“I See You But Do You See Me?” – Artist Marc Clamage, Bearing Witness

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art, bearing witness, beggers, Bernie Glassman, Blog, Homeless, I Paint What I See, living on the street, Marc Clamage, painting, panhandlers

“I see you but do you see me?” Maxine by Marc Clamage

Since my last post, I discovered another artist who refuses to turn away. He bears witness one face at a time by painting panhandlers he sees in Boston Harvard Square near his workplace.

“I used to hurry by them,” writes artist Marc Clamage, “but then I began to stop. Each face tells a story, I realized, and I would try to capture as many as I could through a series of oil paintings.”

Rosie and David with pet guinea pig, by Marc Clamage

He’d noticed there were more than usual that year, and that they seemed “younger, and more troubled.” Sometimes even whole families begging on the streets.

Many of the people he encountered were simply passing through, on their way to a new job or to visit family. Some panhandled to supplement a low-wage job, or help pay the rent.

Others were homeless. Panhandling was their only source of income. A few of these were mentally disturbed, or drug addicts. Some were sick and dying.

 Marc writes: “I do not ask the panhandlers to ‘pose’ for me, but to carry on with their business. I pay each person $10, though I wish I could afford more, because they earn that small fee in the hour or two it takes me to paint them.

“Newly Engaged, Need Motel to Celebrate” Justin and Lauren (The Lovebirds) by Marc Clamage

Over that time, we often get to talking, which has been a privilege and an education.

I’ve seen or heard many human dramas: the tragic love story of Gary and Whitney; squabbles over the best places to work; the mysterious figure everyone calls “The Rabbi,” stuffing $20 bills into cups and disappearing before anyone can see his face.

“I’ve witnessed a few instances of cruelty, but many more of thoughtfulness and generosity. And when I head home, I’m always struck by one thought: There but for the grace of God go the rest of us. Perhaps that’s why we find panhandlers so hard to look at.”

I was deeply touched by Marc’s paintings and by the stories of the people who posed for him. You can view more of his paintings and read the stories on his website “I Paint What I See“, or at his blog.

Gary, Desert Storm Vet, by Marc Clamage

I also like what he says about how he paints:

“I paint what I see, only what I see, only with it right in front of me, only while I’m looking right at it. I do not work from photographs, or imagination, or memory, or even from sketches. I paint exclusively from life. The essence of representation is that every choice, every brushstroke must be made in direct response to the experience of visual reality.”

To really “see” someone, the way an artist does, objectively, without judgement, and yet responding to what is seen, the pain, or loneliness, or confusion, or anger; to see and be seen like that, must be freeing, for both the painter, the one painted. And for the viewer as well.

To simply behold what we see–the good and bad and beautiful and ugly–without judgement, but with compassion and humility, is the essence of “bearing witness.” And it must have a healing effect.

Bernie Glassman in “Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace” wrote:

“In my view, we can’t heal ourselves or other people unless we bear witness. In the Zen Peacemaker Order we stress bearing witness to the wholeness of life, to every aspect of the situation that arises. So bearing witness to someone’s kidnapping, assaulting, and killing a child means being every element of the situation: being the young girl, with her fear, terror, hunger, and pain; being the girl’s mother, with her endless nights of grief and guilt; being the mother of the man who killed, torn between love for her son and the horror of his actions; being the families of both the killed and the killer, each with its respective pain, rage, horror, and shame; being the dark, silent cell where the girl was imprisoned; being the police officers who finally, under enormous pressure, caught the man; and being the jail cell holding the convicted man. It means being each and every element of this situation.”

Whitney, cancer victim, by Marc Clamage

To bear witness in that way must be the hardest, the most healing, and the most humbling thing we could ever do. And the most needed.

Elsewhere, Glassman writes: “When we bear witness, when we become the situation — homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death — the right action arises by itself. We don’t have to worry about what to do. We don’t have to figure out solutions ahead of time. . . . Once we listen with our entire body and mind, loving action arises.”

