outlaw those, we'll be fine.”

On Oahu, you do have the right to sit on the sidewalk in line to buy concert tickets, new iPhones, million dollar condos, or other luxuries, but not if you have nowhere to go after.

On Oahu, you have the right to shit, but only in a toilet; given the lack of public facilities, you pretty much need an apartment or a house.

On Oahu, you have the right to get on a wait list for housing, but not to wait in a place where you won't be “swept away” by the police.

On Oahu, you have the right to buy a gun from a large, exquisite display at Sports Authority, but you will not have the right, under redrafted Bill 45 to a full night's sleep. Instead, you get 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.: free from the sit/lie ban, or just 7 hours.

On Oahu, the Waikiki tourist board has the right to strong-arm IHS and the City Council into passing these bills before giving $500K to help the homeless; apparently, no one has the right to strong arm them by refusing their blackmail and demanding such help without the strings.

On Oahu, you have the right to say you're a progressive politician when you run for lower or higher office, but seemingly you do not have the chutzpah to actually be one when it comes to homelessness.

If you don't have a street address or a valid id, you can't vote, so no need help. Someone counting the votes? The campaign contributions?

How the City Council Talks about Homelessness

The Honolulu City Council will take up Bills 42, 43, 45, 46, and 48 again on August 28 at 9 a.m. in Honolulu Hale. So I'm going to do some basic research on the public face of the Honolulu City Council's members on the issue(s) of homelessness. Interspersed with my research are statements and examples by H. Doug Matsuoka, who's been at this much longer than I have. [HDM] As he writes to me: "I've been trying to combat these bills since 2011's Bill 54 (which became 11-29 Revised Ordinances of Honolulu, I think). That was Tulsi Gabbard's bill and it seems some council members think if they replicate that kind of bill they will replicate that kind of success."
 
Many on the council are quite ambitious politicians, so they have websites that are easy to access. For example, Ikaika Anderson, Joey Manahan and Stanley Chang ran for Congress (they lost, but). But their websites are, for the most part, notably clean of any mention of this issue. As Colin Kippen would say, "there's a hole in his lauhala mat that covers the abyss."

Ikaika Anderson does not include homelessness among the issue on the website set up for his congressional campaign, though he seems to be one of the prime movers and shakers behind this move to criminalize.

http://www.ikaikaforhawaii.com/issues

[HDM]:  "Ikaika Anderson has been a big supporter of criminalization and "sidewalk" bills. He introduced 2013's Bill 6 that would have outlawed putting "any structure capable of providing human shelter" on the sidewalk. It was too idiotic even for the Council so they did not pass it. In fact, I believe Ikaika retracted it. http://www.dougnote.com/2014/01/testimony-in-strong-opposition-to-bill-6.html"

Ernie Martin's website includes a plea for better housing for the homeless. But he voted to pass on the legislation that criminalizes the homeless! When I talked to him while on a bike ride, he said, "something needs to be done," though he expressed concern for homeless children.

http://www.erniemartin.org/in-the-news/

But HDM adds context: "But right after that [Anderson's bad bill] Ernie Martin introduced Bill 7 which did indeed pass and became ordinance 13-8, the notorious no-knock midnight raid law used in current raids."

Stanley Chang also ran for Congress as a liberal politician. He was endorsed by the Progressive Caucus in the US Congress. Where on his website is mention of homelessness? Nowhere that I see (at least on his "agenda for change" page). He also voted to pass Bills 42, 43, 45, 46, and 48 along.

http://stanleychangforcongress.com/agenda-for-change/ 

On another website, he talks about how the practice of pu`uhonua inspires him, but the writing is too vague to understand what specifically he means:

http://stanleychang.com/priorities/ 

More background from Doug:  "I met Kathryn Xian when she offered to help defeat Stanley Chang's Bill 59 (2013): http://www.dougnote.com/2013/09/no-on-city-council-bill-59.html I caught (here in the beginning of this clip) calling the homeless, "an epidemic of people obstructing the sidewalk.

The Doug Note: Testimony in strong opposition to Bill 6

www.dougnote.com": Here's the video:

Part II: http://youtu.be/HTvP9pn_2ao

Bill 59 wrap up: Down for the count or just back to corners

youtu.be

Carol Fukunaga does not refer to homelessness on her City Council website, but has proposed adding public toilets downtown. Her facebook page informs us that she sponsored Bill 44, the sit-lie down bill that extends the reach of Bill 42 into her area:

"6/25: On Friday, Councilwoman Carol Fuku­naga unveiled Bill 44, which imposes the "sit-lie"ban in an area from River Street to Ward Avenue, makai of the H-1 freeway. Fuku­naga said the homelessness issue is just as acute in that area as it is in Wai­kiki. The Downtown-Chinatown region already has a state-imposed restriction on urination and defecation. -- Team #Carol2014"

http://carolfukunaga.com/public-restrooms-for-urban-honolulu-neighborhoods/ 

More background from Doug:  "Oh, Fukunaga has always been a proponent of the criminalization bills. Here's a clip answering the homeless question posed during a candidates forum": http://youtu.be/W3E8PqFvDgs

7/17/14 HNL County Council D6 candidates answer Q on homelessness

youtu.be

Joey Manahan ran for Congress. His statement on homelessness exists, but is plenty vague:

https://www.joeymanahan.com/issues/homelessness/

Ron Menor's site is covered with platitudes; there's no specific mention of homelessness, though there's a photograph of Menor at a food bank.

http://ronmenor.com/whyron.php

Kymberley Marcos Pine's on-line presence is not very specific, though you can see here that she (and Breene Harimoto) have voted against Bills 42 and 45.

http://www4.honolulu.gov/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-150456/BILL042%2814%29.htm 

Doug:  "Kymberly Pine opposed Bill 59 which so literally and directly violates the Kanawai Mamalahoe that she is afraid that the Hawaiians in her district would get upset. I've got a clip of her saying that if you want me to find it." When I (Susan) spoke to her after one Council meeting, she seemed genuine and concerned, and mentioned that she was an English major--

Breene Harimoto did not post this video; H. Doug Matsuoka did. But it speaks volumes. He's opposed to criminalizing homelessness, and he speaks with moral authority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGCg9iLQI3k 

As Doug points out to me--it comes through in this video--Harimoto believes he's following his Christian faith in supporting the homeless. How one wishes other Christians were as, well, Christian on this issue.

