Crazy
Last night was my monthly book club meeting: "The Curse", as I call it because we're so "us", that our last new member joined 8 years ago and we still have to call her "the new member" because we haven't been able to keep a newer one for more'n one meeting.
Also, once you're in Book Club, you can never leave. It's not like Hotel California, either, if that's what you're thinking. It's like a book club that you can never leave because the other members will phone you and e-mail you and, in one case - come to your door - to make sure you show up for the monthly meeting.
Every month.
For the rest of your life.
Anyway, the food's good, so, I really can't complain too much and I only have to host it once/year (we take the summer off and one member is the permanent Christmas host because she lurrrrrrrrrrves Christmas so much that we make her take a regular turn, too) and it does ensure that I read at least one book per month.
This meeting we did "An Audience of Chairs" by Joan Clark, which we didn't discuss much because the main character is mentally ill and that led almost immediately to a discussion about Mayor Larry O'Brien. One of our members, who works in and around City Hall, dispelled the possibility of mental illness, though, and said flat out, "Everybody at City Hall thinks he's a psycho prick. And just very, very stupid."
That doesn't surprise me. I'd have just gone with "asshole" but she said, "No! No! No! More than just asshole. He's a stupid psycho prick."
By the way, Dear Reader, in case you don't know who Mayor Larry O'Brien is, he's a guy who probably received more in taxpayer dollars than all the Homeless in Ottawa since Homeless people were first discovered in Ottawa - even before he became Mayor and made it his first order of business to try and give himself a great big fat taxpayer dollars RAISE. He also, more or less famously, said last week on CFRA (Ottawa's Hate Radio station):
"We've got to stop feeding the pigeons (referring to homeless people) in the Byward Market," O'Brien said on Madely in the Morning.
"And we did that with real pigeons about 25 or 30 years ago and low and behold, you barely ever see a pigeon around here. You start doing that with the panhandlers -- you stop giving out those toonies -- and they'll stop hanging around here."
THEN he borrowed a page from retired Premier Ralph Klein's hymn book to claim that Perth was sending it's Homeless people to Ottawa, which led to the Mayor of Perth claiming that Perth did no such thing, before remembering to comment on the inhumaneness of Mayor O'Brien's comments.
Anyway, I wouldn't care about Mayor Larry O'Brien except he's a charlaton holding the key to the city for FOUR MORE YEARS!!! Voters? Way to go. Now, suck it up - assholes.
But back to crazy people. The main character in Ms. Clark's book has at varying times, schizophrenia, manic depression, bi-polar disorder, and post partum depression. Now, I'm no mental health expert, but I would have diagnosed her with that new mental health catch-all: a borderline personality. She had what I thought was a self involvement that didn't allow her the capacity to consider other people. At first, I really didn't like her at all, but as the book went on, I found myself rooting for her to establish at least a couple of mutual relationships. And there were parts of the book that I actually found quite gripping while I hoped for the best: Would she be able to keep it together just long enough to not alienate everybody else in the scene with her bizarre behaviour and maybe even come out of it with someone who could tolerate her enough for a little future to and fro?
But that's just it with crazy people, isn't it. We want them to normal up, to fit in, to GET IT TOGETHER AND ACT RIGHT!!!!!!!!
Or is that just me. C'mon. Admit it. You feel that way, too - don't you? Sure, it takes all kinds to make a world, but, I would feel better if everybody acted right in the head in it, too.
Anyway, it struck me that by the end of the book, I had a certain respect for Moranna - just as she was. Which was an interesting transition for me to make. Certainly she had an adventurous life lived on her own terms. As I realized, who am I to talk about living right? Until very recently I lived my life according to the rules and was what any casual observer could see but I couldn't - depressed. When I threw out the rule book, voila! - I was happy. A little less liked for a while, shunned for a bit - but eventually - it all worked out. I know that because I found myself caring again about people I had been angry at for a long time.
