The New Living Room...

The other day was interesting. After calling the police at 2:30am to report a homeless man sleeping on my building's lawn, I spent several hours riding my bike around North Portland looking for free stuff on people's curbs. Then, at 6:30am, I asked another homeless man if I could trade him a pair of boots in exchange for the blanket he was carrying. And when he didn't want the boots, I bought the blanket from him for a dollar.

If you've seen the pictures in my sorcerer blog, then you already know that the blanket is only one step in an ongoing project. I've spent most of my adult life crammed into small rooms owned by people who didn't have to work because of the rent they were getting paid, so I've learned to limit the number of my possessions, to spend as little money on myself as possible, and to always be able to leave things behind when the inevitable rent increase means it's time to move (again). Thus, for the first few years of tenancy in my current apartment, the only things that passed for decoration outside my small bedroom were a few stacks of firewood and the crazy-looking notes I made while writing my first novel. It never occurred to me to look for furniture, because I never imagined I'd be here so long, which is why I was especially excited to find an abandoned coffee table on the sidewalk just a few blocks away.

Years later, the abandoned coffee table was followed by an abandoned couch, a fake fish, and, apart from an abandoned dining chair, that fish, couch, and coffee table were the only pieces of real furniture that I had. Until one day, when I found an abandoned throw pillow...

The pillow was indigo, the couch was green, and, because rainbows are important to me, I've long been aware of the fact that they're made of seven colors. So I thought it'd be funny to complete a "rainbow of comfort" by finding purple, cyan, yellow, orange, and red pillows. I therefore kept my eyes open, eventually finding a pillow that was definitely yellow, then one more that was arguably cyan (when one is desperate for cyan)...

But the arguably cyan pillow wasn't alone. It was a companion pillow for an abandoned lounge chair...

The years spent in my apartment have been spent bereft of companionship. But I've been wanting to change that, so I went into my building's basement and dug out an old abandoned hand truck, determined to provide a comfortable chair for a guest (or for me in the event of a guest preferring my couch)...

Again, the abandoned chair was only a few blocks away, and since carrying its companion pillow that distance was easy, using a hand truck to wheel it across that same distance seemed like it'd be easy enough. Until it came time to actually get it done, and the actual distance involved seemed suddenly impossible...

But the chair was still there when I went back for it...

The journey involved sweat, but once the chair was loaded onto the hand truck, it was surprisingly easy to wheel from one block to another (and another, and another). I'm sure I looked more than a little goofy doing it, but since it was getting done in the wee hours of the morning, the only opinions I had to worry about were those of the neighborhood cats. Here's one that actually came out of its yard to gawk until it shied away when I decided to stop and take its picture...

Since my pockets were sweaty, my camera lens was all fogged up at the time, but I wiped it clean when I got the chair home. Then I took the following picture, showing that the chair's previous owner had tried using packaging tape to repair a cracked leg...

And this picture shows that I prefer sections of birch wood...

It smelled like cat piss and a double-dunked dose of Febreze, but I liked my new chair...

So I blasted it with baking soda, and once the smell began to fade, I thought it made a lovely addition to the whole living room area...

But it was insanely comfortable, and I especially liked sitting in it to see my living room from a different perspective. I also thought it was more green than cyan, so I decided to keep an eye out for more options. ...

That meant looking for an additional chair, and one night, again at around 2:30am, I found the perfect option in an alley that was roughly umpteen blocks away...

It was covered in dog hair (and smelled like it), but I loved the color and the shape. So, since it was too big to fit into my backpack, and since I didn't feel comfortable transporting it via hand truck, I tied the cushions to my pack and walked the umpteen blocks with the chair balanced on my head. Then I found a pink pillow in front of a house on Albina, another arguably cyan pillow somewhere between Rosa Parks and Stafford, a red pillow stuffed inside the original arguably cyan pillow, a purple pillow on top of a garbage bin behind the Fred Meyer in Arbor Lodge, an orange pillow (for $7.99) at the Goodwill on Lombard, and an arguably rainbow-colored pillow somewhere west of the park in Kenton...

And that's when I started really collecting, finding a white pillow behind the Radio Room in the Alberta Arts District, a ukulele on Delaware, an accordion in the same box as the ukulele, a gray stability ball (thanks to Craigslist) on Commercial, an indigo stability ball in Kenton, a purple stability ball somewhere on Blandena, and a definitely rainbow-colored carpet in front of a house in the Piedmont neighborhood...