So, bear in mind that these politicians, no matter how liberal the politics they show on their websites might be, have made the decision to run under the radar on this important issue. Or to go for the cliches. Cliches, like the intricate Homeric similes spun by Mr. Kippen (Abercrombie's homeless "czar"), avoid the point by painting beautiful fuzzy and unrelated pictures. Thank goodness Doug takes and archives video of these council meetings and campaign events.


Note: If you like Doug's digital work, you might also be interested to hear that he loves fountain pens and medievalism. Go figure.

"Enforcement tools" as "encouragement": More on the criminalization of homeless on O`ahu

                               [Photo by Krystalle Marcellus]

Beneath this photograph, which is in equal parts amusing and unhelpful, today's Honolulu Star-Advertiser contains a front-page story, "Visitor industry pushes for more help from city," that explains why, at a recent Civil Beat forum on homelessness, the spokesman from Institute for Human Services (IHS) supported efforts to criminalize homelessness. These are Bills 42,  43, 45, 46, and 48 deferred by the City Council right before the primary election, now up for review again (redundantly so) on August 28. The first paragraph makes clear that funding for IHS from the tourist industry depends on the City Council's passing these bills. To help the homeless, in other words, you need to make it illegal to sit on sidewalks or urinate and defecate in public (in areas where there are no public restrooms, mind you).

I went to the Civil Beat panel at Fresh Cafe on August 14 to get better acquainted with the issues and personalities involved in them. On the panel were Collin Kippen, the governor's "homeless czar," Jung Yang, who works for the Mayor, and two men who've had experience running shelters, Jason Espero and Jerry Coffee of IHS. The moderators were Chad Blair and Gene Park. The room was packed with people: activists, homeless people, interested citizens like myself. The personalities were more compelling than the ideas, from Kippen's persistent flights of metaphor and analogy, Yang's more bureaucratic and defensive approach, Espero's earnestness, and Coffee's odd support for criminalization. One of Coffee's "theories" of homelessness is that it is like addiction, that there are cycles of addiction and recovery, relapse and further recovery. Nice theory, but where in it do we find any economic analysis; it would seem to take a village to recover from this problem, not one person with a substance abuse problem. I was so fascinated by this last panel member, for his self-unraveling remarks, that I looked him up when I got home, only to realize he is the son of a POW held in North Vietnam, a man who has authored a book titled Beyond Survival: Building on the Hard Times--a POW's Inspiring Story.

Make of that what you will. While Kippen was amusing the audience with his analogies about lauhala mats, holes, and the abyss; padding outside the wave; salmons and waterfalls and who gets to climb them; and the steep road we're on from which we fall, only to get put back on . . . the best information was provided by one of the questioners during the second hour. He referred to the way in which wages have flattened, but rental and housing prices have not. That many people who work cannot afford housing is true now, and will be more true in the near future. If the median price of a house on O`ahu is now $700,000, and developers are building 22 huge condo towers in Kakaako in the next few years for extremely high prices, then where will ordinary people live? That that sounds like a rhetoric question is evidence that the answers, too, seem only rhetorical.

There's Housing First, which is intended to house the "chronically homeless" first--these are the single men (mostly) who have mental health and substance abuse problems, those who will die on the streets if they're not helped soon. We were each given a lovely booklet about the Mayor's Housing First plans. Discussion of Housing First led to a quarrel with the panel over "stereotyping" the homeless as dirty drug addicts (Kathyrn Xian did a very good job of punching holes in this lauhala mat). I'd rather consider the groups without judgment, but it's clear that a lot of homeless families need immediate housing, too. Housing First passed the City Council, but has not been funded. And, while there are good ideas about micro-housing and other options, no one seems to know where they'll be located. And then there are these bills to criminalize homelessness. We're caught between a policy that is not being permitted to work, and one that will only hide the problem rather than address it in any practical, compassionate way. Brought up in discussion, but never addressed directly, were the developers currently making fortunes in Honolulu building condos largely for people who do not live here.

Which brings us back to the re-introduction of Bills 42, 43, 45, 46, 48 by Councilman Ikaika Anderson, chair of the Zoning Committee. According to today's Star-Advertiser, Anderson wants the criminalization bills to pass, and he complains about the Mayor's not doing enough to implement Housing First. Certainly, the tourist industry is playing hard ball with the council, demanding that these bills pass before they help to fund IHS. But theirs is the language of humanitarianism: "'Oftentimes, we see the visitor industry step up in times of crisis, like a tsunami in Japan, or the Philippines,' Egged said. 'It's more unusual to see it happen for a social crisis, but I think that everyone recognizes the magnitude of this issue for the community." (Rick Egged is the head of the Waikiki Improvement Association.) This after saying that seeing homeless people on the streets is bad for tourism (aka the economy, which trumps everything). Among the other problems, someone from Outrigger declares that the homeless are "not civil," because they steal towels panhandle, and block access to beaches.

Clearly, the people at the Waikiki Improvement Association and at IHS believe in "tough love." IHS's executive director, Connie Mitchell refers to the bills as "deterrents,"believing that when people are forced to move they realize that the shelter is not as bad of an option as they might have originally thought." Such is the "tough love" offered by local business and IHS, now tied together by way of a trade(?) of money for criminalizing the homeless. (Well, if you're not a criminal, you'd make the choice of going to a shelter, they are more than seeming to say.) But if "love" is, on the one side, the desire to make disappear in order to help business and, on the other, a desire to have people use your facilities (rumored to have bed bugs and less than kind staffing), then what is love's opposite?

Note:

Bill 42 prohibits sitting and lying on sidewalks in the Waikiki Special District . . .

Bill 43 prohibits urinating and defecating in public areas in Waikiki

Bill 45 prohibits sitting and lying on sidewalks throughout Oahu

Bill 46 prohibits urinating and defecating in public areas islandwide.

Bill 48 prohibits sitting and lying on the sidewalks during specific times in specific commercial and business areas within Chinatown, downtown, McCully-Moiliili, Waipahu, Kalihi and Kailua.

