GUY ON HOMELESS SPACE - 1

AND THE BUBBLE BURSTS

Home foreclosure right now is a wave sweeping the country and globe. And like a wave curling over and crashing on the beach in great slow-motion, the nose-diving economy and resulting wave of foreclosures is encircling the space of the American home-space and smashing it into millions of small floating bubbles of wandering, homeless space.

What forms does this homeless space take? When we think of the homeless, mostly we think of people living on the street, or in the park, or in the wild. But the national or global phenomenon of mass foreclosure today reminds us that, like after Hurricane Katrina, people can be homeless who are actually living in a home. In relatives’, friends’, or foster homes, or even government-supplied temporary homes, they can be said to be living in varying degrees of homelessness.

At least at first. People are made homeless by an event, like foreclosure, that takes them out of the warm, comforting, well-worn space they call their home, without them having a new home-space to move into. You can imagine this being the first degree of homelessness: Moving into a family member’s house after foreclosure. There could be further degrees, like government housing or homeless shelters, leading eventually to the final level of homelessness—where a person actually is on the street.

But we build our homes around us. They don’t require physical walls, fireplaces, stoves, or washing machines. They require no more than warmth, comfort, and familiarity. And this can be found, in time, by the lowliest beggar poorly clothed and wandering.

Time is the key. For eventually, it is human nature to find familiarity in one’s surroundings: even if you wander from town to town aimlessly, this constant change in your surroundings becomes, in time, familiar. And with familiarity comes comfort, and with comfort, warmth.

Economist have a measure called the “velocity” of money. It is roughly a measure of how frequently the same money changes hands, allowing more people to benefit from it. What foreclosure does is increase the velocity of space in one dimension, by moving people’s home-space into homeless space—the wave crashing down. But that is not the end of the story. Eventually, even those totally bereft find home-space wherever they are.

And in that sense, home-space and homeless space are one.

MAX ON HOMELESS SPACE

BREAKING & ENTERING

When we see homeless people we often see them on the same plot of land that we always do. It’s a spot that is either secluded so that they can hide from the world or it’s spot right in the middle of the hustle and bustle where we can see them. These places that they happen to live on become their homes, so if we are constantly walking by them, are we breaking and entering?

I’m so always considering what the other person feels and when it comes to homeless people and their space, sometimes I just feel bad. It’s bad enough being homeless as it is, but being homeless in New York City must be horrible. There is no place to hide, no privacy. There is this one guy who lives in the entry to the subway on 86th and Lexington and I see him every day. And every SINGLE day, I see people staring at him and I just wonder, “What the hell are those people thinking about?” then I wonder, “What is this poor man thinking?”

Even though at times we feel like homeless people invade our space, have we ever thought about how it’s possible that we could invade theirs? Sure, we could be walking along, busy yelling on our blackberry’s about god knows what and feel alienated when a hand pops out asking for change. But what about that guy who is asking for change? For some reason, life has thrown him curves that have led him to this point, sitting on a box begging for pennies that people won’t even give. His 4 by 4 box, his home, that we’re constantly running by and not even respecting because we feel like he made decisions that got him to this point. We are always looking out the windows of our apartments or houses or cars envisioning something, like a better life. Where as our homeless friend sits on his box, constantly looking up at the windows above wishing he was there. And when he asks for some spare change that we have, we close our windows to our souls and keep him from breaking and entering.

[Originally from LA, Max E Kestenbaum now lives, studies, writes and clubs in New York City]

LORRAINE ON HOMELESS SPACE

LOCATION. LOCATION. LOCATION.

Around the corner from where I live, a camper has been parked in the same spot since 1964. Every Tuesday at noon, the street cleaners commandeer that side of the street and I have witnessed the camper on the corner poised to swoop back in and reclaim its turf the minute the sweepers pass by.

I often wonder how the homeless decide on which space to make their own. From a tent pitched on a central divide to six feet of sidewalk between a set of potted plants to a particular patch of parking lot – and not in the private corner that one might think. Often the location seems random, as if suddenly the person got too tuckered to continue, such as the two bodies in sleeping bags stretched head to toe along the curb by a row of parked cars. Then days later there they are - the same two sleeping bags – suggesting that indeed a choice was made.

