I talk to BJ at the street homeless centre in Lancaster. He is a head taller than me, a beard that’s a huge thicket, eyes that hide in his face. As we talk he starts to test, to gauge if he can trust me a little — am I pitying him, do I disapprove of his drugs, of “scroungers”, of how he lives. We talk about judgement, talk about punishment and the destruction of the self by the self. All the things that he knows a great deal about.
He tells me right now his home is a gravestone.
“But the good thing is… You see the stars. See them properly.”
I noticed as we’re talking that quite often he jumps to “the good thing”. It’s a kind of wisdom poetry, I suppose. I describe the project and he agrees to help; he also suggests that I try working with sound as well as the written word, so that people with literacy issues (about 45% of people affected by homelessness) can access the work.
Later as I’m walking back up the hill to my house in rural darkness, I glance upward into a misty, black down of night sky. But these are only brief glimpses and glimmers; When I get to my house my eyes are dazzled by the brightness of the kitchen, calling me in.