[from the Star-Advertiser, August 18, 2014]

"Sweeping" the homeless away

 I ran into my city councilman, Ernie Martin, yesterday; I was riding my bike and he was waving campaign signs. When I said I'd testified in front of the council, he said, "You da professah." While he persisted in saying "we need to do something," by which he means the new anti-homeless legislation, he did say he felt very sorry for kids living on the streets in Kaka`ako (the part of Honolulu that is currently bursting with high-priced developments for the super rich). Here's an article that addresses homelessness in Kaka`ako, followed by a link you can use to give to the family in the television report.


http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/26039725/former-pearl-city-family-says-citys-efforts-to-end-homelessness-is-hurting-not-helping


https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-3-year-old-talia-out-of-homelessness

Homelessness as contagion: Bills 42, 43, & 44 before Honolulu's City Council

 

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

             --George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

I've attended the last two City Council meetings on bills to criminalize homelessness, one in late June and the other on July 9. Of course they are not called bills to criminalize homelessness, rather they merely "relate to public sidewalks" and to "defecating and urinating in public" in Waikiki and in Chinatown. (Another bill extends the range to all of Oahu.) At the first meeting, I listened as testifiers came before the Council to speak for or against the bills. It struck me then that two central arguments were being made: the first, by the side in favor, was based on the economy. Business people spoke in favor because they are losing business when homeless people camp in front of their store fronts. The second side said very little about the economy, except that homelessness is the symptom of a bad one; instead, this side's argument was a moral, sometimes a religious, one. "The least among us" was a phrase I heard more than once. How can you throw already homeless people off the sidewalks? (More than that, the penalty for such behavior is a fine; if the homeless cannot pay the fine, they end up in prison, where they are housed--in a modern-day debtors' prison.)

Honolulu's Mayor Kirk Caldwell was quoted at the end of June in the New York Times. "We haven’t eliminated the visual impact of homelessness,” Mr. Caldwell said. “When visitors come here, they want to see their paradise. They don’t want to see homeless people sleeping in parks or on sidewalks or on the beach . . . . I want to do this in a constitutional way, a human way, but I want to do it. We need to do it. I call it compassionate disruption — we are not doing it without heart.”

Where to begin a close-reading of such "jibber jabber," as one testifier called it? Perhaps with "the visual impact of homelessness." The Mayor sets us on the cosmetic level, the level of surfaces (nay sidewalks). This "visual impact" is not on the homeless, forced to witness others' disdain or avoidance of them, nor even on residents, but on visitors to the island who have come pursuing a fantasy that they want to see--if not in truth, then at least on their vacation. They do not want to see the homeless, who are an affront to the myth of Paradise, who are, in fact, more a part of the myth of the Fall. If Waikiki exists within the walls of ocean on one side and the Ala Wai canal on the other, then it offers Paradise before the Fall. Kick the homeless outside these walls because they sin against the image of Paradise. They have eaten the apple of poverty. But the richest of Caldwell's phrases is the seeming paradox of "compassionate disruption," which he has offered up on other occasions. "Compassion" is a word that means "to suffer with." It requires imagination--to feel compassion, you must feel as if you are someone else--and also to feel "for" them. "Disruption," on the other hand, means "a violent rending apart." Is not homelessness already disruption enough? How is the violent rending of "sweeping" (for that is the term) people off the streets also an act of "compassion"? Perhaps the Mayor means to use high falutin' language for "tough love," but that phrase, too, sounds better than it means. He wants to accomplish this violent rending in "a human way," "with heart."

Somewhere, Caldwell learned about the use of paradox. But he did not learn that simply yoking opposites together doesn't necessarily mean anything, especially in a world that is not metaphorical but real. Paradox works beautifully in poetry because poetry often imagines a different reality, but Caldwell is not talking poetry, he is talking public policy. To make the treatment of the poor into a clever paradox does not, cannot, help them, even if it makes him feel smart.

In my research on Alzheimer's, I found that right wing politicians talk about "illegal aliens" and people with "Alzheimer's" in much the same way. They are rootless, scary because they have no sense of boundaries or frontiers, and they don't obey laws that governments attempt to force upon them. Today, I see an article in AlterNet about the crisis of immigrant children at the US border, in which the author points out the use of "sickness" as a way to frighten people away from sympathizing with children in detention. You can read the article here, but the money quote (as it were) is this: "But the controversy really boiled over with news reports last week that these children were 'diseased' and were being shipped all over the nation, infecting Americans with everything from H1N1 flu to scabies to Cangas fever. Whatever other problems these people may have had with these children being allowed to seek asylum in America, it was now a public health threat." 

I'm not here to argue that all undocumented immigrants are healthy people; clearly, they cannot be, due to the situation they find themselves in, their lack of health care, the trauma of their exodus from Central American countries.  But it's clear that the trope (not the reality) of illness is intended to scare American citizens, make them want to reject the "illegal" "germ" that is the refugee. And I'm also here to report that the language of Bill 42 (re: Waikiki) and its echo, Bill 44 (re: Chinatown) feeds off this very system of metaphor. (Thank you Lakoff and Johnson, for your Metaphors We Live By.) 
For the bill itself, like the testifiers about it, splits between tropes of "health" and "disease," economics and the threat of hard times. Look at Bill 42, section (a), third paragraph down, and read this:

The public welfare is promoted by an economically healthy Waikiki special district area that attracts people, including visitors, to reside, shop, work and resident accommodations, restaurants, retail shops and other commercial establishments that offer a unique visitor experience and provides easily -accessible goods and services, employments opportunities, the tax revenues necessary to support essential public services and the economic productivity necessary to maintain and improve property within the area.

So, the welfare of the "public" (most of whom are visitors) depends on the "health" of the economy. What gets contrasted with such economic robustness, but "danger" and "obstacle" and "bad behavior"? See the next paragraph:

Persons who sit or lie down on public sidewalks deter residents and visitors from patronizing local shops, restaurants, businesses, and cultural and art venues, and deter people from using the neighborhood sidewalks . . . Business areas and neighborhoods become dangerous to pedestrian safety and economic vitality in the Waikiki special district . . . This behavior [of blocking the sidewalk] causes a cycle of decline as residents and visitors go elsewhere . . . residents become intimidated from tusing the public sidewalks because of obstructions in their own neighborhoods.

From then on, this becomes an issue of "safety" from disruption (this is not compassionate disruption, mind you). When we get to Bill 43, 'RELATING TO URINATING AND DEFECATING IN PUBLIC," we read about "a public health risk because of the possible spread of disease." Fair enough: untreated human waste is hardly healthy stuff. But when--as person after person testified--there are not enough public restrooms in Honolulu to accommodate a real human need, then what? Arrest people for not finding an unfindable restroom? For "intentionally or knowingly" fulfilling an absolute human need?

During the testimony on the second day of hearings I attended, David Cantwell, a homeless man in a wheelchair, pulled out "pooping pads," which he distributed to each member of the council. On this KITV report, you can hear him ask, "are we supposed to poop in our pants?" What gets left out is his question to the council members: "have YOU ever pooped in your pants?" You can see him (and me) here. 

