Sunday, March 11, 2012

What's Next? A Road to Transition

In last week’s blog entry, I briefly touched on a conversation between myself and Josh, a homeless man I met while wandering around downtown Chicago. He had described some of the hardships he has endured (and continues to endure) when just before we were about to part ways he mentioned how he had attended college once. This stirred in me a need to explore this aspect of his life, but unfortunately, he had to run. However, after accurately reading my interest in the subject, he invited me to meet with him again, sometime soon. Over the last few days, I made it a point to traffic the area where I had met Josh. After all, not only do I need to familiarize myself with homeless people for this project, but I need to connect it to higher education as well. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to bridge the two; and I was also eager to meet with him because I brought him a gift: some pencils and a pad of paper.

Sadly, Josh and I have not met since our original encounter. I’d like to see him, though; so hopefully over the next few weeks, I’ll have the pleasure again. I’ll be sure to share that story with you if it happens. However, this past week, a few interesting things did come up. To be clear, they were as interesting as they were troubling… (They’re not in any way troubling… I just wanted to hook you. And not much happened, but keep reading...)

Michigan Avenue seems to be the starting point of many of my nighttime excursions (Wow, I sound like either a criminal or a super hero. I promise I am neither). I am hoping in the near future to find some other areas of the city to explore. I would imagine I will be able to accomplish this feat after I’m through with some of the interviews I have lined up with people who have studied homelessness. But, for the purposes of our blog today, we will begin where we have begun before, and that is near Loyola University Chicago’s downtown campus on Michigan Avenue.

On this particular evening, and I don’t know why I did this exactly, but I waited for people to approach me. I know this may sound weird, but if you think about it, aren’t people always approaching you on the street? They are always trying to make a point, or sell something, or get you to go somewhere (like a club, not the back of a van), or even to ask you for money. But who has the time to listen to all that? Who has the time to deal with that? Like many, when I am walking from point A to point B, I will ignore everyone around me. Not the case three days ago. I walked around, happily waiting for conversation to spark. If someone wanted to talk to me, for whatever reason, I was game…

Nobody spoke with me. I wandered a bit, but nobody spoke to me. It was kind of sad. I would walk slower around people I thought would talk to me. I would inch closer and closer, hoping for that oh-are-you-talking-to-me moment. I may have been giving off a creepy vibe. I’m not sure. For whatever reason, people steered clear of me. Isn't that always the case thought? When you want something, you have to look for it, but when you don't want something, it comes looking for you.