To Ken, an outcast, a wanderer, a veteran, homeless, black, and human

Dear Ken, 

I’ve been telling everyone about you since we met. I was eating my sandwich when you rolled up with your bicycle, plastic crate attached to the back, and locked it to my bench. We smiled at each other and said hello.

“Are you a scholar?” you asked, striking up a two-hour-long conversation outside the library. 

I laughed and told you that I wasn’t a scholar, but that I am constantly learning new things.

You, on the other hand, are what I’d consider a scholar, but not in a conventional way. You are a life scholar; the kind I aspire to be. 

You don’t quite blend in with the academics of Harvard in your beanie, hole-y sweater, and those camouflage cut-off shorts you wear over long-johns. You, with your untamed graying curly beard, blend in more with the homeless. Then I learned that you actually were homeless for many years. 

Five to six years in Massachusetts, you said. You’ve slept along the Charles, in MIT’s library bathroom, and somewhere on Harvard campus. You’ve slept on the streets, in homeless shelters, and in church shelters, too. 

I was surprised to hear that you preferred the streets over church shelters, but perhaps I, too, would feel uncomfortable under the authority of pastors who preached the love of Jesus to me when I just needed a roof over my head. It made you uncomfortable enough to opt for the street. And now you’re a staunch Atheist, ha! 

You reasoned that if birds and rabbits could live outside without long-johns, then you could, too. And that’s what you did. 

I guess after hitchhiking from Oregon to Alaska, across Canada, and then across the United States six times, you are quite accustomed to an unstable life outdoors. Or are you? 

You’ve lived in Massachusetts 17 years now, and according to you, human connection is very difficult to establish here. 

“Even in Cambridge?!” I thought people in this city I call home tended to be more worldly, educated, cultured, and collective, therefore presumably more willing to engage with strangers. In fact, I’ve never lived in a place where the talk of human connection, community, and social activism was more ubiquitous. 

But talk is talk. 

You shook your head profusely, stuttering “no no no no no” and waved your hands indicating no no no definitely not. Even the homeless want nothing to do with you. “There is an insane lack of trust here.” 

That’s the problem with the world today, though, isn’t it? We are so suspicious of everyone around us that we don’t engage anymore.

But apparently Eugene, Oregon is different. You said Eugene is 99% White, and they are the most progressive White people in the country. 

Strangers make eye contact and strike up conversations with one another. Homeless folks talk about their futures, their ambitions.

For someone who flunked their high school courses, you did well for yourself to go off to community college and join the Navy for nuclear engineering. But for someone who believes that human beings are meant to help each other—not kill each other—the Navy was the last place you wanted to be. So you AWOL-ed. 

It couldn’t have been easy going back to Jersey where your three younger brothers who once looked up to you as a hero now looked at you with downcast eyes. That, you explained, is what pushed you westward. 

A vegetarian healthfood shop in Eugene seems much more up your alley than the Navy, anyway.  

In society’s eyes, it’s difficult to see past the holes and raggedy long-johns. Nobody could know that you once aspired to be a nuclear engineer and considered going back to school for Applied Mathematics. Nobody could know that you record every conversation you’ve had in that purple journal, bound by multiple rubber bands, you carry. 

No, we just see a tall, slim, aging Black man in tattered clothes. 

You’ve experienced the lowest lows of existing in this country as an outcast, a wanderer, a veteran, homeless, black.

You know this country and its people better than most. You’ve seen heard touched felt what even the most elite scholars will only ever read in books and will never comprehend. 

You know how a human being should treat another human being. 

We all crave human connection, but we’re picky about who we connect with. What if we got to know the next person that sits down next to us? We might find an alliance with this stranger we didn’t know was possible. We might learn something that will enrich our lives like you’ve enriched mine.

You’ll never know until you say hello. 

Thank you for saying hello, Ken, and for taking the time to share your story with me and to ask about mine. 

Hope to see you again.

Regards,

Emily 

P.S. Did you start that blog yet?