Hollywood Mike
I never expected to make it to Hollywood: never gave it the least little bit of thought. So you might guess at how very surprised I was when "Hollywood" came to me! Yep, came right in through the front door: without so much as a hello, asking "You got any buttermilk?"
"I'm not sure, but I'll go check for you... just let me finish giving this gentleman his bowl of soup."
A minute later and I'm in the walk-in refrigerator wrestling with today's donated milk crates filled with assorted dairy products. A voice over my shoulder says, "You'd think with all this crap there'd be some buttermilk."
I look up and say, "You're not supposed to be in the kitchen area." He says, "I won't tell anyone!" And then quickly before I can add anything, "There it is!"
"How much would you like?"
"How much can I have?"
"Well, why not help yourself... since you'll not tell anyone you were in the refrigerator." He picks up a half gallon of buttermilk from the bottom crate saying, "This ought to do." I follow him out of the kitchen and back into the dining room. He stops, opens the container, and begins to gulp down the buttermilk... some dribbles down his beard and drips onto his shirt... finally, probably with half the container gone, he wipes his mouth, looks at me, and says, "Is that how buttermilk is supposed to taste? Maybe it's bad?" I look at the date on the carton, "Well, it expired yesterday, but it should still be good. It's been refrigerated."
He looks at me with a slow, beady-eyed, gaze before breaking out in a radiant smile and saying, "If it kills me, what do you suppose will happen to your place here?" I respond, "Well, most people in town like us, so they'll probably just say you died of an overdose."
"Ha! An overdose of buttermilk! Maybe I'll be the first to die of buttermilk in Chinatown!"
Hollywood Mike came into the Kitchen like everyone else: just showed up one day and adopted us. I christened him "Hollywood" because of his skill in altering both his voice and personality daily: sometimes even during mid-sentence. He said he almost became a doctor but he was too honest. Still, he would borrow medical dictionaries from the clinic and memorize them just to throw in outrageous words and pronouncements of maladies likely inflicting the unknowing... He loved to ask me nearly everyday, "How'd you get such a gorgeous woman? You're no better looking than me! What's the secret?" "I don't know Mike, but it could be the buttermilk not dripping from my beard!" A few months of buttermilk, though, had Mike saying the stuff was making him sick and he didn't know how he had ever drank it in the first place: then he was on to entire fresh cloves of garlic... and for awhile he became "Garlic Mike"... Then came the cowboy hats, boots from the donation room, and a long coat from who-knows-where and all of a sudden he's "Cowboy Mike"...
Ah, then came the stories... always the same: withering rejections from everyone that he ever cared about. And an all-consuming loneliness that couldn't be masked by playful questions as to how I got to be so lucky... Eventually, Mike was able to crawl his way through the disability-form-nightmare and began to receive some small financial assistance: basing his first check upon his date of application gave him enough money to buy himself an old used car... which died after a few months. Still, Mike was no longer homeless, for his home was parked right across the street from the Soup Kitchen: but still no woman, although life got better with a puppy that showed up and adopted Mike as he had us...
The debilitating pain in Mike's back eliminated any serious volunteering on his part, but he found his consolation in daily conversation and the surety of acceptance for who he was. Every-once-in-a-while, though, if I was really strapped for help in the kitchen I could cajole Mike to don an apron and chop some veggies for a little while. Of course, our conversation would always circle back around to my "luck", and his lack thereof... but deeper, we'd get into such topics as forgiveness, the possibility of "God", the meaning of life, and all the whys of homelessness, break-downs, mental illnesses, and the social pressures that chew so many people up only to eventually spit them out... So it was with a crushing sense of loss and failure that we stood side-by-side one morning as his home was ticketed as an abandoned vehicle by the police sweeping through Chinatown. A tow truck was summoned, and his home disappeared down the street. The officer said, "You can get it back when you pay the fine." Our protests eventually settled into a numb silence.
