06/24/2024
So I decided I am gonna start just telling yall what I do all day. Unhoused life is wild and I think more people should understand what this whole culture faces as a whole.
I guess I'll start with an intro or something?
I am sitting at the computer using the randomly generated library cards at Carnegie Branch of Jackson District Library, in Jackson, MI. I really love this place a lot. It is wild what the perspective of not only the street, but the Jackson Street does to the way the world feels to someone. I will add some of what this districts library does for tis community later on. Suffice it to say for now that Librarians are one of the noblest creatures I have met on this spinning blue marble.
Most people around here know me as Red. I make art. I am weird.
On Thursday the 13th of this month, there was a fellow unhoused individual who I caught being inappropriate with my 18 yo child with Autism. Him and I (my son) are both Diagnosed. In my attempted to make sure this individual did not continue, I demanded he stop and leave the public park affectionately known in the community as "Wifi Park". The life people are experiencing, the mental health crisis, the conditions and the general miasma that can affect tis population often leads to violence. This interaction led to an altercation resulting in me geting beat all the way up haha! It is and was bad, I am not young anymore. Walking miles and miles with a limp and a black, blue and green face sucks y'all!
None the less, I am a different person now. So, I am going to try and let people see the people I know and care about, this strange chosen family that cropped up around me like so many twisted up wildflowers, and what day to day life is like in the world of the unhoused. My perspective, the world is too wild a storm for me to be so arrogant to try and sail alone. Come with. I'm scared.
As I start to figure out what to tell yall be patient with me please. I just got back the the Harm Reduction outreach van, I try and make sure I have fentanyl testing strips, narcan, clean needles, sharps containers and clean rigs. There is a world of good people that our society is desperately failing to understand. Saving other humans from over dose is a regular occurrence for the people around me. Violence is the norm, compassion is rare and everyone needs socks.