Also, something that struck me in the book that I've also noticed about the Homeless people around me (I live in downtown Ottawa) was that Moranna worked really hard. Physically. She walks for miles in the book and survives by her wits (which are often a double handicap) and fairly hard labour. But because she is so difficult a person to deal with, people really don't care for her. And that's understandable to me. Crazy people are hard to be around, hard to put up with, because - they won't do what we want them to do - which is to act right.
Believe me - realizing that (and it took reading "An Audience of Chairs" to do it) was a real breakthrough for me. And I mean that in the sense that it's my problem if I have trouble dealing with how other people choose to live their lives. Just like it's Mayor Larry O'Brien's problem. Except that he's being paid to look out for ALL the citizens of Ottawa. I'm not. It's my duty to care, as a decent person, about Homeless people - but it's HIS duty to do right by them.
Or is it? Because talking about the Homeless in Ottawa led to a discussion about the latest, greatest issue in all of Canada's newspapers right now - the crack problem.
Now, when I first moved into my apartment building, it turned out, unbeknownst to me, that there was a crack dealer, newly arrived, on the first floor. It wasn't a nightmare, living in a building with a crack dealer on the first floor, but it was annoying. And a bit scary. Crack addicts, although skinny and jittery and generally pretty unhealthy, so not a big threat, physically, are desperate, too. So, it was a huge relief when he moved out, more or less of his own accord, although the police were watching him so that may have been what hurried up the exit - taking all his clients with him. Because, yeah - he was a normal enough guy and no real problem to deal with - but his clients were difficult and messed up.
As always at our book club meetings, one bit of discussion led to another and a couple of my fellow book clubbers said - flat out, and in majorly moralizing tones that these two simply do not use on any other subject, and which I doubt they even knew they had before crack came along - that they wouldn't give money to Homeless people anymore because they didn't want them buying crack with it - with THEIR money. And, they felt, that's exactly what they were doing - taking THEIR money (which they would never say is hard-earned - even though in both their cases - it is - it really and truly is - because they're not "like that" at all) and buying crack. Another one of our number even saw, first hand, a guy take her $5 and buy a rock from a guy leaning against a telephone pole just a few feet away.
To say they were mad about it - about what crack had made of giving money to Homeless people, I mean - would be an understatement. (And I'm being judgmental of them right now because I'm trying to be honest about my reaction at the time - which was judgmental. Whatever that says about me because as you will soon read - I was pretty much full o' shite, mesself.)
Now, I'm not playing Devil's Advocate, even, but I just can't help feeling that if I were a crack addict, I'd want you to give me $5 so I could get a hit. But, giving me $5 and expecting me to turn my life around would probably annoy me. In fact, I think I'd be pretty pissed off. And I think I'd be justified to feel that way. Look, give me money or don't, but if you give me money - don't tell me how to spend it. Because, here's the thing (and I didn't realize it then, I only realized it when I examined my own conflicted feelings about giving money to someone I know is going to buy crack with it), my fellow book clubbers don't want to give money to Homeless people now because - THEY DON'T FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT!
If it doesn't make you feel good to give money to a Homeless person - then why give?
Which was when I realized - "Oh yeah... that's why *I* give money, too! So *I* feel good!"
Oh dear, just when you think you're holier'n your fellow book clubbers.
So, tell me (and bear in mind, I'm not talking about anything spiritual, here - I'm talking strictly feel good territory in the here and now - I've even reduced, "there but for the grace of god go I" to "there go I") - is the real test of our humanity, giving the money and, knowing the person you've just given the money to is going to buy crack with it, walking away NOT feeling good about it?
Nevermind. It is. And all those do-gooders burbling on about helping others because it makes them feel good inside is just so much more bullshit and truth denial and mixing morality up with humanity.
Letting people live their lives in spite of ourselves is where it's at, if you ask me. Which. Thankfully. No one ever does.