Mike said, as we surveyed the homeless scrambling to rescue blankets from their shopping carts being tossed onto the backs of trucks, "I'll never get it back. The fine plus towing, plus fifty dollars a day for storage. They took my dog too." The ineffectuality of Soup Kitchens and shelters and all such places once again knocked me up on the side of my head. I had thought, years ago, that perhaps if I cooked enough soup maybe I'd be able to do a few miracles... well, that desire had certainly faded: and all that was left in its place was a hollow spirit of compassion in the litter of brokenness and oppression... And more time would have to pass before that spiritual willingness to care opened a very little window in my heart. Where long ago, I had thought of maybe a miracle or two and of changing someone's life... the view from that little window was simply that in touching with love another human being, I could touch the very Face of God, and be touched in return... So maybe all those conversations with Hollywood Mike about my luck and God, led me to the miracle that I needed... even if it failed to cure anyone or to solve homelessness. So this one is for you Mike, and for every lonely and breaking heart: may Luck finally welcome each one of you (all of us) home! [It is written, along with its companions, as if a collection of "postcards" from Rumi.]
A Postcard from Rumi
Don't be silly.
There is no difference
Between human love and divine love.
It's just the story we've been told!
The way we kiss,
The way we touch,
The way we enter our lover's embrace,
All our secrets with one another
Can lead to the Great Revelation:
There is a Way
To caress the Face of God
Even now...
I finally accepted that I was not going to be able to end homelessness, poverty, and marginalization: not even in the little world of Chinatown-Salinas, let alone throughout the country and around the world. While it could be done through the collective will of all of us together, I was not going to be the one to facilitate such a dramatic shift in consciousness and policy: poverty still crushes, the police still sweep, politicians still circle in blame, and charities still wonder about resources and next steps... But like Dostoevsky wrote a hundred years ago, it could all change in just one hour if we just began to love one another: that's exactly what thirty years of the homeless did to me! If we just loved one another, everything would change in the blink of an eye... You ask, "Where to begin?" With your lover of course! Tonight, or as soon as you can, caress knowing that you are also caressing the Face of God! And then, inspired and activated by the compassion now burgeoning in your heart, carry it out into your daily world and serve others in any way you can and build justice: this is the miracle of transformation that is so absolutely ridiculous: it just might be true!
Based on a True Story
-- Robert Daniel Smith
Read: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I never expected to make it to Hollywood: never gave it the least little bit of thought. So you might guess at how very surprised I was when "Hollywood" came to me! Yep, came right in through the front door: without so much as a hello, asking "You got any buttermilk?"
"I'm not sure, but I'll go check for you... just let me finish giving this gentleman his bowl of soup."
A minute later and I'm in the walk-in refrigerator wrestling with today's donated milk crates filled with assorted dairy products. A voice over my shoulder says, "You'd think with all this crap there'd be some buttermilk."
I look up and say, "You're not supposed to be in the kitchen area." He says, "I won't tell anyone!" And then quickly before I can add anything, "There it is!"
"How much would you like?"
"How much can I have?"
"Well, why not help yourself... since you'll not tell anyone you were in the refrigerator." He picks up a half gallon of buttermilk from the bottom crate saying, "This ought to do." I follow him out of the kitchen and back into the dining room. He stops, opens the container, and begins to gulp down the buttermilk... some dribbles down his beard and drips onto his shirt... finally, probably with half the container gone, he wipes his mouth, looks at me, and says, "Is that how buttermilk is supposed to taste? Maybe it's bad?" I look at the date on the carton, "Well, it expired yesterday, but it should still be good. It's been refrigerated."
He looks at me with a slow, beady-eyed, gaze before breaking out in a radiant smile and saying, "If it kills me, what do you suppose will happen to your place here?" I respond, "Well, most people in town like us, so they'll probably just say you died of an overdose."
"Ha! An overdose of buttermilk! Maybe I'll be the first to die of buttermilk in Chinatown!"
Hollywood Mike came into the Kitchen like everyone else: just showed up one day and adopted us. I christened him "Hollywood" because of his skill in altering both his voice and personality daily: sometimes even during mid-sentence. He said he almost became a doctor but he was too honest. Still, he would borrow medical dictionaries from the clinic and memorize them just to throw in outrageous words and pronouncements of maladies likely inflicting the unknowing... He loved to ask me nearly everyday, "How'd you get such a gorgeous woman? You're no better looking than me! What's the secret?" "I don't know Mike, but it could be the buttermilk not dripping from my beard!" A few months of buttermilk, though, had Mike saying the stuff was making him sick and he didn't know how he had ever drank it in the first place: then he was on to entire fresh cloves of garlic... and for awhile he became "Garlic Mike"... Then came the cowboy hats, boots from the donation room, and a long coat from who-knows-where and all of a sudden he's "Cowboy Mike"...
