For the last three times I’ve been into the street homeless centre LDHAS I’ve had long conversations with BJ about wolves and their meaning. BJ called himself a lone wolf and is living outside, teetering on the edge of everything, it seems.
He’s talked a lot about psychedelics and how they’ve open doors for him, made him see the world of shamans and possibilities beyond human patterns, a sunrise of the mind, the root and blossom of systems of thought. Last time we spoke he gave me a YouTube link to a recording of future sound of London, with a shamanic voice-over.
BJ is almost to head higher than I am and is about half as wide again as me. In his big bobble hat and his wraparound anorak he is a big bulk of a man. Sometimes he gets violent. But never with people, only objects. He’ll have a rampage around the town, smash some windows maybe…
That’s when the change is coming for him, the full moon beckons and what we’ve been calling the wolf side of himself comes out. These times are ended by him being sectioned and spending a while institutionalised. He fiercely holds his independence, it’s the thing he’s got most of all. Even now, living outside in a graveyard, under an archway with only the dead for neighbours, he is his own, his very own person.
And so we talk about wolves and he asks the question what are the lost jewels of our cities, our civilisation? Can some new shaman help us to find them? In old traditions, the shaman wears a wolf head to mark him out as the people’s guide.