So we're left with the dichotomy between health and disease, as if health were money, disease its lack. If you're "unhealthy," you need to be separated from the healthy, either by being "interned," as Kathryn Xian aptly put it, put in prison, or left on a distant island where no one can see your diseased skin or self. (That's been done before in this state.) The state will always opt for health (if not, of course, for health care). And so it did, passing the second reading of the bills on to a third reading, with only two council members in opposition to some of it. Remember their names, Breene Harimoto (of Pearl City) and Kymberley Marcos Pine (of Ewa, Waianae). They are legislators who answer to more than the monied interests. I found Ikaika Anderson notable for asking questions only of testifiers who agreed with him. "Do you not think that Waikiki tax revenues pay firefighters and police and university professors?" he asked one supporter. Which begs the question, again, of who supports the least among us. When that question gets asked, Ikaika Anderson will not come forward.

Here is how I ended my testimony on that second day:

So what is being hidden by this rhetoric and the language the bills before you, aside from the homeless themselves? What's being hidden is that this is all about money. Who is to pay for the poorest among us—the ones who cannot afford a $1000 fine for breaking these proposed laws—that's what is at stake here. The language of the bills pits a “healthy economy” (which we need) against an “unhealthy” “disruptive” and “dangerous” group of people who have nowhere to stay except sidewalks and nowhere to urinate or defecate because there are so few public restrooms and they're being chased out of parks that have them.

If you're going to pass these bills, at least acknowledge that you are voting to protect businesses and to sweep away real human beings who are “unsightly” and have no resources. If you're going to pass these bills, announce what you're doing. You're setting up to put people in prison for not being able to pay a fine that would keep them out of prison. You will be paying to house them in prison where visitors to paradise–to say nothing of outsiders buying fancy condos in Kakaako--cannot see them. You are privatizing blame and cost, while the “social contract” is being used to exclude some to the benefit of others.

Note:
Photograph of missing Ikaika Anderson (off on a restroom break, one presumes) is by Kaho'olemana Naone.

mem card: "a particular pronoun": 27 june

You should study this in detail. He testified that the homeless sleep perpendicular to the street, rather than parallel. The homeless are a particular pronoun. Leaving a restaurant I saw a fresh line of tents on the sidewalk; a couple my age walked toward me from theirs. I have my grandfather's Hamlet, who was taken off a Pittsburgh street by nuns. He was a great salesman, my mother said. A poet's son was killed at Leavenworth. To leaven is to make rise. The homeless must get off our sidewalks, leave our parks, keep their shit to themselves. In an interview, the poet said, I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.

                                                                  --27 June 2014

Notes:

"You should study": Dogen

"I like all": Howard Nemerov

Photograph of Jeremy Nemerov (1968-2014), from an article by Bill McLellan 

"In God's name don't think of it as Art": On first (belatedly) reading _Let Us Now Praise Famous Men_, by James Agee

To give them as they were and as in my memory and regard they are. If there is anything of value and interest in this work it will have to hang entirely on that fact. James Agee

__________

When I put James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men on the reading list for Spring, 2012's Documentary Poetry course, I had not yet read the book. I am only two-thirds of the way through as I write this. More precise than almost any book I've read--the lists of animals, of clothing, of furniture, are astonishing--Agee's style cycles between Whitman and Faulkner and a rural Ginsberg, between Objectivism and raw subjectivity. He ushers in C.D. Wright's South decades before she began to write her prescient books. Reading it feels at times like being a hamster in a wheel; all the pressure is to move forward quickly, traveling back again and again to a starting point that disappears as quickly as it reasserts itself.

I expected the documentation; what I did not expect were the extended, sometimes self-corroding, sometimes transparently self-justifying, episodes of poetics. It's a self-defending artifact, doing and then reasoning about the doing. I want to think more about this reasoning because it opens a space from which to teach documentary poetry and prose. More than that, Agee brings together the actual, the ordinary, the factual and the spiritual, the intangible, the sacred, in ways few other documentary poets do. Using a word introduced to me by Leonard Schwartz, I will say that Agee is a "sobjectivist," finding subjectivity in the objects of the southern tenant world, and a need for precise, objectivist description in the persons of that world. If he loses the political force of using the few to represent the many, and so to press for change, he gains the moral force of thickly describing particular places and the people who fight to live there. While acknowledging that the ambition of his project takes him outside the provenance of language, he writes: "yet in withholdings of specification I could but betray you still worse" (89).

Nowhere does the perceived gap between material fact and spiritual presence seem as great as in situations like the those Agee describes, inventories, catalogues, details, worries over. He is writing about people who are dirt poor, whose houses offer only partial shelter against the elements, who do not own the land they work or most of the proceeds from it. To find beauty here can seem condescending, demeaning, naive. How to make it otherwise is one of Agee's central projects. Here he describes himself as a "cold-laboring spy," who

shines quietly forth such grandeur, such sorrowful holiness of its exactitudes in existence, as no human consciousness shall ever rightly perceive, far less impart to another: that there can be more beauty and more deep wonder in the standings and spacings of mute furnishing on a bare floor between the squaring bourns of walls than in any music ever made: (117)

Beauty to a tenant farmer is either impossible or it's a decoration taken from advertising and applied to the walls near the fireplace. Agee devotes a page and a half to the "pretty things" the Ricketts put on their walls. Ad copy tries to sell you expensive things, but it's cheap art. Agee is not, as he tells us over and again, interested in art; he wants some notion of the real to come through in his writing. And that real is beautiful, more beautiful than art. And so the houses are beautiful:

It is my belief that such houses as these, approximate, or at times by chance achieve, an extraordinary 'beauty.' In part because this is ordinarily neglected or even misrepresented in favor of their shortcomings as shelters; and in part because their esthetic success seems to me even more important than their functional failure; and finally out of the uncontrollable effort to be faithful to my personal predilections, I have neglected function in favor of esthetics. (177)

The moral problem becomes clear later, when Agee asserts that the house's beauty is set against its "economic and human abomination," but "that one is qualified to insist on this only in proportion as one faces the brunt of his own 'sin' in so doing and the brunt of the meanings, against human beings, of the abomination itself" (178). There's no purity here, no Wallace Stevens's-like elevation of poverty into abstraction. It's as if, in Agee's terms, poverty descends rather than ascends into beauty. And that's a problem. Agee's hatred for "reformers" is perhaps due to a sense that they, like Stevens, abstract their focus rather than materialize it. He refers to this as the movement to "Improv[e] the Sharecropper" (189). On the other hand, it's hard to sympathize with Agee's attacks on rural electrification (he loves lamps!) and on the toilet, for the American obsession with "sterility" to which it testifies.

