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.