The poor

One thing I have learned quickly is that Los Angeles has a lot of poor, and by that I don’t mean people who are just on food stamps and government supplement but actual poor who make beds on the streets and dig out recyclable bottles from trash cans to make 5 cents selling them back. The beggars here are more forceful, but they almost have to be with the amount of competition they have. Are most of them probably on drugs, yes, but not all. A lot seem to be mentally handicap, disabled, or just old. Those are the ones I most see in the trash cans at night.
The mild weather and largeness of the city provides, I guess, a better place to sleep out on the street then a place like Montana, where they would freeze. Frankly, I don’t know what else Los Angeles has to offer them, maybe benefits maybe not. All I know is driving back the mile from USC I see them, pushing carts, carrying bags of empty water bottles, their honest livelihood. Keep in mind I haven’t seen Skid Row, nor do I want to, would you? Drive where some people are so desperate and mental messed that they would pull a weapon on you for a dollar? Yet this is where others who have no place to go live, without solid shelter. Of course we could say, they just need to get off whatever drugs they are on and get a job. Like that is easy. I am clean, intelligent, and considerate with a BA degree and a work history of people being happy they hired me, yet I’m struggling to even get a call back on jobs someone who didn’t even graduate high school could do. So tell me, who will hire the bum off the street, who is so mentally messed up from either drugs or simply a life of being thrown to the wolves? I wouldn’t. But if you did what would you pay them? Enough to get an LA apartment with no credit and buy food, pay bills, health insurance, and have money to make repairs?
I then drive to other places and I see the wealth. Beautiful cars, homes, shops, ect. I don’t have anything against these things. I wish deep down as I pass these places that one day I’ll be able to buy a house in a safe neighborhood, with a yard and a garage. That one day, I can buy the cloths I want to, the ones made out of fabric other then polyester, that are tailored for my body instead of the stuff I find on the sale racks at Burlington coat factory and Ross. I get annoyed I have to watch how much I spend on groceries and can’t just buy the really good cheese at the Santa Monica farmers market, when a year ago I could have got it without a second thought. I dream of buying that cheese, those cloths, and that home. Yet now I know that while I eat that cheese, there will be someone else who just dreams of sleeping somewhere with a working shower and bathroom all their own.
So what is there too do? Force others to share? Give up all that we have to others? What of the drugs? What of the fact that some people aren’t educated? Will steel? Have been taught to take what they can? Might not know how to socialize in public settings anymore?
The sad truth is I don’t think any one program will fix this. You can get rid of drugs (which I think would fix a lot) but you will still have the sick, mental handicapped, old, and those who don’t have working skills or just can’t get a job. You can provide better education. You could set up a business that would distribute the profits equally, but who would take the pay cut, when they’ve had to pay for school to be an effective CEO? And the list goes on. But I guess, the best we can do is remember that they are, and that they are people like us and do what we know how.

It's hard to wash away the sun

I had a dream with a song that went,

It's hard to wash away the sun
for after all is done
the rays, light, and shadows
linger on, even after the sun.

We all have choices to make during the light of day. Some choice to hide and some to play. I've chosen to walk an only slightly visible path. I don't know what is coming and it was scary. I am not scared now though. Now I am holding to what I know, what I have been promised, and the light that God has given me through the shadows of the trees. In the back of my head, I know that what I do or don't do will stay with me once the day is done. I just hope that sometime when I wake-up tomorrow, in a month, or in a year that I can see something good reflecting back in the light of the day.
For now, I am walking with my eyes half closed, until I can adjust to the sun.