The extent to which we need to elevate "abominations" into livable conditions, while acknowledging the beauty of these abominations is an unsolvable problem. The tent city on the sidewalk beside Old Stadium Park in Honolulu poses the same question. The tent city across from K-Mart off Nimitz is another. The line of tents up the Waianae coast is another. And another and another.

Yet Agee insists not simply on beauty in poverty, but the "lucky situation of joy" that occurs when the perceiver is put in a position to notice the actual world. Somewhere between the actual (even the non-toilet, the non-art, the car's exhaust) and the writer's perception of it there's a spark. "[I]n any rare situation which breaks down or lowers our habitual impatience, superficial vitality, overeagerness to clinch conclusion, and laziness," offers the writer that joy. Beauty in poverty is greater than beauty in art because actual conditions are real, and art is not. Agee throws imagination out with the (infrequent) bath water and offers as clear a poetics of documentary writing as I've seen anywhere:

I will be trying here to write [this is on page 213!] of nothing whatever which did not in physical actuality or in the mind happen or appear; and my most serious effort will be, not to use these 'materials' for art, far less for journalism, but to give them as they were and as in my memory and regard they are. If there is anything of value and interest in this work it will have to hang entirely on that fact. . . I am in this piece of work illimitably more interested in life than in art (213-214).

"I hate art" becomes "I love actuality."

Actuality can bite back. There are big problems with Agee's project, problems Jonathan Morse gets at on his blog, The Art Part:

In 1980, Howell Raines of the New York Times revisited the three poor Alabama families of whose lives James Agee and Walker Evans made immortal art forty years earlier in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Those forty years, it turned out, had reduced Agee's gusty prose to sentimental fiction. The pathetic little girl whose imminent death Agee movingly predicted, for example, was still alive in 1980 -- and a high school graduate, and six feet tall, and full of hatred for the artists who had once, long ago, picked up her tiny body, made it into a specimen, and then dropped it back into the dirt of Hale County, Alabama, and driven away.

Agee's multi-genre work did include "sentimental fiction," at least in retrospect. That is not its strength. What is strong, it seems to me as I read it now, is the density of detail--as if Agee were as much a shopkeeper as a writer, or maybe just a belated Melville--and in his self-examinations in the face of the task. He finds "the dignity of actuality" in tenant farmers and their few possessions, and posits beauty and sacredness in that actuality. The ad copy provides tenant farmers with small spots of beauty over their fireplace; in Agee's book it is not those pictures but the list of them that is beautiful. The fact of their being there is what makes them beautiful, and the desire for beauty behind them. As Elizabeth Bishop noted of the filling station, itself a beautiful, troubling poem, there is a (feminine) presence behind the doily in the oily shop. She's as interested in that presence as in the doily.

It's where invisibility meets the visible, the hidden hand meets the open eye, that Bishop (and Agee) find the spirit. It's precarious and troubling, but the unsettled (con)fusions are what finally join inventory to art. Book and photographs have shifted from the category of documentation to that of art (the Frank photographs sold at steep prices, according to Jonathan Morse, and netted nothing for their subjects). Or maybe it's in their wavering between art and actuality that the real force of our projects needs to reside. As Agee argues, description is not enough and yet what else is there? The what else is something we bring to the language, some notion of the sacredness of the actual, even if--especially--it is poor in substance or mercantile value.

__________

The other day, the New York Times put up a video clip from a forthcoming Errol Morris film. We see and hear a man (aptly monikered Tink) who has been obsessed with the JFK assassination for many decades, but who is not a conspiracy theorist. He tells us the story of "the umbrella man" who stood next to Kennedy's motorcade at the moment he was shot. He tells us about the conspiracy theories that emerged from his being there, the only man in Dallas who carried an umbrella on that sunny day. And then he tells us that the man was found, years later, and testified before Congress. His umbrella had not had to do with weather, or even with the sun, but with his anger at JFK's father for supporting Neville Chamberlain, who carried an umbrella and who made nice with Adolph Hitler. Nothing is so wacky as ordinary fact, this man tells us on the film clip. Any event, if you look at it closely enough, becomes strange, opens up to our quests for meaning, our tortured intelligences. The man named Tink told this story with something like joy inscribed on his face. Ordinary explanations are way more strange than extraordinary ones, he told us.

Here's a book list for this Spring. Insufficient, I know! And here's a blog post I wrote on teaching documentary poetry.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Agee & Walker, Mariner Books

Dictee, by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, University of California Press
Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Claudia Rankine, Graywolf Press
Coal Mountain Elementary, Mark Nowak, Coffee House Press
I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning, Kristin Prevallet, Essay Press
from unincorporated territory [saina], Craig Santos Perez, Omnidawn
Things Come On: an amneoir, Joseph Harrington, Wesleyan
Green-Wood, Allison Cobb, Factory School
We will also read Murial Ruykeyser's Book of the Dead (1938) in pdf or xerox form. I will also recommend a slew of other texts for anyone who is interested.
After asking for suggestions toward a list of readings in documentary prose on facebook, I got the following recommendations:

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs or The Soccer War & Studs Terkel

W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn & Gary Young, No Other Life
Grand Avenue (a novel in stories), by Greg Sarris, Life Lived Like a Story (Life Stories of Three Yukon Native Elders), by Julie Cruickshank, and Immigrants in Our Own Land, Martín & Meditations on the South Valley, two books of poetry by Jimmy Santiago Baca.
Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Books by Juan Goytisolo
I welcome more suggestions. In the meantime, thanks to Ragnar, Molly, Sergio, and Pam for these possibilities.
Sergio Pereira sent the following list of documentary poetry and prose. What a treasure trove!

Dear Susan,

Here is a 'river-list' of books that I read over the years and perhaps some/most of them

can fit into the category of documentary poetry & documentary prose that you are working

with great talent and dedication.

Best regards,

Sergio

-------------------<>--------------------

Documentary poetry:

Clark Coolidge, The Act of Providence, Combo Books

Roy K. Kiyooka, Pacific Windows - Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka, Talonbooks

Mitsuye Yamada, Camp Notes and Other Writings, Rutgers University Press

Jessica Hagedorn, Danger and Beauty, City Lights Books

Daphne Marlatt, The Given, McClelland & Stewart // Ghost Works (prose & poetry), NeWest

Carter Revard, Winning the Dust Bowl (prose & poetry), The University of Arizona Press

Gu Cheng, Sea of Dreams - The Selected Writings of Gu Cheng, New Directions Books

Breyten Breytenbach, Judas Eye, Faber and Faber

Harry Robinson, Living by Stories - A Journey of Landscape and Memory, Talonbooks

Harry Robinson, Native Power - In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller, Douglas & McIntyre

Ko Un, Ten Thousand Lives, Green Integer

Miyazawa Kenji, Selections, University of California Press

Miguel Algarín, Love is Hard Work - Memorias de Loisaida, Simon & Schuster

Juan Felipe Herrera, Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler (prose & poems), The University of Arizona Press

Louise Bernice Halfe, Bear Bones & Feathers, Coteau Books // Blue Marrow, Coteau Books // The Crooked Good, Coteau Books

Joseph Bruchac, Ndakinna (Our Land) - New and Selected Poems, West End Press

Baisao, The Old Tea Seller - Life and Zen Poetry in 18th Kyoto

Kimberly Blaeser, Apprenticed to Justice, Salt Publishing

Duane Niatum, The Crooked Beak of Love, West End Press

Ricardo Sánchez, Canto y Grito Mi Liberación - The Liberation of a Chicano Mind Soul, Washington State University Press

Eric Gansworth, A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function - poems and paintings, Syracuse University Press

Wendy Rose, Itch Like Crazy, The University of Arizona Press

Gregory Scofield, Native Canadiana - songs from the urban rez, Polestar Book Publishers // Singing Home the Bones,

Polestar Publishers

Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Life Woven with Song, The University of Arizona Press

James Thomas Stevens, Combing Snakes from His Hair, Michigan State University Press

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera - The New Mestiza (prose & poems), Aunt Lute Book Company

Luci Tapahonso, Sáanii Dahataal - The Women Are Singing (poems & stories), The University of Arizona Press

Luci Tapahonso, Blue Horses Rush In - Poems and Stories, The University of Arizona Press

T'ao Ch'ien, The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien, Copper Canyon Press

Su Tung-p'o, Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o, Copper Canyon Press

Wei Ying-wu, In Such Hard Times - The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu, Copper Canyon Press

Cherríe L. Moraga, Loving In The War Years (prose & poetry), South End Press // The Last Generation - Prose & Poetry,

South End Press

Kamau Brathwaite, DS (2) - dreamstories // Elegguas, Wesleyan University Press

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Dark and Perfect Angels, Cinco Puntos Press

Maurice Kenny, On Second Thought - A Compilation (prose & poetry), University of Oklahoma Press

Matsuo Basho, Basho's Haiku - The Selected Poems of Matsuo Basho, State University of New York Press

Kobayashi Issa, The Spring of My Life and Selected Poems (prose & haiku), Shambhala Publications

Santoka Taneda, Mountain Tasting - Haiku and Journals of Taneda Santoka, White Pine Press

Ana Castillo, My Father Was a Toltec and Selected Poems, W. W. Norton

Simon J. Ortiz, After and Before the Lightning, The University of Arizona Press // Out There Somewhere, The Univ. of Arizona Press

Documentary prose (memoirs, essays, autobiography)

Leslie Scalapino, R-hu, Atelos // Zyther & Autobiography, Wesleyan University Press

Ted Greenwald, Clearview/LIE, United Artists Books

David Antin, i never knew what time it was, University of California Press

Ron Silliman, Under Albany, Salt Publishing,

Cherríe L. Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness - Writings, 2000-2010, Duke University Press

Fanny Howe, The Winter Sun - Notes on a Vocation, Graywolf Press

Lyn Hejinian, My Life, Green Integer

Bernadette Mayer, Studying Hunger Journals, Station Hill Press

Michael Gottlieb, Memoir and Essay, Faux Press

Leslie Marmon Silko, The Turquoise Ledge - A Memoir, Viking Penguin

Etel Adnan, In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country, City Lights Books

Aaron Shurin, King Of Shadows, City Lights Books

Kamau Brathwaite, The Zea Mexican Diary, The University of Wisconsin Press

Jalal Toufic, Over-Sensitivity, Sun & Moon Press

Keith Waldrop, Light While There is Light - An American History, Sun & Moon Books

Fred Wah, Diamond Grill, NeWest

J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands, Oxford University Press

Carolyn Lei-lanilau, Ono Ono Girl's Hula, The University of Wisconsin Press

bell hooks and Amalia Mesa-Bains, Homegrown - engaged cultural criticism, South End Press

bell hooks, Remembered Rapture - The Writer at Work, The Women's Press

Breyten Breytenbach, Mouroir, Archipelago Books // Intimate Stranger - A Writing Book, Archipelago Books // Dog Heart - A Memoir, Faber and Faber

Breyten Breytenbach, The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution, Return to Paradise, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, Faber and Faber

Gerald Vizenor, Interior Landscapes - Autobiographical Myths and Metaphors, University of Minnesota Press

Louis Owens, I hear the Train - Reflections, Inventions, Refractions, University of Oklahoma Press

Bill Reid, Solitary Raven - Selected Writings of Bill Reid

N. Scott Momaday, The Names - A Memoir, The University of Arizona Press // The Way To Rainy Mountain, University of New Mexico Press

N. Scott Momaday, The Man Made of Words - Essays, Stories, Passages, St. Martin's Griffin

Diane Glancy, Claiming Breath, University of Nebraska Press // The Cold-and-Hunger Dance, University of Nebraska Press

Diane Glancy, The West Pole, University of Minnesota Press // In-Between Places, The University of Arizona Press

Alurista, as our barrio turns...who the yoke b on?, Calaca Press

Juan Felipe Herrera, Mayan Drifter - Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America, Temple University Press

Alfred Arteaga, House with the Blue Bed, Mercury House

Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, Vintage Books

Kenneth Lincoln, The Good Red Road - Passages Into Native America, University of Nebraska Press

W. S. Penn, All My Sins Are Relatives, University of Nebraska Press // This is the World, Michigan State University Press

Ray A. Young Bear, Black Eagle Child - The Facepaint Narratives, University of Iowa Press

Ray A. Young Bear, Remnants Of The First Earth, Grove Press

Carter Revard, Family Matters,Tribal Affairs, The University of Arizona Press

Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over The World - A Native Memoir, W. W. Norton

Joseph Bruchac, Bowman's Store - A Journey To Myself, Lee & Low Books

Anita Endrezze, Throwing Fire at the Sun,Water at the Moon (prose & poetry), The University of Arizona Press

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer - A Story of Survival, University of Nebraska Press