More of Marc’s paintings follow. See if you see what inspired him to paint these people. Sometimes we see something that cannot be “passed over” lightly, but must be “passed on” to others in whatever way we have of preserving them:  in paint or print, or images on a blog site. So I pass these on to you.

Colleen, by Marc Clamage. Died of exposure and a drug overdose.

Gideon, by Marc Clamage

“Too ugly to prostitute, too kind to pimp.” Anthony by Marc Clamage

Maria by Marc Clamage

Laurel by Marc Clamage. Her sign says she’s a mother of 4 and victim of domestic violence. On the flip side it says “I’m not a whore, asshole.”

Carrie by Marc Clamage. Now clean and sober and off the streets.

[This post originally appeared on another blog in a slightly different form]

Houseless, not Homeless

Tags

Addiction, Affordable housing, Homeless, Homelessness, living on the street, Poverty

Once when I was part of an effort to end homelessness in our community, one of the participants who had himself been homeless objected to the term. “We’re houseless, not homeless,” he insisted. Unfortunately his preferred term never caught on. I understood what he meant though. It was more than the fact that many people without housing live in cars or campers, or take up residence in empty buildings, or crude shacks built in remote areas.

It was the realization that all of us share a home on Mother Earth that may or may not include four walls and a roof. I remembered how Jesus once lamented that birds have nests, and squirrels have burrows, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Yet we never think of Jesus as having been homeless. Nor do we think of our nomadic ancestors as having been homeless. There was always a sense that people were at “home” in their own bodies, in their natural environment, and in the communities of those they identified with.

This realization struck me on a deeper level years later when I went to pick up someone who had been living a nomadic “houseless” existence for long stretches of time when he could not find nor afford a drug treatment program that could take him in. After living that way all summer and most of the fall, I went to bring him to a place where it would be safer and warmer to wait for a bed to open up.

He had me drive him to a parking lot near the beach so he could hike back into the sand dunes to collect his gear.

I offered to go with him and help carry it back, but he said no. It was too far, and the most direct route would have us climbing up and sliding down huge dunes. So I took a walk along the beach while awaiting his return.

The weather had been stormy for the last few days and the morning sky was a molten sheen of silver as the sun tried to burst through. The tide was out and tiny rivulets of water had formed between the ripples of wet sand, reflecting the bright sky. Dozens of sand dollars in all sizes had been washed up on the beach, most of them perfectly whole, and I collected my share. Hundreds of tiny sea birds hunted among the puddles and shallow waves. Among them gulls flew in and out, and one long-legged white heron tip-toed among its cousins.

It was breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful. I imagined him up there, all alone among the sand dunes at night, peeking up at the bright expanse of stars, hearing the hum of the breaking waves, breathing in its salty breath.

Camping out it might have been called–once upon a time in a land far away.

But when he returned with his gear I found out it wasn’t that way at all. The dunes where he slept were full of fellow travelers. As we were driving away he had me pull over so he could hail down a man on a bicycle packed tight with tent poles and back packs and what looked to be a small camp stove.

“Tell Josh I left the tent and blankets he loaned me out there for him.”

Josh was a young man living in the dunes with his girlfriend. They had grown up “houseless” and now were living a”houseless” life together.

Many people like them and the bike rider lived back there, and the place where he had slept would not remain empty long. The secure burrow deep beneath a sage bush had been dug by another, inhabited and abandoned time and time again.

But that’s not the half of it, he told me. Many have lived out there so long and had become so adept at doing so, they had tapped into the electric grid and had TV, computers, and electric lights.

This was true back in the canyons far from the beach as well. There a whole community of “homeless” residents lived, having dug caves and elaborate tunnels into the hillsides, and built tree houses for lookouts to guard against intruders. Hundreds lived back there, he said, in relative luxury, since they too had found ways to plug into the electric grid. The homeless 1%, I suppose.

This is not to make light of, nor to romanticize the plight of people who lack mainstream housing. There is no question that for some this is a lifestyle choice.

But for the vast majority who live on the streets or in the dunes and canyons, they do so because they have no other options. They are there because poor health and medical bills left them bankrupt and houseless. They are there because a lost job, a string of bad luck, addiction, mental illness, and an array of other similar calamities left them no choice but to try to find a way to exist without a house to live in.

