today i attended gizmo’s send off. i didn’t know gizmo real well, but we had chatted a few times when he was out panhandling.
many people celebrated the idea of gizmo now residing in a better place. for one person that included endless beer from the earth and cigarettes from the sky. for others it was left to the imagination. for me it was a place somewhat like, i might guess, his later years here on earth. my understanding is that gizmo moved into the new Our Place (formerly the Open Door ) with the new improved housing option. it’s not so good as it might be, but it was a bit better than it was.
he sure had a lot of friends.
the room was almost full. my friend and i wondered if there might be so many at our last remembrance.
after reverend al lead us through one of his too-frequent nature-ized christian services, people were invited to speak. a significant number remembered gizmo as someone who was a big help to them when they were first introduced to the streets. some of those people are now off the streets. others .... i don’t know.
i don’t know all the homeless/street/poor people in town, but i know a few of them. i know some wealthy people too. there’s good and bad everywhere.
i always feel a little guilty if i know i have enough money until the end of the month and there’s this person, just a few days away from cheque day (usually the last week of the month in a full week), who’s eating mostly bread or rice or oatmeal because that’s all they can afford. or maybe they just want a beer to feed their addiction. whatever, i think if a few people out of all of us were to get to know a poor person or two in their neighbourhood, and not feel like they have to take the person in as if it’s their own child but just offer a little help sometimes, and other times feel alright just saying hi how are ya, i think we could do away with governments altogether.
so shoot me. i’m just not into party politics. the deal making, both within and without, occupies so much time and energy they all forget what it was they were doing in the first place. and now they’ve introduced the black diebold boxes, known to be faulty at best, easily hackable at worst. count me out.
i really believe that governments, in the very very beginning, were just units of consent. just people with common interests getting together and divvying up the tasks, and each doing their part to make sure that what needed to be done was done. now? i don’t know.
farewell, gizmo. it’d have been good to know ya.
