Luckiest Girl In the World

On my way to work everyday I pass by a tent city, what we are calling Nicholsvilles here in Seattle. From the bus it almost looks like a cheerful thing with all the bright pink and blue tents donated by some outdoor company. It isn't until you start looking at the people that populate it that you become aware of the sad reality.

And all I can think of is how much easier I have it. Sure the Kid and I have been without a place to collect mail for the last few months. We've had to tread lightly to avoid annoying our generous friends in any way that might make them reconsider their generosity. We've had to share a small room and lost all our furniture. We've had to master cooking on a hot plate and keeping the kid from having asthma attacks while staying in damp basements.

But we are inside, warm, safe, and surrounded by people who love us. We are not targets for derision or scorn or violence from the public and the police. We do not have to fight everyday to prove that homeless does not equal worthless. We are so close to being like the tent people, but even in poverty there is a hierarchy. We are at the lucky top.

One of my problems is that I have enough eduction to see the systemic nature of the challenges (blockages) that have kept me in poverty. I know the trap of pink collar work that looks respectable on the outside but never pays enough to bring actual respectability. I know that drugs and alcohol are just ways of masking the sad perpetual hopelessness of life lived on the edges. What I don't have is enough education (the on paper, can put it on a resume kind) to be able to fix it, for me or anyone else.

But this week has taught me that since I cannot do it alone, I am the luckiest girl in the world because people, awesome, faceless people, will help me.

And the truth is that all human advancement has been because of those kind of actions. We think that it is competition that pushed us to the top of the food chain, or the independent nature of a few lone geniuses through time who have launched us into our present state. But the most radical human advancement ever, more radical even than opposable thumbs and upright walking, is language.

And language is a cooperative, social thing. Language only works when people agree that certain sounds or symbols mean the same thing. It only works when there is a mutual cooperation to understand something outside of either party.

Because of language I can sit here in a basement in Seattle and bunch of people who I have never met are helping me to get one of the most basic human requirements.

I want to use the same language skills that have made me so very lucky to help those down the pole. I'm not sure how yet.

(This is a long meandering post which wasn't/isn't very clear in my head. You peeps are getting the raw babbles again- sorry).