Sadly, we’ve make outcasts and outlaws of the poor and sick and struggling. We’ve banished them to live outside the norms of society and forced them to create counter communities at the fringes of society.

We call them homeless, when in truth we all share one home. We’ve simply failed to provide for our own. We’ve failed to create the kind of safeguards and services that would keep all of us safely housed.

“Rider on the Storm” – My Wild Child, My Son

Tags

Addiction, Body art, Family, Heroes journey, Homelessness, living on the street, Parenting, Recovery, Riders of the Storm, Survival, Tattoos, Wild Child

Recently I posted a tribute to my daughter on her wedding day, and as I wrote it, I wondered about the tribute I might pay to my son, whom I love equally, but whose life journey, even while raised so similarly, led him down a very different path, often heartbreakingly so.

It always amazed me as my children were growing up how they had come to be, in some uncanny way, the embodiment of very different parts of my psyche.  My daughter was growing up to be the woman I had always wanted to be—beautiful, brave, strong, independent and self-confident.  While my son was turning out to be the kind of boy that I and so many young women were drawn too——wild and reckless, handsome and charming, sweet and funny, willful and stubborn—a born rebel, who cherished his freedom, testing limits and bending rules.  Living with him was like living on a roller-coaster ride, full of thrills and chills that never seemed to let up.

Almost from the day he was born he was a handful. I would ruefully tell other mothers how he entered the terrible twos when he was one and never grew out of it. At the tender age of two he ran away from home–twice.  Once to visit his grandma five blocks away.  Another to buy candy.  A policeman brought him home that day when he was trying to cross a busy street with a nickel in his pocket.  I installed locks on all the doors and gates after that.

Yet he was a loving child, a sweet child, popular with other kids and his teachers, even while he spent much of his early grade school days in the principal’s office. Not because he was a bully, but because he refused to be bullied, or see those he cared about bullied.

When he was 11, we moved on our boat La Gitana in Ventura Harbor.  He immediately took up surfing, and learned to row and sail a dinghy. He became an avid sport fisherman, making all his own lures and rigging his own poles.

When we finally did take off on our journey there was always a line in the water and he supplied most of the fish we dined on. He could free dive to depths of 20 or more feet to spear a grouper or capture a lobster.

He made friends easily with other sailors and fishermen who were impressed by his skill and knowledge.  He became a certified scuba diver at the age of twelve.  He was a true Pisces—at home in the ocean he loved.

Trying to home school him was a challenge, but once I enrolled him in a self-paced program where we mailed his work back to a teacher for grading and feedback, it went better.  Not that we didn’t have our moments.

By the time we reached Australia, he was 16-years-old and didn’t want to leave. In Australia at the time, many children that age left formal schooling to learn a trade.  Often they lived on their own, helped out by the government, or boarded with those who were teaching them a trade.  Chris was invited by a boat-builder to join his crew.  When it was time for us to leave Australia, he begged me to let him.  It was his dream to become the captain of a sports fishing boat, and this seemed like an opportunity for him to pursue that goal. I interceded on his behalf with his father, who, against his better judgment, allowed him to stay.

I’ll never forget the day we sailed away, leaving our son behind in Australia.  I felt like the worst of all mothers, like I was abandoning him.  And something in his eyes made me wonder if he was thinking the same thing.

At the same time, I felt like I was giving him an opportunity to be the man he wanted to be, to live the kind of life he wanted to live.

I had read books of young 16-year-old boys taking off on their own from Ireland to seek their fortunes in America, how difficult it had been for them, but how they had thrived.  It’s what I had hoped for him. I trusted that he had what it takes to make it on his own.  To this day, I don’t know if I made the right decision.

He spent 18 months on his own in Australia.  We exchanged letters and talked to each other as much as we were able.  Always I asked if he was ready to come back on the boat, or go home to stay with his grandparents.  Always he said no, he was fine.  But I never really knew.  I learned later that the old guy he had gone to work for was hospitalized and eventually died.  I heard tales about him drifting around working as a carny, and later for a Mafia-type family who owned a string of Italian restaurants.  He’s very tight-lipped about those days, and I do not press him.

