I am currently sitting in my house on the lake, full fridge and pantry (granted all food I hate due to other people in this house still being confused on what qualifies as good food), wireless internet, and of course all the basics like running water. Why would I mention this besides trying to brag about my living situation? Well I assure you that’s not the point of this blog.
I spent the previous four days living in, well, I guess to put it in perspective; I have seen hotels with $5 hourly rates that were nicer. The carpets, spotted from years of spilled drinks, food, and other fluids that I am sure I would rather not know, gave off hints of odor from each of these forgotten spots now held captive by the fibers. The kitchen was full of dishes that appeared to have gone even longer without being washed than the carpet. In fact, while trying to pour a drink I was told to “just grab whichever one appears to have less mold”.
In the defense of the tenants, one of whom happens to be a very close friend of mine, they were in the process of moving across the street. Therefore they did not spend much time here and had not felt the need to go out of their way to clean an apartment they would soon be leaving.
Anyway the point of this article focuses more on some of the other aspects of this slowly dilapidating apartment, not the filth that had claimed it as the newest landlord. This apartment did have the luxury of electricity and running water. Yes I do mean luxury because that’s all it had. There was no phone line and therefore no internet, and while yes running water the gas had long been off resulting in a lack of water that did not border on 40 degrees. This made showering an experience that only an Eskimo could identify with. There of course was no TV either as I assume the gas bill would be slightly higher up on the list than cable. The only edible food I managed to find was a jar of olives in the fridge but those were reserved for martinis apparently and thus off limits.
The cause of such a sever lack of funds; Well the one works as an unpaid intern at The Buffalo News over 20 hours a week and then scrapes together what shifts she can as a waitress for Jack Astors. She is rolling in the dough. The other is the definition of a starving artist. In between his plays and paintings he scrounges up a few shifts as a waiter as well.
It was this situation that I decided to drive six hours and spend four days in rather than sitting in my comfortable, clean, amenity filled home. It’s amazing what one will do to spend time with another. I have always been one of those people that was in the mindset that if one can make money they should and those that put forth no effort and live in poverty were crazy, vaive and to be honest it annoyed me. Little did I know that my view was about to not simply be proven wrong, but lead to one of the biggest shocks of my life about how off I could be on something I felt so adament about.
I started off the trip by meeting Lena at Jack Astors as she was working one of her multitude of night shifts. I sat around, ordered some food and drinks and relaxed while she finished up. We then went back to her place, got around and spent a night walking around the town. 4 hours later we stumbled back to pass out at 3 a.m. in no condition to care about the condition of the home.
This is similar to how we would go about spending the next four days. We walked around town, went to a free concert held every Thursday in what is called the “Square”, spent nights playing cards, twister and catchphrase. Before I realized I was even there I had to leave and found myself thinking of anything I could do to delay parting ways. I did not once notice the horrors that existed in that apartment in the forms of mold and lack of basic utilities.
It was then that I truly realized. There is something to be said for scraping by on the seat of your pants. Every day was an adventure filled with finding random ways to spend time or get food or even take a shower. It was a four days of just enjoying being with people rather than worrying about everything else. The truth is that the majority of what we have we don’t need. Cliché I know, but I don’t simply mean we don’t need them. I mean lacking more can lead to experiencing everything else in new ways. Before this trip I had not gone more than a day or two without the internet and it wasn’t until I got home after nearly five days that it even crossed my mind. I was so caught up in spending time with these people and simply enjoying being alive that the rest of the world, even the room around me was a blur, but the people in front of me, the times we spent, I saw more clearly than ever before and it was a truly amazing experience. I can now say that the truth about living in poverty, it can be one of the greatest experiences of your life.
People will say “you were there for four days, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor” and that’s ok. These people I stayed with were by far literally the poorest people I have known. They had simply enough money to afford rent split between two people in a ramshackle apartment and if given the opportunity I would move in with them tomorrow. It’s this knowledge that makes me know I am justified in saying that, beyond being so poor that you may actually die, having no money can actually be an exhilarating and fun experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment