Moby Dick (Part 1)
Mark sat on his sidewalk reading a fat novel. As I approached him on weekday morning in August, I saw he was wearing the Old Crow Book Club t-shirt and it looked damn good on him. He was not malt liquoring.
He saw me and belted out a boisterous hello! It was then I noticed the title of his book: Moby Dick. Moby Dick!
I wanted to leap into a conversation about the novel because it rates as one of my favorites. I've read it three times (!) and understood all too well its eternal message: seek out mad revenge and you will end up dead in some form or another. In recent years, I'd had many easy opportunities to exact revenge on some of my detractors and never once got into the gutter with them. Sure, all of us long to orchestrate a Count of Monte Cristo-like revenge on the truly evil people in our lives, but even in that story, it ruins him.
Confucius said it best: on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. In the case of Captain Ahab, it was the biggest grave of all, the ocean.
I knew Moby Dick from stem to stern and wanted to convene a meeting of the Old Crow Book Club immediately, but more pressing matters related to Mark demanded action.
There was news about his search for housing and it sucked.
First, I gave him his voter registration card that arrived at my house the previous day. In the next election, I would deliver his mail ballot, bring mine along, and we'd launch the Old Crow Vote Club! Naturally, Old Crow would flow.
The Old Crow Vote Club. I liked the hell out of that idea. Virtually every election during colonial and frontier times, when only white males owning property could vote, was awash with free whiskey supplied by the candidates from all political parties. Whoever supplied the most and best whiskey, usually won. The only election George Washington ever lost, for some bumpkin surveyor or legislative post in Virginia before the United States existed, was because he refused to supply whiskey at the polling places. Later in a letter to a friend, he admitted his blunder and said he'd never make that mistake again. He didn't and became the Father of Our Country!
So Mark could now vote in a putrefying national democracy where you can't drink at the polls but you can carry an automatic weapon, but he couldn't get off the streets although he wanted off the streets, as did every member of the book club. As a result of being homeless, Mark could not become a real citizen because practicing meaningful citizenship as a homeless person is almost impossible, and virtually never encouraged by the advocates for the homeless.
Again, because of the colossal indifference and incompetence of nonprofit organizations and government agencies tasked to address the homeless crisis in Multnomah County, Mark was still living on the streets.
I'd gone through it all with Mark the previous summer, and to quote the son-of-a-bitch who started it all, President Ronald Reagan, “There you go again.”
But the “you” wasn't Mark, it was the institutions who were supposed to get off their ass and help him.
It was then I gave Mark the bad news about his housing options. The best one, a new Safe Rest Village a mile from the neighborhood, had opened and filled up. Several of us, including Mark's hospital appointed social worker, had tried, once again, to connect him to this transitional form of housing, and met, once again, a stone wall of nothingness.
In an email Mark's social worker sent to Mark's informal care team, she wrote:
I emailed this address (the one for the Safe Rest Village program) and the response directed me back to 211 Info that I have called multiple times and they do not have a referral process for the Clinton Triangle pods. I was informed that The Safe Rest Village program is not affiliated with the Gideon Temporary Alternative Shelter Site.
Just connected with a staff member for Central City Concern Navigation Team and was informed the wait list for Clinton Triangle pods is already closed. Outreach workers filled the list of 100 applicants about 5+ weeks ago and are working on this list initially. The list was only open for 2 weeks and it was full. I was informed there is no wait list at this time however I placed my name on a list to be called when there are openings. Unfortunately, the referral-based entry process was not provided to health care organizations, only to first responders, Park Rangers, and Portland Street Response. I am checking to see if Mark’s name was added to the list when the list was opened. I left a message for staff at Urban Alchemy, who manages the Temporary Alternate Shelter Sites, TASS, to see if they have a wait list for the Clinton Triangle pods.
Mark has five people, including a paid professional, working to get him off the streets, and this is what we are up against.
It was precisely the same farce I had documented in The Old Crow Book Club. The farce was ongoing a year later. Actually, it had moved beyond farce. And where is beyond farce? It's a place where people die.