Day 10: 12:30 p.m.

His name is Anthony but he doesn't want me to call him that.

"It's Tony, Ma'am," he says.

I want to say "ma'am?  Ma'am is for old ladies but then I realize to Anthony, I am fricken old.  He's a kid.  I'm almost fifty. 

"What's going on, Anthony?" I ask.

"Tony," he says.

I hand him a buck, which I had ready and just a few feet away, a guy (who also got a dollar) slams a big drum with his foot and plays an accordion. He's got two dogs (you only see one in the photo) and he sings what sounds like a German song.

"Can you understand that language?" Tony asks.

"No," I say. "I can't."

Tony sits on his pack and in front of him is a sign that reads how he was in the Navy, some kind of ship clerk, and he wants to go home.  The thing about Tony is that he is tall and great looking.  Spin him around, put him somewhere else and women would be filing up to flirt with this guy.  What the hell is going on?

"I lost my job and my wallet, so I can't get another job," he says.  "I want a ticket to get home and it's like a couple hundred bucks so I'm doing my best out here on the streets but this guy with the dogs just came out and I think I am probably going to go because what's the use, right?"

"How are you doing? I mean, are you close to reaching your goal?"

"I am," he says, "I need like thirty bucks more."

He looks up at me from where he squats and he's got the sorrowful, difficult, man-I-need-a-little-help expression down pat.  I feel bad for him but then again, I also see that there is something under what he's telling me about himself.  If I give him money, I can almost guarantee it's going to booze or drugs and not to a ticket back to Chicago. 

This is something I think every single time I give money to someone who is on the street.  I think, "this is not compassion.  This is enabling.  This is idiot compassion."

And then that begs out the question, "what the hell is compassion?"

According to Ken McLeod, who wrote Wake Up to Your Life:  if you feel an impulse to help from your own discomfort in the situation, you are reacting, not responding, to the pain of the person.  If you are unable to do anything, you collapse into helplessness, withdraw from the situation physically or emotionally, and see yourself as a victim of the others misfortune and pain.  

Neither is compassion. 

McLeod goes on to say compassion is being there with someone in pain, without concern for yourself.  You are just with the person, even though it is intense.

Okay, I've heard this before and it still pisses me off.  It just bothers me.  "Just being present to pain and suffering," feels so odd.  Just be with it?  Just sit there and relax?  Doesn't that seem futile?  And there I go, collapsing into helplessness.  A victim.

Compassion is a mother f!

"Can I take your picture, Anthony?"

"Tony," he says.

"Tony, I'm sorry.  I'm writing this weblog about being on the streets.  I would like to include your picture with what I write.  Is that okay?"

"Hey, that's totally cool," he says.  "I write."

Tony flips out a notebook and sure enough, that boy does write.  "I've been putting down my experience, you know, just a little bit here and there but I like it.  Writing is cool, it helps."

"Yes, it does," I say.

"Cool," he says.  "That's really great."
 
"Tony, I gotta go but good luck, okay.  Take it easy."

He says he will take it easy and that's it.  I've got to get my kid from school and I cross the street.  It's SW Portland, that crazy Pearl district traffic near Powell's City of Boos and if you don't watch out you will be flattened by a car.  I cross the intersection and go a few steps and I know it in my gut, I just know Tony has a habit he's supporting.   But he's a writer.  He's got words on the page and even though I really don't have money enough to do it, being a writer myself and a single mother too, I fish a twenty out of my wallet and turn around.

I do not write this to say I'm a good person.  It's not about being a good person.  I don't think giving this kid is good or helpful or even compassionate now.  I don't know enough about compassion to understand what's going on yet.  I'm just trying to be present and feel my way through this.  Turning around and passing over twenty large is about being a writer.   Writing is how I make the teeny tiny amount of money I make, which supports my family and my home and my ability to be in Powell's buying books.

I cross the crazy intersection again, jog up to Tony and hand him the twenty which gets him to stand up.  He hugs me and says, "oh my God, thank you, thank you.  I mean it.  I can't thank you enough."  The drum banging, German singing accordion guy is still going strong but I manage to say it.

"Write, Tony," I say.  "If I can do it, anyone can do it.  Write and get yourself out of this mess."

Tony nods like sure, he'll write, maybe, maybe not.  And that's it.  I'm gone.  I don't look back to see what he's going to do.  I cross the intersection, check to make sure my wallet is still there becasue in that hug, it could have been lifted.  That's how stupid vulnerable I just made myself.  The wallet is there.  Whew. 

TIME TAKEN:          10 minutes 
DOLLARS GIVEN:  $22.00