Melissa Jayne Fawcett, Medicine Trail - The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon, The University of Arizona Press

Darryl Babe Wilson, The Morning The Sun Went Down, Heyday Books

Mavis McCovey and John F. Salter, Medicine Trails - A Life in Many Worlds, Heyday Books

Eva Tulene Watt and Keith H. Basso, Don't let the Sun Step Over You - A White Mountain Apache Family Life, 1860-1975, The University of Arizona Press

Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis, Mankiller - A Chief and Her People, St. Martin's Griffin

Jeannette Armstrong, Slash, Theytus Books

Refugio Savala, Autobiography of a Yaqui Poet, The University of Arizona Press

Matsuo Basho, Basho's Journey- The Literary Prose of Matsuo Basho (prose & haibun), State University of New York Press

Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand, Grove Press

Greg Sarris, Mabel McKay: Weaving The Dream, University of California Press

From Washington, DC, Dave Taylor sends another list of possibles:


Blood Dazzler, Patricia Smith
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman
Telling True Stories, eds. Kramer & Call
The Conversations, Michael Ondaatje with Walter Murch
which leads into film:
Buddha’s Lost Children, Mark Verkerk
In the Realms of the Unreal, Jessica Yu
Mysterious Object at Noon, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
The Source, Chuck Workman

Back to prose and graphic novel memoirs with:
Away from the Light of Day, Amadou and Mariam
Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation, Harvey Pekar
Citizen 13660, Miné Okubo
Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

The man with the dog; or, post-APEC ruminations

The man with the dog is not young or old, though his face is marked by dents, creases. Someone says he has a job washing dishes in Waikiki, but can't get there now that the APEC conference (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation: for details, see below) is in full bloom. His dog is small and furry, mottled black and white; she wears a plastic tag that marks her as a "service dog." He took her into a store at Kam Shopping Center and the security guy demanded (loudly) to know his disability. He's got a complaint lodged. The man with the dog lives in a tent on the sidewalk; he can't live in the park--that's illegal--so he lives beside the curb on King Street, inches from the traffic, precarious in so many ways. His tent is but one of many; there's a line of
them from near Isenberg back to the taco shop, a good 50 yards of tents, blankets, neat piles of possessions. A trash can reads, "Eat shit and die," but mostly one is struck by the civility of this encampment. A woman rakes trash and leaves in the park near her tent. Someone has left a blanket in the park's corner, just that side of the sidewalk.

We protested APEC at the corner of King and Isenberg. A large tarp covered the table covered written matter you could take away with you; in one corner a silkscreen was set up to make APEC SUCKS teeshirts (writing over pre-existing language, like Michigan State, like Coach Susan); in another corner a Vietnam vet sat on a chair, talking to a friend. The man with the dog spent a lot of time with us. His dog did not like loud noises, so when we left on our march to Waikiki, he left her in the tent.

HDoug (who is everywhere!) tweets the following:

Bill 54 if passed will create a bill that will allow police to remove attended personal property from the sidewalk. We heard Honolulu Police boasting that this will allow them to remove the Occupy Honolulu encampment (as well as other "troublesome" encampments such as the recent Kanawai Mamalahoe puuhonua). This is designed to abridge the rights of free speech and peaceable assembly, and violate the Law of the Splintered Paddle.

At the point a bill like this passes, homelessness will itself be a form of protest--not the undertone, the spatial lament it is now, but active. even in its staying in place. Subject to being thrown off the last sliver of ground they have left, the homeless will have become illegals, aliens, interlopers on the common areas of sidewalk, park, beach. Will they then move into the street?

The man with the dog (but without her) marched with us from Stadium Park into Waikiki on Saturday. I lost track of him early on. We were a thin line of several hundred souls, spirited, armed with cardboard signs, the best of which was probably the empty sign, with plastic window, a call for transparency. Earlier on, the policemen in blue had surrounded us, one of them with a video camera, shooting us as we gathered. Beside us now was a line of bicycle cops dressed in bright yellow. Among us were the omnipresent cops of the aloha shirt, who also sported straw hats to match. Hilo Hatties does good business with HPD, it seems. As we crossed the Ala Wai canal, we saw Coast Guardsmen encamped next to the water (the filthy water), their inflated dinghies at the ready.

On the other side of the canal, I spotted the President of UH, MRC Greenwood, walking toward, through, and then past our group. We made eye contact. And then we arrived at the real "security" force.

Around Fort DeRussy Park was a tall fence; the fence was filled in with dark material so you could not see what was in the park. An occasional break in the fence revealed more "security" on the other side. Along with our friends on their bikes, and our friends who looked like wacky tourists in their aloha shirts, we now encountered guardsmen in camouflage. Everyone had weapons. Military vehicles were parked here and there. There were concrete slabs around the guard posts, which were on the blocked-off street. The cops kept telling us to stay off the road and on the sidewalk. Occasionally, a dignitary in a suit would walk past on the road.

I had a point of reference for this display of armed force. It was Kathmandhu, Nepal in December 2004. We were there to adopt our daughter, Radhika, from Bal Mandir orphanage. Every street corner, it seemed, had a sentry post, and every sentry post was populated by soldiers with automatic weapons. Sangha, who was 5 at the time, loved seeing all the soldiers and waved to them as we rode past. "But Sangha, it's not a good sign when you're in a country where there are so many armed soldiers everywhere," I remember saying to him, hoping he'd remember those words when he was older.

I think of those words now. It's not a good sign when you are walking the streets of a city where you've worked for over 20 years and you see so many policemen, soldiers, humvees, guns, blockades. Whose security are we threatening? That's the question, whose answer is coming clear in the repeated attacks on Occupy (and here, de-Occupy) sites around the country. We are threatening someone's security. And there is perhaps some joy--and hope--in that. How much hope is yet to be seen.

This morning, we were told that H1 would be closed at 8:30 for Pres. Obama's motorcade. Bryant and Sangha were stopped at the end of H3 for one hour, beginning at 7:30 a.m. on the way to Sangha's school near Hickam AFB. More "security"--for whom and against whom, one wonders. Even if there were not reason to protest APEC (and there was), there is certainly reason to protest the near-imposition of martial law on a peaceful city during this past week.

Notes:

The official website of APEC can be found here.

A take-down of APEC by Eating in Public can be found here.

The "we" of the demonstration was multifarious. There were the (De)Occupy folks, the World Can't Wait supporters, the Moana Nui group, and a large group of anti-Chinese, anti-communist Vietnamese with bright yellow and red flags. Also protesting against APEC this week were members of the Falun Gong, among others. And there were a lot of UHM faculty there.