Ah, then came the stories... always the same: withering rejections from everyone that he ever cared about. And an all-consuming loneliness that couldn't be masked by playful questions as to how I got to be so lucky... Eventually, Mike was able to crawl his way through the disability-form-nightmare and began to receive some small financial assistance: basing his first check upon his date of application gave him enough money to buy himself an old used car... which died after a few months. Still, Mike was no longer homeless, for his home was parked right across the street from the Soup Kitchen: but still no woman, although life got better with a puppy that showed up and adopted Mike as he had us...
The debilitating pain in Mike's back eliminated any serious volunteering on his part, but he found his consolation in daily conversation and the surety of acceptance for who he was. Every-once-in-a-while, though, if I was really strapped for help in the kitchen I could cajole Mike to don an apron and chop some veggies for a little while. Of course, our conversation would always circle back around to my "luck", and his lack thereof... but deeper, we'd get into such topics as forgiveness, the possibility of "God", the meaning of life, and all the whys of homelessness, break-downs, mental illnesses, and the social pressures that chew so many people up only to eventually spit them out... So it was with a crushing sense of loss and failure that we stood side-by-side one morning as his home was ticketed as an abandoned vehicle by the police sweeping through Chinatown. A tow truck was summoned, and his home disappeared down the street. The officer said, "You can get it back when you pay the fine." Our protests eventually settled into a numb silence.
Mike said, as we surveyed the homeless scrambling to rescue blankets from their shopping carts being tossed onto the backs of trucks, "I'll never get it back. The fine plus towing, plus fifty dollars a day for storage. They took my dog too." The ineffectuality of Soup Kitchens and shelters and all such places once again knocked me up on the side of my head. I had thought, years ago, that perhaps if I cooked enough soup maybe I'd be able to do a few miracles... well, that desire had certainly faded: and all that was left in its place was a hollow spirit of compassion in the litter of brokenness and oppression... And more time would have to pass before that spiritual willingness to care opened a very little window in my heart. Where long ago, I had thought of maybe a miracle or two and of changing someone's life... the view from that little window was simply that in touching with love another human being, I could touch the very Face of God, and be touched in return... So maybe all those conversations with Hollywood Mike about my luck and God, led me to the miracle that I needed... even if it failed to cure anyone or to solve homelessness. So this one is for you Mike, and for every lonely and breaking heart: may Luck finally welcome each one of you (all of us) home! [It is written, along with its companions, as if a collection of "postcards" from Rumi.]
A Postcard from Rumi
Don't be silly.
There is no difference
Between human love and divine love.
It's just the story we've been told!
The way we kiss,
The way we touch,
The way we enter our lover's embrace,
All our secrets with one another
Can lead to the Great Revelation:
There is a Way
To caress the Face of God
Even now...
I finally accepted that I was not going to be able to end homelessness, poverty, and marginalization: not even in the little world of Chinatown-Salinas, let alone throughout the country and around the world. While it could be done through the collective will of all of us together, I was not going to be the one to facilitate such a dramatic shift in consciousness and policy: poverty still crushes, the police still sweep, politicians still circle in blame, and charities still wonder about resources and next steps... But like Dostoevsky wrote a hundred years ago, it could all change in just one hour if we just began to love one another: that's exactly what thirty years of the homeless did to me! If we just loved one another, everything would change in the blink of an eye... You ask, "Where to begin?" With your lover of course! Tonight, or as soon as you can, caress knowing that you are also caressing the Face of God! And then, inspired and activated by the compassion now burgeoning in your heart, carry it out into your daily world and serve others in any way you can and build justice: this is the miracle of transformation that is so absolutely ridiculous: it just might be true!
Based on a True Story
-- Robert Daniel Smith
Read: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, by Fyodor Dostoevsky