I have to assume that there isn't a good city for being homeless on the streets in the northern tier of U.S. states; surely, Duluth must be one of the hardest. It is frigid here most of the winter (and winter started earlier this year than, say, last year). Today's high will be about 10 above zero Fahrenheit, with a wind chill well below zero. The season can last fully six or seven months, with brutal winds, steep hills, a freezing lake, and a smaller infrastructure than bigger cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Green Bay, etc. While I am essentially homeless (in the sense of never having had a permanent home, and not living in the country that feels like home), I currently have a roof over my head, for which I am profoundly thankful. Most days, however, I use the bus system, and it appears to me, from being on the buses and changing buses at the Transit Center, that this is going to be a particularly hard winter for many people here. The situation elicits a complicated set of feelings...It's hard for me to feel spontaneous love for strangers under the best of circumstances, and I don't seem to be able to go down the road of "feeling sorry for" people carrying all their belongings with them. Perhaps it is a casualty of my family background, or of it being too close to my own reality...yet I definitely don't blame them or feel repelled. I'm only inches away from where they are, even if for somewhat different superficial reasons. So the level on which I can deal with it at the moment is my old standby, my intellect. What all of us have in common is not having been able to function within America's "system". In that way, I feel in complete community with the homeless. Perhaps in time I will grow, spiritually, into a fuller, warmer, more engaged sense of connection. And, of course, ultimately "they" are not "them", they are me. They are all of us.
Actually, the most traumatizing part of a bus ride is looking out the window. It's looking at the ways in which, post-pandemic (if indeed we are "post"-pandemic), our city is trying to do what the U.S. always does, push forward, grow, profit, expand. There's a neighborhood in west Duluth that is rapidly moving from stalled and downmarket to trendy and gentrified. To whatever extent such tony shops and eateries used to feel comfortable for me (during my Time Inc. days, perhaps), they are mostly out of my price range now, and, certainly, out of many peoples' price range. Up near the mall, it's the construction of ever more big box stores and their neighboring coffee shops, auto dealerships, and franchises representing all sorts of national brands. (Many of them cannot be reached by bus, or, once dropped off, you have a long and potentially unsafe walk.) And taking the bus east from the transit hub takes you next to a hospital's huge new expansion -- two buildings that are, from what I can see, almost completely encased in glass. What is the wisdom of this design decision in a city with such blustery winds and frigid outside temperatures much of the year? It is imposing and beautiful in its own way, but for someone who has largely lived without health insurance or health care, it's like something from another planet. The extremes of what I see over the course of a half an hour can be almost unbearable. These economic steps forward leave me spiritually as cold as the wind.
I guess I just don't understand. Are those of us at the lower end of the spectrum expected to see these wonders and want to be part of it all? If that's the case, it has never worked for me. With every passing year, I feel less of a stake in our culture's values, and more alienated. I try to intuit where the Goddess is in this picture, and I see Her in the lake itself, in the eagles and hawks floating on the strong winds, in the beautiful people serving the poor, and in the touching gestures you happen to see and hear, like two homeless men greeting each other with a big bear hug, or hearing the tail end of a cell phone conversation where someone says, "I love you." Sometimes I envy my friends who own cars and are somewhat insulated from what's happening on the streets, but these unexpected, beautifully poignant moments help to tip the scale back to the center.