It’s been reported that up to 5,000 people live in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and over the years various city regimes have attempted to oust them. One wet winter I watched the bulldozers shove mud from A to B and then back again in the name of landscaping. The problem was that the chicken wire blocked access to the park for all citizens, not just those in search of a lawn to pass out on. As soon as the park reopened, the homeless were back in droves. I didn’t blame them. Camping in the urban jungle seems more appealing than the cement jungle. Besides, the location had a 24-hour supermarket, Laundromat, McDonalds and a French coin-operated toilet in its favor. Location, location, location.

Which brings me back to the question.

I have spoken briefly with the gentleman who resides in the camper. James is a gentle-spoken African American as eloquent as an English professor. Perhaps he chose the spot for its proximity to the library. I imagine he has lots of friends on the street who invite him in for dinner, pass on a barely-worn coat, maybe even have him baby-sit. I do know that his block is the only one in the neighborhood that doesn’t have two-hour resident parking, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to park there, which gives me reason to believe that at some point someone made a decision to let him have his space.

[Lorraine Flett is also the author of Sassy & Single in San Francisco]

ADAM ON HOMELESS SPACE

GOING HOMELESS. GOING MOBILE.

In a city that’s crazy about cars, it seems only fitting that people who are often thought of as “crazy in the head” should make their car their home. I’m referring to those Angelenos who are said to be, “living out their cars”. They are the homeless with a set of wheels. In a sad and ironic sense, they combine the American love affair of the car and the open road, with the American dream of homeownership. It’s a curious space, where many of the shining values and norms driven by our society crash head-on into the darker side of our collective fears and failures.

The other day, while driving during the evening rush hour on a jam-packed east-west LA artery, I came to a red light and noticed a car up ahead struggling to make a left into the parking lot of a bank. This can be a tricky maneuver even for the most accomplished drivers in LA. The fact that no oncoming car was going to yield wasn’t what caught my eye. After all, during gridlock, space becomes a premium for LA drivers – even if that space is just a few inches. And of course, going to the bank is still common practice even in the age of online banking. What made me get out of my own space (the comfort zone of my own car), put the brakes on my normal behind-the-wheel brain and take notice, was a set of unsettling signs indicating that the car (now just off to my side) was a rolling wreck with a lost soul inside.

Unlike a shopping cart, which is easy to identify as a homeless person’s home on wheels, a car is far less recognizable as someone’s “home-sweet-home”. Everything is concealed inside the cabin, as opposed to being out in the open. That said, if CAR & DRIVER magazine were to do a feature story on such an auto, it would be a late model Buick or Pontiac riding on balding and under-inflated tires. The enigmatic car would have a faded paint job with an array of bumps and bruises. Its pitted body would be hovering just a few inches off the ground, its engine able to generate only enough power to always travel well below the speed limit, and its tail pipe would constantly be spewing a cloud of noxious exhaust. But the most important feature would be its semi-opaque windows consisting of a layer of caked-on dust, dirt and grime. In effect, creating the poor man’s version of the rich man’s tinted windows.

As a result, it’s nearly impossible to tell who’s behind the wheel. Is that a woman or a man? Are they young, middle-aged or senior citizen? Nor is it easy to make out exactly what’s piled high throughout the cabin. Are those old newspapers and magazines, or a decade worth of dirty laundry? Is that a cat, a dog, or a bird sitting in the back window? Or just a stuffed animal? Or a pillow that looks like a stuffed animal? Perhaps all those seemingly soft and plush items tightly packed together are part of makeshift airbag safety system, providing a life-saving cushion during a collision. Whatever is in there (and there’s always plenty of it), surely has taken years to amass. And isn’t likely to be brought out any time soon.

After inching my way forward at the remarkable speed of about 2 miles an hour, I looked through my rearview mirror and saw that the homeless mobile home had finally turned into the bank’s parking lot. Of all the things that flashed through my mind at that instant, a torrent of unanswerable questions and profound uncertainties, the one thought that parked in my brain was both banal and bold.

