Free Lunch

Buffalo is a very poor, segregated city with many homeless people. A lot of them flock to my neighborhood, which is in the wealthier, gentrified section of the city, and stand outside of the stores on Elmwood Ave (the main shopping area), begging. I encounter at least one or two every day, and I'm really torn on how to respond to them. Is it better to refuse the homeless person there before you in the flesh and donate to a charity or a shelter instead? I'm uncertain of that mentality, because it seems too abstract, even if it ultimately does more good than to give to an individual; that individual still matters, that person right before you, appealing to you for help. The endless obligation to the other, when confronted with the other face-to-face. The face-to-face matters, the reality and individuality of the other is far more demanding, and more difficult to respond to, than the abstract vision in the mind when donating to an institution. I feel really guilty when I refuse that, but I often do refuse. Most of the time, I apologize and say that I don't have any cash on me, which is true; I very seldom carry cash. This was the case yesterday; I was walking to the corner store to buy some oatmeal for breakfast, when I saw a woman leaning up against the side of the building. I've seen her multiple times before; mid to late 40s, heavy-set, disheveled hair, the same clothes every day, flagging down every person who walks by and asking for cash. She's not aggressive or threatening, like some of the other visible homeless who regularly frequent the area. I've given her cash before when I've had paper money on me. As I approached the entrance of the store, she asked me if I could spare any money; I only had my credit card on me, so I started apologizing as I thought of maybe asking for cash back when I purchased my oatmeal, when she asked if I could buy her food. I was a little surprised, because just a few days ago, Jarrod and I had talked about people begging on the street and how our responses are really constrained. Both of us wanted to buy something for the people-- food, a sweatshirt, something-- but didn't know how to offer it. The act of begging is inherently uncomfortable in the overt recognition of class differences, a stark demarcation of those with excess and those with nothing. There's instantly a tense dynamic between the beggar and the other, an accusation of being selfish if you refuse to give some of your excess, an accusation of being wealthy. Granted, as a grad student, I don't have much excess, but my very position as a grad student designates me as privileged.


I agreed; she asked me if I could buy her food and I said, sure and she followed me into the store, clearly surprised and pleased. The dynamics of this encounter weren't aggressive or threatening, but it was still strange. She disappeared into the aisles of the store as I went for my oatmeal, and for a minute, I thought she had gone back outside and was expecting me to choose her meal. Then I thought about it, and she was probably embarrassed by my acceptance, even though she was clearly happy that I had agreed to buy her a loaf of bread and sandwich meat. I was self-conscious myself, looking around for her, wondering if she was going to thrust the items into my hands and leave the store. I thought of the reversal of the physical discrepancies between the privileged and the poor in the 21st century; this woman easily outweighs me by 60 lbs, but heaviness no longer indicates wealth and the ability to feed oneself to excess. It's because she's forced to eat convenience store food, buying bags of Doritos and 99 cent donuts with the spare dollars she collects, while I walk another block to buy fresh produce at the local co-op. I rounded the corner and headed towards the check-out line and noticed her standing off to the side, holding a loaf of bread and a package of bologna. I made eye contact, and she placed her items on the counter before me. The cashier, a grim-faced older woman, asked me gruffly if I was paying for her things and I said yes. The homeless woman requested a separate bag, I paid, and headed for the door; she thanked me again and I just nodded and said no problem.


Did I handle this well? I obviously helped this woman; the loaf of bread and sandwich meat would probably make 10 sandwiches, so maybe she wouldn't have to stand outside and beg for the rest of the afternoon. I didn't look back to see where she went; she was still inside the store when I left, and I sort of didn't want to know what she did after. I had the impulse to disengage, to slip back into anonymity and have no one else confront me, recognize me, ask of me. I think I did something good, but am I obligated to do this every time I encounter a homeless person? Is it my personal responsibility to triple the cost of my order to buy food for others when I'm rationing that container of oatmeal so it lasts for the last month or so of the semester? I'm not sure if there's any good solution, if it's my responsibility to take on, but I also feel like I couldn't have refused. In total, it only cost about $10 for my food and hers, giving her $7 that she just didn't have, $7 that I could spare. Perhaps that's the difficulty of all of this-- what, exactly, can you spare?

Bring Out Your Dead! Camus' The Plague

I recently read Albert Camus' novel The Plague. To give a brief synopsis, the bubonic plague breaks out in a modern city in north Africa (presumably Camus' native Algeria), and the quarantined residents grapple with their fear of infection and death, separation from their loved ones, exile from the outside world, and questions of faith and science (or, faith in science).



Although a novel about a devastating epidemic is fitting for this season of swine flu, what struck me most was the theme of how love changes with different circumstances. For many of the residents trapped behind the barricades, their primary concern is reuniting with absent loved ones. They are so monomaniacal about this goal that the desire to find a way around the barricades soon outweighs their desire for the loved person. This happened to the character Rambert, a reporter from Paris who happened to be in the city at the time of the outbreak, depserate to get back to his wife in France. For weeks, he was consumed by his plans for escape and realized that, the entire time he was plotting out the details with two guards, he had not thought about his wife at all. This distressed him somewhat and caused him to reflect. And then he decided that there was something more important than love within the walls of the city; he had a responsibility to fight the plague, to give his all to combat the disease and help its victims. The happiness of reuniting with his wife would be forever tarnished by the shame of abandoning the people he could have saved.



While reading this book, I was struck by how many obstacles threaten to render love impossible, or to change it irrevocably. Another character, the one I found the most tragic of all, was an old man, Grand. He reveals to the protagonist, Dr. Rieux, that he had married when he was just a teenager, but because he was poor and couldn't manage to advance in rank in his profession, he neglected his wife. Although he loved her very much, and even loves her now all these years later, he was too preoccupied with the dire state of his finances to show her that he loved her. To even tell her that. It soon became something that he couldn't find the words to say because it had gone unsaid for too long. She left him; he tells Rieux that no passion can withstand the strain of poverty.



Dr. Rieux cannot say "I love you" to his elderly mother, nor can she say it to him; Dr. Rieux explains that his sentiments cannot live up to the lofty phrase. They can only express their affection and care for each other in actions, or indirect phrases like, "how are you feeling?"



Illness, finances, the stresses and obligations of daily life all pose a threat to the delicate existence and expression of love. Even when Rambert is finally reunited with his wife in the end, he feels distant from her, as though she can never regain that central position in his life now that he has chosen the plague over her. In this novel, love is such a fragile and fleeting state, and it's essentially not the driving force behind our relationships. Rather, a fear of death, a need for human warmth and companionship in the face of the plague, defines relationships and incites people to seek out the company of others.



I don't think that I agree with Camus on that, but I do think it's worth contemplating the fragility of love, and how words fit into the experience of love. Would Grand's marriage have lasted if he could have found his words, or was it doomed from the start? Is Rieux right in saying that the sentiment of love can never live up to the word assigned to describe it?