And if you think hauling all that stuff around was easy, try riding between Piedmont and Boise with a light strapped to your bike like a pedal-powered Sir Lamps-A-Lot...

But the Piedmont house put out a great painting a few days later, and then I hung a pair of paintings that I found somewhere else in Alberta, followed by another painting that I found somewhere near the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church on Williams, and then I found an orange telescopic demarcation pole that I used in conjunction with an aluminum clamp light to balance out the floor lamp from Boise...

And I found a black desk with purple drawers, a rubber chicken, and some other stuff...

But, for some reason, the couch still seemed incomplete. Which brings me to the homeless man that I found sleeping on my building's lawn.

During my nighttime/early morning excursions, I'm somehow always surprised to come across homeless people sleeping in free piles on curbs, because they somehow always manage to blend in with the piled-up stuff and/or garbage. And that's what I thought I was looking at when I peeked out my window, just another free pile (in fact, I was actually excited to be looking at a pile that I didn't have to bike all over town to find). But when I went outside to see what was in it, the homeless man that it turned out to be stirred, and that made me angry.

I was angry because of the bold disregard for common sense and courtesy that results from a town being governed by its collective guilty conscience rather than its civic pride.

What do I mean?

I mean, it doesn't make sense to go to sleep on a stranger's lawn anymore than it does to do so in a business' doorway. In either case it's illegal, and if even that particular kind of trespass has been decriminalized in progressive Portland's oasis of self-reproach, it's definitely discourteous.

Take a look at the following pictures...

The picture on the left shows a small pile of junk, surrounded by garbage, next to a bike parked in front of a restaurant that was established by three extraordinary ladies in the Overlook neighborhood. And the picture on the right shows the bike's owner.

I could hear him snoring while I took the picture, so he wasn't dead, but he was sleeping, having haphazardly strewn his belongings, garbage, and self across the sidewalk in front of what was once the neighborhood's best hangout.

I write once because that restaurant recently closed its doors permanently, the official reason given being that the owners decided not to renew their lease on the space. But FYI, the business that used to be next door to them has also closed permanently, and every time I ride by both locations, each is surrounded by homeless people, drug addicts, camps, and garbage. So try putting yourself in the shoes of the businesswomen who had to start their working day (possibly every day) by having to just deal with it when they were forced to ask some sleeping urchin to move along, knowing that that person might wake up hungover, still drunk, stoned, or just plain crazy.

Would you want to deal with it outside your place of business first thing in the morning?

How about this person, sleeping under this blanket...

Or this...

Or this person, sleeping bottomless in the doorway of a tattoo parlor...

I wouldn't. And I didn't want to deal with the homeless man on my front lawn anymore than I wanted him to see me leaving my apartment unoccupied and vulnerable at 2:30am. So I called the police, hoping that they'd deal with it, knowing that I'd be stuck in my apartment until they did, which they did, too many minutes later.

Then, hoping to spend the rest of the morning focused on something other than anger, I rode out to look for brightly colored objects that might lighten my mood. And experience has taught me that the Alberta Arts District is a great place to find brightly colored objects of all kinds...

Along the way, I found a few great photo opportunities, a metal desktop mail organizer, and a pair of gloves. But the thing that really caught my eye was a magnificently rainbow-colored blanket wrapped around a lump of something that was probably a homeless man sleeping in the doorway of yet another vacant business on the corner of Alberta and MLK.

I should've taken a picture, but I didn't want to get too close at night, and I wasn't thinking of a future in which the blanket would be mine. So I kept riding until, just after sunrise, I found a great pair of boots in a "free box" in front of a house on Going...

The organizer, gloves, and boots were alright, but they weren't exactly colorful. So, not wanting to return home without something that was, I returned to the corner of Alberta and MLK.

Because I see abandoned blankets haphazardly strewn across street corners all over town, I know how easy they are to find, and I therefore know how valuable they are to the homeless people who do the strewing. So my hope was that if the sunrise had already woken the homeless man sleeping beneath the rainbow-colored blanket, then he would've already abandoned it. But when I arrived, he was only just beginning to rouse, which meant my best course of action was to pedal down the street to a spot where I could watch and wait.

The spot I found also had a view of a popular fitness studio, in which a group of well-toned men and women were in the midst of exercising with red and black medicine balls. And it was the group's loud, synchronous bouncing of those balls that finally encouraged the homeless man to get up, collect himself, and, much to my disappointment, start trundling toward the nearest bus stop with the rainbow-colored blanket slung over his shoulder... but I really, really wanted that blanket.