I envisioned this person pulling their mobile homeless home in front of the convenient drive-up ATM. And then depositing all their misfortunes into it with the touch of a button.

RO ON HOMELESS SPACE

HOME TRUTHS

Guy observes that the general tendency is to conflate space with its container.

So what happens in the absence of a traditional container of living space, known to most of us as “home”?

It’s an absence that’s particularly noticed – and noted with vehement indignation by media – when bitterly cold arctic air descends upon Winter’s days to clutch them in a relentless grip. “Homeless evictee found frozen to death on park bench” screams a headline or two, usually in a sprawling urban landscape which – ironically – is most densely expressive of dwelling spaces, some with multimillion-dollar containers.

Expelled from the private spaces of real estate, the homeless have little choice but to spill into public spaces. But even within such public spaces is a need to form containers of semi-private spaces: The grocery cart. The church steps. The park bench. The promenade. The tunnel. The pipeline. The phone booth. Spaces, which – ironically – also symbolize plenitude and prosperity, pleasure and progress. These, however, are spaces that townships and their governances stake their claims upon, prohibiting the homeless from finding any recourse whatsoever in this form of shelter.

Homelessness is a strange space. Perhaps because it has few or no borders, it pervades into several other spaces.

Visual Space being one such. Your eyes can’t miss the San Francisco Santa on Battery who sells Christmas cards every November. Or the human “fixture” on the doorway of the church on 85th & Madison’. Or the unkempt itinerant who lies covered in rags on Tokyo’s otherwise immaculate streets, creating dissonance on the eye. Or the cardboard sign on Berkeley’s Telegraph Street: “WHY LIE? I NEED A BEER.” In its charming, persuasive honesty, that’s Creative Space as well.

Which draws us by the hand into Advertising Space. In Toronto, a “creative” media buy by a radio station chooses a placard held by the homeless himself, to ignite a moral debate on so many levels: “SHOULD PANHANDLING BE LEGAL?”?

What, then, of Auditory Space? The “God bless you” or the four-letter sentiment doled out depending on the proportion of generosity one responds with.

How about Tactual Space – particularly in emerging nations – when the fervent appealer nudges, jabs, and prods, so as to penetrate a wall of deadened emotions?

What of instances when the transient, lacking the means for personal grooming, impacts on the surrounding Olfactory Space with an intensity that is almost tangible?

Consider the implications that the loss of Domestic Space could have on Private Space and Emotional Space. On the spaces surrounding comfort, self-respect, even identity.

For a space so devoid of possession, its explorations are ironically rich.

MAX ON RUPTURED SPACE

"IMAX" BY I, MAX

Space. Something easily ruptured. Like in an elevator when it’s crammed and a baby is crying hysterically. Or a subway cart when it’s packed and stinky people are singing, dancing, or murmuring in the seat right next to you. Not cool. Not fun. Or it could be in a movie theater – a place that is supposed to be peaceful and stress-free.

Over the summer, my friend invited me to go see Pineapple Express. The movie is about these stoners who go on an adventure because they are really paranoid (I wonder why). With every stoner movie comes your usual stoner moviegoers who don’t laugh because they understand the jokes…they laugh because they are too high to know what’s going on.

I had my huge popcorn and my huge drink. I was in my comfortable seat, ready to laugh and enjoy my two hours away from reality when all of the sudden I hear, “Transformers. SCOOBY-DOO!” In New York, you develop a sense for danger and possible threats. You know when something is wrong or is going to be wrong and you know to avoid it. But in a movie theater, you can’t go anywhere. After I heard those two words, all I thought was, “Fuck.”

The high person kept on shouting, “Transformers. SCOOBY-DOO!” His high friends kept laughing. Stress filled the room. I saw heads keep turning back, shooting nasty glares at the noisy assailants. I looked at my friend to my right. He’s slowing being driven to insanity. I could see him unraveling. I looked at the gentle man to my left. He had his hands over his ears and a constipated look on his face. He’s not happy. All I could concentrate on were the loud noises that were preventing me from enjoying my movie. Now I’m angry. I’m zoned in on the noises. My heart was pounding. My anger was rising. I snapped. I jumped up out of my chair, turned around, grabbed my huge drink and yelled, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” And I rifled my drink at the loud guy’s head. Crack. Direct hit. Silence. The kids are quiet. All eyes in the theater were on me. Now, I was that guy who ruined the movie.