He came home at age 18 around the same time we returned from our travels, and he was tall and handsome and had an Aussie accent.  He seemed happy and confident.   He spent some time with his grandfather, going mountain climbing and obtaining his GED.  Eventually he became a commercial diver, working on the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Then he moved to New Orleans.  Two years later when he returned home to California he was a heroin addict.

That’s when the roller-coaster ride became a nightmare.  He couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t stay clean.  He spent years on the street, in and out of rehab, in and out of jail and prison, in and out of hospitals when he overdosed.  We took him in when we could, until we couldn’t anymore.  On more than one occasion I moved out with him, thinking hands-on mom-care would help.  It didn’t.

The worst part was when I didn’t know where he was.  I didn’t know if he was sleeping on a park bench or was rolled up on someone’s couch, or lying in a ditch somewhere.  When he was in jail, or even in the hospital, there was always hope.  He was safe, for now.  And maybe at last he’d hit bottom.  Maybe this time he would begin to turn his life around.

Yet even in the midst of all this he showed strength and resilience, street-wise resourcefulness, and a basic goodness that would inspire him to share the little he had with those who had less.

He saw himself as a “Rider on the Storm,” riding a long wild wave that would surely crash him on the rocks unless he could hold on tight and ride it out, and manage to turn it at just the right moment.  He couldn’t control it, and he couldn’t stop it, but he could perhaps outlast it. And he did.

He claims now I helped save his life. And sometimes I believe him.  My love for him was so strong, my prayers so constant, my will so fierce, nothing could make me let go, nothing could tear him away from me.   That’s how I saw it, willed it, demanded that it should be.  But I know better.  A mother’s love isn’t enough to keep a child safe.  Yet still, still, we would so believe.

Sometimes I think he’s the bravest person I’ve ever known.  No one else that I know could survive what he’s survived.  I know I wouldn’t.  Even his father, strong as he is, would not have survived that craziness.  Few do, I’m told.  Only fifty percent of heroin addicts survive their habit, and only half of those who do eventually lead drug-free lives.

I’m proud of him for being a fighter, a survivor, for not giving up, for having the stamina and courage to start over again and again and again—with nothing, no job, no money, no prospects.

I’m proud of him for winning the heart of the woman he now loves, for helping to bring their child into the world and raising her together, for caring for this child with such love and tenderness. For becoming the Father, the rule-maker rather than the rule-breaker, the Authority Figure in his young one’s life, someone she will look up to, and trust to care for her and keep her safe.

I think of those fairy tales and journeys heroes take, how they go into the dark, scary places of the world, do impossible deeds, overcome unimaginable challenges, fight off terrifying monsters, then save the princess and ride away with her on a white horse.  To some degree, in some measure, he’s done all that.

I see him as the warrior turned woodsman who has built a home on the edge of the forest.  All the scary things are still out there, but now he’s a seasoned fighter, and he has something other than himself to protect and keep safe.  He’s guarding hearth and home, this dragon-slayer, demon-hunter, who has lived with and among dragons and demons for so long.

His body art tells the story of his survival and his path to recovery.  Draped along his upper chest are the words “Riders on the Storm” to remind him where he’s been.  On his shoulders and across his back are nautical stars and a compass rose to guide him through the storm.

On his arm is an anchor with the word “Family” wrapped around it, to help keep him grounded and remind him of what’s he’s fighting for.  Beneath his heart are the infant footprints of a son he almost lost and is seeking to regain.  Soon to come, he tells me, are the fingerprints of his tiny daughter whose hold on his heart is so fierce.

Perhaps we all live at the edge of a dark forest, at the edge of the wild, with the dark scary things we fear forever yawning at our backs—addiction, disease, poverty, financial ruin, failure, loss of loved ones, war, famine, even enslavement for some.   Perhaps our life journey is to keep ourselves strong enough to survive the darkness, and bright enough to face the light and keep walking toward it.

I trust we all shall continue doing so.