My frame of mind could best be likened to that of someone playing sports, i.e., adrenaline pumping, surrounded by chaos and variables, I spotted an opening and went for it, pedaling my bike towards the homeless man fast with no specific plan of action other than to achieve my goal.

A pretty red-headed woman was waiting at the stop, and, smiling at me as I approached, she was obviously caught off guard when my eyes made contact with the homeless man's as I shouted an adrenaline-fueled "Good morning!"

And the homeless man was obviously caught off guard when my bike came to a screeching halt in front of him, because his eyes instantly broke contact with mine, staring at the sidewalk in an attempt to remove himself from the situation as I asked, "Would you be willing to trade that blanket in exchange for a pair of boots?"

"What kind of boots?"

"I'll show you-" and, without getting off my bike, I unzipped my backpack to show him one of two, plain-brown, waterproof, Timberland-brand boots.

Shaking his head from side to side, the homeless man asked, "You got a couple of dollars?"

Before answering, I looked down at the homeless man's feet, which were only covered by a pair of sun-faded orange, not-waterproof sneakers that were each missing their laces, "Uh, yeah. I could give you a dollar for it."

And the homeless man nodded, "OK."

So I clarified, "The boots and the dollar?"

Again, shaking his head, "No. Just the dollar."

"OK."

And I enthusiastically whipped out my money clip (which is actually just a cheap metal binder clip that I stole from the supply closet at an old job) and handed him the sweat-covered bill.

He handed me the blanket, which I quickly folded into eighths and then curled up into a football-sized roll. But before stuffing the roll into my backpack, I looked once more at the homeless man's shoes and had to ask, "Are you sure you don't want the boots?"

"No. Thanks."

"Well, I'll tell you what. I'm not sure if I can fit the boots and blanket into my backpack. So I'm probably going to leave the boots there-" indicating the bus stop's concrete garbage bin, "by that bin." After which, the homeless man somehow ceased to exist while I dismounted my bike, removed both boots from my pack, reorganized, and then, having decided that I could fit everything in, stuffed the boots back in (on top of the blanket, followed by the gloves and organizer), got back on my bike, and rode away just as fast as I'd approached.

And the first thing I did when I made it home was to wash the blanket, when, as usual, the clogged pipe that my building's washer is supposed to drain into flooded...

But the dryer works, and when the blanket finally came out, it made a clean and pristine addition to my museum of rescued objects...

Since then, I've found a few more interesting items, including a set of handmade ceramic bowls, a pair of ruby slippers, colorful balls of yarn, and some other stuff...

The blanket continues to be a favorite, and if you've read this blog's previous entry, then you're well aware of how important it is to me to find two more floor lamps (in order to complete a light-bulb rainbow). But, amidst all my new stuff, there's one item in the room that's more important than any other...

It's one of only a few objects on the mantle that weren't found...

The original draft of my very first picture book, A Tale Of Two Beggars...

I jazzed up the cover when I self-published the book on Amazon, though one of the story's many simple messages remains the same...

STUFF ISN'T IMPORTANT; COMMUNITY IS.

Remember the picture of a person sleeping bottomless in the doorway of a tattoo parlor? One way or another, that's someone who's spent way too much time alone and in his own head. I don't know if I've seen him anywhere else around town; I only know that I've seen too many people just like him and that, while digging through Portland's free piles and boxes, I've seen firsthand the disrespect with which those people treat the colorful treasures that more community-minded people leave out.

The furniture and other treasures I've picked up were all collected during the last few weeks of summer. But winter's coming, and again, in reference to the homeless man who sold me the blanket, I thought that the waterproof boots were of much greater long-term value than the dollar.

Granted, it's tough to look forward when you're convinced that you have nothing to look forward to; nevertheless, I knew that that magnificent blanket was fated to be abandoned by him somewhere, and that the Portlander who put it on the curb for him to find in the first place did so because it was special enough to them to have hoped it'd find a home outside of a landfill.

So my book isn't on the mantle for any reason related to vanity. It's there as a reminder that although I haven't earned the gifts in my living room (being neither a professional artist nor author and having never worked any other job that'd pay me enough to afford them), they're only mine in the sense that I did the work necessary to haul them into my apartment. And that their only value to me is being able to offer someone a special seat in a relaxed and open environment.

And that special someone's company will be priceless.