Homeless in Vancouver Secret Voices

I have been the one that collects things for people. Keeping a box of their hopes and dreams. Little parts of them, and little parts of me.  I used to carry my parents heritage furniture with me from home to home, just to keep it in the family and because I liked old.  I refused to let my Dad sell our musical instruments, for they are sacred, instruments should never be sold.  I keep things for people, when they can not keep it themselves, although I am a gypsy myself, thus my caravan is never light.

Walking around Vancouver after I had moved here for school, I began to witness the unbearable homelessness here. I really didn't know how to deal with it; it deeply affected me and I could not find a way to come to terms with it.  I was told they were just lazy, and that I was feeding their addiction by giving them money. But this did not mean much to me, when faced with another being sleeping on a cold cement street, asking for a dime.  I didn't have much money, or I would have given them everything... 

Instead, I justed talk with each of them. And once in a while buy a coffee or a sandwhich or a hostel for a night .... but mostly I would just learn their story, figure out who they were and how in the world they ended up there, on the street, a beggar.  Their stories were incredible, each and every one of them.  The grey haired Santa outside 7 - 11 on Denman Street, a Vietnam veteran who was always smiling, although in such physical pain, the boy in the hospital waiting room who said it was his free will to remain outside of society and he was proud of it, the man from Manitoba who carved windchimes into slate, he was an old Artist shaman whose spirit was full and divine, for when you looked through those rocks, the winds whispered to you.   

Then, there was the Buddha boy, whom my friend humorously called Jingle Bells, we would sometimes sit in the evening sun together as it passed below the sea in English Bay.  He told me that he was waiting for Buddha to rescue him, to save him from this world. He had been doing his prayers and meditations for years now and he was ever so patiently waiting, with all the faith I had ever seen in a human being.  He looked up at the dark, starry sky and said, 'he will come soon." And I wondered if he ever would...

One evening, we hung upside down on the beached log near the water; this he said helped to illuminate our minds and connect to the great Buddha in the sky.  I smiled, hanging upside down, as people walked by on the great Sea Wall, looking at us so quizzicly, but I did not pay much attention, the blood was rushing to my head, my back was being stretched out by the great log beneath me and the last of the dying embers of the sun lay on my cheeks.... it was all so funny to be there...with the Buddha Boy, lying upside down in the park.  After the sun set, the dark night reached in deeply through the thick trees of Stanley Park and I had to go.  Buddha Boy asked me to take his hoodie home for him and to clean it.   A very strange request I thought, but okay... Here I went again, holding things. 

When I took the hoodie from his kind hands, it felt very strange, alive, as though something inside it were moving. And as I continued walking home, it became even stranger, intensifying, like electricity whipping through me and coils of snakes within it.  It became so powerful that finally and suddenly I dropped it on the ground....creepy....I stood there for some time, looking at it piled in a heap below me, where I was currently standing under a great big tree. I really did not wish to touch it, again, but, I thought I can't leave a poor man's hoodie under a tree...  Slowly, I reached down to pick it up, this time it did not bite me.

I carried it home and washed it. And a week or two later I managed to find him somewhere along the Sea Wall, decorated with his jingling buggy of Tibetan Bells and small pamphlets to hand out to the uninformed. When I returned it to him, it seemed he really didn't want it back...strange... I only saw him one more time, I am hoping that Buddha came for him.

I have carried a momento box now for over 5 years.  Everytime I think of giving it away, I just can't, even though I let go of some things in it, matches, strands of hair tied up in a bow, an envelope with notes...I asked him several times long ago if he ever wanted it back, he was sure he did not.... but, I carry it for him still, just in case, he ever has a change of heart; the most sacred parts are left... two pictures of him and a beautiful poem, written, I believe on a warm and starry night. I doubt he wants me to share it, but what am I supposed to do, keep holding it forever, unread by anybody but me? I am trusting my heart, that this needs to be shared... It's too beautiful, as is the picture and the box and the little bits of himself that he has asked me to hold onto... so here it is, a passage from the poem, never read before by anybody, but me... 

This is a poem, from a poet who lives on the street, was a methane addict and probably coke too..

Secret Voices.