What happened was a transfer of ruptured space. From my patience being pushed to the limits, I exploded and turned in to the bad guy. But who is to blame? Is it the high people’s fault for rupturing everyone’s space for a prolonged period of time? Or is it my fault for throwing a drink and rupturing their space taking the focus off of them and putting it on to me?

All good questions… all will be answered in time.

[This piece is a contribution by Max E Kestenbaum, 22, who studies Marketing & Advertising, and is one of the most personable people I have ever met]

JOSE BACA ON RUPTURED SPACE

“CONTROLLED RUPTURE”

In combat sports, in boxing, MMA – which uses boxing techniques, jiujutsu, kickboxing, wrestling, even old-fashioned street fighting – one thinks of fists, knees, feet, face, nose, eyes, physical body parts, being ruptured.

But it’s really about Space being ruptured. It’s about how space is used to advantage, given it can be your best friend or your bitterest foe. Let’s see how it plays out in boxing, in the legendary fight between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito.

So, Cotto was staying on the outside while using his jab, the perfect way to set it all up. Margarito, on the other hand, likes to fight close, on the inside. During the first 7 rounds, Cotto was winning the fight flawlessly, using space to his advantage. As the fight wore on, Cotto started to tire. In the last four rounds or so, Margarito started to walk him down, cutting off the ring and closing the space that favored him. Margarito started swarming him, intimidating him, pushing him against the ropes. On the 11th round, Margarito completely closed off the space. Guess what happened. Cotto succumbed to the punishment and was forced down to take a knee. The referee wiped off the gloves, Cotto got up. Then, Margarito again began to close off the space as fast as possible, didn’t let him move. Cotto was ended up taking another knee, and his corner was forced to throw in the white towel.

Another way to use Space is to literally guard one’s personal space very, very closely. A classic case in point is Mohammad Ali’s “rope-a-dope” strategy, where he lay on the ropes while protecting his head and face with his fists. George Foreman, one of the top punchers of all time, began to throw blow after blow out on his body. But Ali just let him, all the while, defending his head. By the 5th round, Foreman got exhausted from all the punches he threw at Ali to no avail, because he couldn’t land punches to his head. As the fight wore on, Foreman got completely wiped out, and was eventually knocked out. In this case, Ali basically used his own personal space to counter-attack.

Contrary to how it’s viewed, the space within this arena is actually quite civilized. There’s an unspoken (if very strong) code of ethics, etiquette, respect. You have to respect that person, because they are about to take on as much punishment as you are. At the end of every fight, combatants actually hug each other, congratulate each other, and hang out as close buddies. It’s not about wreaking anger, it's not emotional. It’s about the sport, the art, the pure craft, the professionalism, the competition. It’s about bringing out all your childhood fantasies and turning them into a career – in a very mature, adult way.

Ultimately, it’s the individual’s choice, he decides how much of his space can be ruptured.

So if you think about it, it’s really it’s a space of “controlled rupture”.

[Jose Baca is an ardent fan of boxing and MMA; being a thinker and an avid boxer himself, he offers a first-hand insight into this world of ruptured space.]

DAVID SLAPE ON RUPTURED SPACE

RUPTURED SPACE AND "FREE WILL"...

For me one of the most profound and disastrous ways in which one can experience ruptured space is when the fabric of one's mind rips or tears. I mean this in two senses. The first is physical…

Glial cells make up about 80-90% of the brain - the rest of the brain is made up of neurons. There are several kinds of glial cells. Astrocytes help clear neurotransmitter from the synapse, without them your neurons would overheat and die from over stimulation. Oligodendrocytes wrap around neural axons and allow electric signals to pass between cells at astonishing speeds. Glial cells can reproduce and be replaced, neurons largely cannot. It’s good that glial cells can replenish themselves except in rare case where they divide mitotically in an uncontrolled fashion. They can form what is known as a space-occupying lesion, the worst type is a glioblastoma, the most aggressive of all brain tumors. It pushes everything adjacent to it out of place, placing pressure on other areas of the brain; it ruptures the precarious composition of everything in the intracranial space.

