{"id":6835,"date":"2021-03-15T07:29:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=6835"},"modified":"2021-03-15T07:29:26","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T14:29:26","slug":"an-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/an-encounter\/","title":{"rendered":"An Encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I was bicycling leisurely through a neighborhood famed for its parks, wildlife and strip club that serves incredible steaks. The sun shined and everywhere people were walking, running, skating, riding, playing Frisbee, football, soccer and even a pickup basketball game featuring mostly transients. How did I know they were transients? There was that look I’ve seen so much of lately, and well, the court was situated mere yards from a row of zombie RVs and other vehicles obviously used as transient or not so transient housing. It stirred my heart a bit to think these men still wanted to shoot hoops on a beautiful day in a partially dystopian city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One domicile, if domicile is the word, arrested my attention. It was a large tent covered by a tarp and surrounded by a fence of new pallets decorated with interwoven tree branches. Someone had spent considerable time on the decoration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was thinking about that, when a gaunt young man wearing a white tank t-shirt emerged from his battered sedan and said, sort of looking at me, kind of snarling and smiling at the same time, \u201cThere’s nothing to fucking see here, move along, mind your own fucking business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a whiff of derangement to his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He moved off in a new aimless direction after confirming every negative stereotype about homeless people in the city after the decorated pallet fence had undone a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t say anything, just kept bicycling, but his words made me think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is my business to observe such things as the decorated pallet fence and the zombie RVs and wonder how it has come to this the last 10-15 years in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I returned home, I told my dad the story and he advised me to avoid that area when bicycling around. \u201cI don’t want you getting shivved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We argued somewhat about that. I was taught by my parents and others and by myself that people are not invisible. I will see them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will certainly not avoid this area. I will keep observing, thinking, writing and trying to look past the stereotypes and see the contours. There’s not enough of that going around.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was bicycling leisurely through a neighborhood famed for its parks, wildlife and strip club that serves incredible steaks. The sun shined and everywhere people were walking, running, skating, riding, playing Frisbee, football, soccer and even a pickup basketball game featuring mostly transients. How did I know they were transients? There was that look I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6835"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6838,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6835\/revisions\/6838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}