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| Issue #30, June 1996 So now we have come to Issue Number Thirty! That has to be some kind of a milestone. It means I've been publishing this newsletter for two and a half years, and I haven't died of a heart attack yet! I expected to be dead long before now, and no doubt there are those who were hoping I would be too. I feel it's time for a little stock-taking, to ask how well this newsletter has really been serving its original purpose. I encourage reader feedback on this. All the time I've been doing the HJ I've suppressed a lot of my ego-urges, the assumption being that I'm supposed to be "serving the community" with such a publication. Of course, one thing the public needs to be educated about is the fact that homeless people do have egos like everyone else. A lot of them also have artistic talents that haven't been properly recognized, which is partly why they became homeless--that is certainly the case with me. Still, the only way I can justify writing and publishing these words on behalf of the homeless now, is that I'm supposedly serving a function beyond mere self-promotion. I'm acting as an advocate, a "voice for the homeless." This is considered a legitimate function by all the people who believe it's empowering for the homeless to be given this "voice." No matter how bad the quality of their writing is--and let's face it, you encounter some really awful writing in those street papers sometimes--it's supposedly therapeutic to give them this chance to express themselves for a large reading audience and thereby connect with many others in the same predicament. This is supposedly an empowering step toward getting themselves out of that predicament. Always the goal is to get off the street and inside of four walls again. So the writing is only considered a means to an end, the end being that ever-elusive goal of "ending homelessness." My writing is considered part of this process, which is why I'm commended by many people for my "advocacy work". But in case you all haven't figured it out yet, that's not the primary reason I do it. The thing that distinguishes me from all the others in Eugene who write about homelessness (at least as far as I know; correct me if I'm wrong) is that they do not call themselves Writers with a capital "W". They are homeless advocates who use writing as only one of their advocacy tools, one of the numerous weapons in their arsenal which they consider useful in the fight for progressive change; again it's a means to an end. For me, writing is an end in itself. Whatever function it serves for the rest of the community is fine, but the primary function it serves for me is that of a creative outlet. I write because I am a Writer with a capital "W"... ...This last April issue contained a little snapshot scenario from an earlier period of my life, when I was a fresh and feisty twenty-two and thought I could conquer the world (as most twenty-two-year-olds think.) My goal then was to be an internationally famous film director by the time I was thirty, perhaps the first woman ever to accomplish this feat. I went to an art school that was full of such egotistical film students, all of whom wanted to be either Orson Welles or Ingmar Bergman (depending on whether they preferred the Hollywood or European film genres.) I spent a year among these self-obsessed young men (not many women) who proclaimed unabashedly that they were destined for Hollywood careers, each one believing he would be the one to beat out all the competition because he was the next Orson Welles. Of course, we now know that Stephen Spielberg is the one who can claim that distinction, being the one of our generation who "made it" as a big-time director before he was 30. I'm still insanely jealous of that guy, as I am also of Ingmar Bergman. I'm still convinced that if I had been born male, and in a smaller country with a government-funded film industry like Sweden, I would have stood a much better chance of having a career like the latter's. That was what I wanted. So I did eventually get my film degree at another art school, finally graduating at age 27--and emerging a skinny, haggard, burnt-out, depleted wreck of a person strung out on Dalmane. I had become a battered woman in the process of struggling through film school, and continued to encounter all the myriad forms of sex discrimination that aspiring women filmmakers invariably run into. My confidence had been basically destroyed, and it was by now painfully clear that I was not about to conquer the world. Fast-forward to the present. I am now 46 and no longer using sleeping pills, but still with the same sleep disorder from my battered-woman days, which I still try unsuccessfully to soothe away with alcohol. And putting out a piddlyshit homeless newsletter. My name has not yet appeared in huge letters on a movie screen (notice I said "yet"--I haven't given up the dream altogether), but it has appeared in smaller print in several newspapers around the country. Some of my writings have been read by as many as 15,000 people on the east coast (in Boston's streetpaper Spare Change.) Ironically, I have much greater name-recognition in Boston now, as an absentee homeless writer, than I ever had during the twelve years I lived there. But what am I in Eugene today? A very reclusive writer who is having a harder time passing for a "homeless advocate" in this capacity, since I no longer live in a car camp and no longer have Rick to go and hustle up newsletter stories. A lot of the homeless people probably think that I don't properly speak for them or for the homeless community as a whole. I always assume it's understood that I want people to send in their writings, but I don't go out actively seeking material. Maybe they don't think I'm really that interested in what other homeless people besides myself have to say. A lot of people, I know, are put off by my egotism and my reclusiveness. Register-Guard columnist Karen McCowan smugly dismisses me as "professionally homeless" and therefore not rating an interview for her column. Don Bishoff won't give me the time of day either. The only time he has ever mentioned me in his column was to refer to me as Rick's "wife" (which I wasn't even) during the Armitage protest. So where am I going from here? I'm not even sure. I suppose I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing until I figure out something better. I may not be giving the readers everything they want, but most of them don't bother to to tell me what they want either. A lot of the time nowadays I feel more like a "voice in the wilderness" than a "voice for the homeless". As I said, I'm asking for reader feedback. If anyone is discontented with what they've been seeing in this rag, I wish they'd speak up. Don't assume I'm not open to criticism, as long as it's politely phrased. I already know a lot of people think I'm a selfish, egotistical snob, so that would hardly be news. But if no one writes in, I'll assume it's ok with everyone the way it is. Happy 30th issue. (click here for next page) |