The other kind of ruptured space I think of most is the psychotic break. These profuse disconnects from reality remind me of how tenuous sanity is. We take it for granted that our mind will always be ours, that our thoughts are our own. But what must it feel like when you start hearing other people’s voices in your head? What must it be like to be so tortured by stress and fear that eventually the mind shuts down, when the space your reality exists in, ruptures beyond repair.

And on that note, one parting thought about who controls your brain. Neurophysicists have recently discovered that most motor signals which precipitate physical movement, actually manifest and are sent several milliseconds before we actually “make the choice” to move.

Kind of makes you wonder about the whole free will thing.

[My friend David Slape, originally from Adelaide, is Psychologist by Day & Bartender by Night. A teetotaler who has perfected – and invented – the Art of the Cocktail at such places of repute as The Slanted Door in San Francisco, Gramercy Tavern, Del Posto, and PDT in New York. David currently studies Psychology at Columbia.]

GUY ON RUPTURED SPACE

BREAKING PERFECTION

Rupture brings greater joy to the impact of space on the mind. When I first got iTunes, I maniacally rated all the songs I added. After a while, I learned how to create a playlist of only five-star songs, and with (by that time) about a thousand songs saved, I was able to listen to a mix of all my truly favorite songs.

The result was boredom. I figured that interest and entertainment required variety, so the large number of songs in the mix should have made for joyful listening. I rarely heard the same song twice in a day, or twice in two days. But excellence and variety were not enough to please.

I returned to the radio for a time, now thinking that it was newness that was lacking. (Do you see how the mind resists rupture? More on that in a bit.) Radio programming surprises more or less by definition, because you didn’t do the programming yourself; even if all you hear are songs you know—and it’s remarkable how many songs, seemingly an unlimited number if the genre is familiar, your mind remembers—you can’t know what song is next. So radio entertains each moment another song begins playing, even if it’s a song you don’t like, just by presenting you with something unpredicted.

But that wasn’t it.

Finally my misunderstanding hit me: what I wasn’t recognizing about radio was the value of the songs I don’t like. I realized that the relentless awesomeness of five-star songs one after the other was giving me no break, putting fast asleep the pleasure centers of my brain. I tried a different mix that included songs that are not my favorites and songs I don’t like. Et voilà! my mix made me happy again. Adding Holes to the content created a more excellent Whole.

This is an example of compensatory perception creating benefit through negativity. In the discipline of space, it translates as rupture of space creating pleasing sensation via reaction of the senses to violent imperfection. This principle tells us that we lead the viewer to an ultimately more pleased reaction by smashing through the main subject giving pleasure. In space terms, breaks in the perfection of emptiness give us greater joy in contemplation of it.

But it is natural and useful for us to resist rupture as strongly as we do. Because perfection is still best. The kind of breakage and violence described here is a human tool for creating satisfaction out of human flaw. Experiencing a work such as the Taj Mahal, though, is quite the opposite of an experience of ruptured space. Its space is ideal, ideally measured, ideally scaled.

Still, we are not all Lahauri, nor was Lahauri likely a creator of ideal space more than once in his life. Though we always instinctively strive for the ideal in our work, we may want to give ourselves our own breaks from time to time, and create pleasurable spaces with interruption instead of only with perfection.

RO ON RUPTURED SPACE – 5

THE GIFT OF RUPTURE

A news clip caught my eye this morning while I was sipping my coffee. Headline read, "Boy's wrapped birthday gift is dad back from Iraq". The picture of the gift box had a giant gash in the center, through which you could see the dad – who’d hatched a plan to hide out in this 4-foot-tall box when he learnt that his leave would coincide with his son's birthday.

And I thought, tearing apart the wrapping of a present is also a rupture of space. It's an oxymoron, because it's an act of rupture that bonds humans, using physical form to express an exchange of emotions.

Set in the backdrop of the Rupture of Political Relations manifest in the Rupture of War, with the Rupture of Separation, what must the rupture of this gift-wrapping have felt like?