The People In My Neighborhood

Living in Portland Oregon makes me think a lot about mental health.  Not just mine but those around me.  You see I work in the heart of downtown Portland and spend my lunch hours walking up and down the Willamette River through a city park.  Traveling through a public park is a lot like visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles.  It is basically a conglomeration of everyone.  For me the saddest part of the experience is viewing the vandalism and destruction left by people that don’t enjoy the park for the reasons it exists as a public gathering point.  Portland has so much to be proud of yet unfortunately there is a small destructive element that that doesn’t share common values.

Walking through the park is like walking through a healing wound.  The scab can be ugly but it is a part of us and we can only hope when the wound heals and the scab falls away, what lies beneath will be better than what covered it.  Portland is filled with homeless people.  Their lives and what it does to the city, is a different conversation.  For this moment I wish to only comment on how some, beneath their dirt and worn clothing, have become a disturbingly recognizable part of my life.  

These people are not well.  They are beyond the drug addicts that cluster under bridges or lay passed out on benches.  Their minds have surrendered to an alternate world where they exist and the rest of us are simply colors and flashes that pass them by.  The schizophrenic have conversations with themselves at times meeting a passers eyes.  Their fixed stare often causes those connecting with it to look away and walk in an opposite direction.  We are afraid of them yet in their world they are insulated from us. 

My rational mind seeks to understand them yet there is little to grasp. How can the rational comprehend the irrational?  Shortly after I start my walk I pass a black man who every day, stands beneath a tree.  At its base rests a back pack and some other neatly kept belongings.  He is probably in his 50s or 60s with graying beard stubble rimming his face like a milk mustache. In his hand he clutches an electronic device that appears to look like a cellular phone or possibly some kind of recording device.  He has a headset extending to one ear.  He paces back and forth slowly yet deliberately never leaving a small area of grass.  His lips move and he smiles yet hardly emits a sound.  I am not sure how long he stands there but I suspect it is the better part of every day.

A bit further along my way I often pass another man.  I see him around the city.  He is always recognizable by his hunched back.  His spine is so curved he seems to walk looking at the ground.  His life is in a black plastic garbage he slings over his shoulder.  He wears a scowl on his face and often flips off anyone glancing in his direction.  Unable to lift his hand his middle finger extends outward like a plane in flight addressing the ground more than any person.  

There is a middle aged woman I see sometimes sitting on the ground with her back supported by a retaining wall. She tends to sit near a fountain and pretends to hold a compact in her hand. She pats her face with an invisible sponge and fixes her hair.

In Portland the homeless are everywhere. I suspect the park transients likely spend their nights in nearby shelters. You can tell by the amount of belongings they haul around.  If the shelters were not in the city core they probably wouldn’t be either. Tent encampments make up the bulk of the homeless. These sites cling to sidewalks and nest in any spot of grass they can find. Unused parking spaces become small communities. Most people hover around their tents surrounded by mountains of garbage. They cling to mounds of garbage as if it is a possession and some how having possessions make their lives more concrete. When the city acts to clean a park it often takes weeks to remove all the trash as precautions are taken to avoid drug needles and trucks are brought in to remove junked cars often stolen and being parted out.

It often appears like these people are trying to be what they perceive as normal. In our eyes they are the polar opposite, yet the conversational black man or invisible makeup woman want to be perceived as living a regular life. Near my office I used to see an older man dressed in a blazer sitting on a bench outside a Starbucks. He would read a newspaper and seemed to want to appear as a business man. His dirty hands and worn shoes told a different story. 

The frightening ones stand on the streets and yell. I once observed a man wearing nothing but a jock strap peering in the windows of a day care.   It was the one moment I was about to engage when a person emerged from the day care center and yelled at him to leave.  Some view this as a kind of in your face reality check illustrating the ills of our society all the wile supporting and encouraging their “rights to publicly exist.”  As a person that lives around it every day I feel like my world is invaded. Like I now live in a place where I cannot visit a park without bodies splayed on dirty blankets or walk on grass without fear of needles.  I pass through a gauntlet of marijuana smoke at times and wonder where they found the money to buy it.  I can’t imagine living in the Portland neighborhoods where you walk out your door to find a person sleeping on the curb. Or being a business man hoping my customers will cross a line of human beings squatting and smoking near my shop door.

How can this be considered tolerable or kind?  How could this be humanistic or generous?  I feel like our wound is festering.  That there will be no renewal. Month after month nothing gets better, only worse.  The Portland City Council and Mayor constantly make promises that never seem fulfilled.  Tax payers throw money at the problem yet day after day passes and nothing ever improves.  Sometimes the characters I become accustomed to seeing simply disappear.  Perhaps they found help.  In reality they likely died.  The morning news will speak of a person being hit by a Max train.  I know the mental hospitals weren’t perfect but it had to be a better way.  Of course like most of society I appreciated not being confronted with their madness on a daily basis yet at least there was shelter and some form of treatment.  At least people cold walk the streets un afraid and children could play in parks without fear of needles.  

The long time residents of Portland (more than two years) tell me Portland was once a lovely place.  I know it could be again but in my heart I fear I will never see it.   This wound just never seems to heal.