JAY.

doing a post earlier today prompted me to go back and review my blog posts.

it turns out that this week marks the anniversary of the death of someone who was also a tuesday night regular, jay, that is, peter jay mcclosky. jay was a pilot, but had a problem with alcohol so when i first met him, he was on the street and when he showed up for dinner, it was usually in the company of a small korean woman named uno who has a similar problem with alcohol. jay and ono were pretty devoted to one another. apparently uno was unaware that jay had died, so when jay failed to show up for dinner the next week, uno complained the whole time about how jay had betrayed her by abandoning her.

uno has taken jay's loss extremely hard. in the past year, uno has stopped by for dinner maybe 3 times. she's been extremely intoxicated every time. otherwise she's usually sitting near the rest rooms at the south end of the park in a continual state of inebriation. once in a while someone will come up and ask us to make a plate to take to her. i regret not taking the time to see how she is every week, but our group is now down to two volunteers, so i don't have the time to run down to see if uno is there.

leon's story gives me hope, while uno's story takes me the same distance, but in another direction entirely.

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we've had (to me anyway) unseasonably hot weather. it hit as high as 108 this past tuesday.

so i made gazpacho and also brought popsicles for them to eat while we set up the table.

as part of an experiment, for the past 10 days or so, i chose not to run the A/C and instead, made a habit of cleaning myself with a face towel every 60-90 minutes. even so, i was still pretty rank by the end of each day.

to me, this is part of what makes being homeless so difficult to escape. no matter how fastidious you try to be, you can't escape the consequences of not being able to wash regularly.

20 years ago, i joined a group of people who regularly traveled down to tijuana, we brought used clothes for the children, but more importantly, we brought tanks of water and provided baths. as much as food, there's a real need for something like that for the homeless here, especially in the summer.

LEON

is the name of a tuesday night regular. he's typically barefoot and shirtless, struggles with bipolar disorder, and hasn't had a job since the 90's. he's not always there when we start to serve dinner, but when he does show, he's typically one of the last to leave.  he drinks to help himself get through the day, and sometimes it's apparent when he shows up for dinner and he can come off as somewhat scatter-brained then. even so, in general, he come across as surprisingly cheerful, and whenever i spend time talking with him, he invariably says something that i end up thinking about during my drive home from the park. i've really come to enjoy interacting with him.  he's said that the police know him and his situation, and apparently when leon can tell that he's losing it, he'll ask the police to take him in and keep him overnight. he's mentioned riding the merry-go-round in santa monica as one of the things he does regularly to cheer himself up, because we all need to do things like that occasionally to get by. he talks matter of factly about his life in general that i have found myself marveling that someone who has basically been crapped on all his life can be so seemingly cheerful.

this week i got a chance to have a long extended conversation with him after everyone else left, and i spent over 2 hours talking with him until well after 10 pm (we typically stop serving by 7:30 and hang out - sometimes we get to the planned scripture reading, sometimes, someone will have a question and we'll just talk until 8 or 8:30.)

now i marvel at him all the more; after talking about this and that for a while, i told him that i found it amazing that he seemed to be so cheerful. i wasn't expecting his response: that as soon as he left for the evening, he would immediately begin to struggle with depression, and how he would pray to god for hours. he talked about being angry with god for his situation, for god making him black, for everyone treating him like dirt. he talked about thinking about killing himself. then he said something that just made my day: he wouldn't kill himself because he believes that he was created for a reason, even though he didn't know what it was yet.

i'm pulling for him to figure out what that reason is, and i so want to be around when he does.