A Trip on TheBus: Monday, December 21, 2009

I've taught "Poetry & the City" a couple of times now. Better to call it "Poetry & Place," since many of my students are not from Honolulu, but from places like Whitmore Village, an old pineapple plantation community outside of Wahiawa, or from Kane`ohe. One of the assignments that works best is to get students to take photographs of the place they live; the only stipulation is that they not be in any way touristic. Then they are to add captions to the photographs and post them on the class blog. We begin to get a sense of the histories of places that way; I remember one student from Waipahu who took a picture of an old general store that has, in recent years, become a Samoan church. Another assignment that proved even more valuable was to take a public bus (TheBus) and write about the experience. (This assignment has since yielded a forthcoming bus map publication of literature about TheBus and an honors thesis by Gizelle Gajelonia, namely Stop Requested.) Once of Gizelle's best ideas, that the bus is like a cathedral, never even made it into her work. Tinfish Press will be publishing her chapbook, Thirteen Ways of Looking at TheBus, in the Spring.

Like many of my assignments, the bus exercise was one I had not done myself. With very few exceptions, I have not taken buses since my first year in Hawai`i, which was 1990. But today my husband decided we would travel to Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu from our home in Temple Valley as a way to show the kids how to get around. He's been working with our son on taking the bus for several months now. So we took the 65 to Bishop and King Streets, then a 20 bus to Ala Moana. On the way back, we took the 57A to Alakea and King Street, and then the 65 back to Ahuimanu. Between trips, we spent time at what used to be the biggest shopping mall in the United States, where a manic counter-recession seems to be occurring.

The bus leaves Hui Iwa Street and winds around, only to stay put next to the McDonald's for 13 minutes or so. Then it goes down Kahekili toward the Hygienic Store, a local landmark notorious for its reputed drug market, then right onto Kamehameha Highway, past Hee`ia Pier and Point and down the coast back to Kane`ohe. Once through Kane`ohe, the bus turns up the Pali Highway and into town (Honolulu). We were seated toward the back of this bus where

--a young man in jacket and sunglasses was chatting up a young woman in tank top and skirt; his voice was slurred as if he'd been in an accident or had been drinking--he talked about drinking, something about the cops, too--and he showed her a picture of a woman he'd liked on his cell phone, and later a video off his laptop. Another young man sat at the back with slatted earrings through his pierced ears, on and off his phone. After he left, another young man sat in back, talking on his phone, while the young woman fell asleep.

--near Times in Kane`ohe a man ran to get on the bus. White, in his 30s, with a neat mustache, he was carrying a large military backpack and a camouflage jacket, which he put in the seat in front of my husband and daughter. He fumbled for change, turning down Bryant's offer of a quarter, and returned to his seat. He pulled out a sushi roll, the kind with the plastic wrap around the nori, and ate it. Then he pulled out a quart of milk and started to drink it, and then he pulled out a plate lunch and started to eat that. Somewhere in there, Sangha pointed to the seat next to the man who was hungry, and I spotted the nose of a dog that had a bone in its mouth, just peeking out of the backpack. It was a black terrier, to whom the man fed bits of his sushi roll. Then he pulled a brush out of the pack and energetically brushed the dog. Every so often the man would turn to look at the woman in the back (her conversational partner had gotten off at Windward Mall). His eyes were a bit too big, perhaps. There was a story. He got off before us, and the dog, hunting for crumbs on the floor of the bus, almost missed the stop. She was an unneutered animal, looked like she'd had puppies recently.

--Ala Moana Center Makai Food Court: an old white man wearing a Santa hat and a bib wandered around, in his mouth a pacifier. A few minutes later, he came the other direction, a baby bottle hanging from his lips.

--Alakea Street bus stop on the way home. A young man started offering us advice on buses to take, thinking we were tourists. My husband promptly started reciting the bus schedule chapter and verse. The young man was from Kailua, on his way to the airport to try to get a job pushing old people around in wheelchairs, being "friendly to people," which he said he always was. But the guy in headphones and a slant cap pacing back and forth ("fucking going up and down," he said) made him nervous. The guy was overweight, appeared too old for his gangster get-up, hardly dangerous. A homeless woman sat down, asked the young man what he did for a living. He said nothing right now. "Have you trained yourself?" she asked. Yes, he did handyman work, he replied, but business was slow. "Is it Easter?" the woman asked, chomping on ice from a Starbucks plastic cup, when she wasn't taking a drag off her cigarette. She wore a black dress with floral patterns on it, could have been on break from work. "No, it's near Christmas," the man answered, then got on his bus to Hickam/Airport, along with the gang banging wannabe. The woman wandered away, talking about Easter.

--A woman with Down Syndrome, her hair curly and graying, got on at that bus stop. During the trip she leafed through a photo album (family pictures?), smiled, and stuck her hands in her mouth, as if to retrieve something she'd lost there. She got off in Kane`ohe, and trudged beside the bus, likely heading home.

--[late addition]: two overweight teen-age boys get on the bus at Windward Mall. One pulls out a paperback (looks like sci-fi fantasy, something about thieves) and starts to read it. The other guy sits with a Borders bag on his lap. The first guy says, "I can't believe you don't like to read--always watching the tv! The first book I read all the way through was a few years ago, and I loved it!" He settles into his book, while his friend sits looking out the window.

--The bus wandered back over the Pali, beside the golf course, through Kane`ohe town, and down Kam Highway. A white-haired guy in broad brimmed hat and swim trunks got off the bus with a six-pack slung over his shoulder in a plastic supermarket bag. Bryant said, "going fishing!" When I remarked that he lacked a fishing pole, Bryant said, "perfect." The bus turned left at the Hygienic Store, went as far as the sewage plant, then took a right. On Hui Ulili Street, two women got on, one older, not terribly mobile, the other tall, lanky, assisting her. The second woman had large upper arms, a long heavily powdered face and bleached blonde curls; her legs were large, thick. We smiled as I and the family exited the bus to walk home.

A friend who came through Honolulu recently noticed the homeless problem on the way in from the airport. There are Vietnam Vets begging on Nimitz Highway under the H1 freeway; there are homeless people in tents in parks from Makaha to Kapiolani Park and beyond. Today's trip did not offer witness to that level of struggle. But it did offer much else, the promise of stories that might explain something, not only about the person seated in TheBus, but about the larger community. I look forward to my next trip on public transit and to next semester's Poetry Workshop (if it makes...) which will concentrate on poems of place.