Aloneness

I’ve landed in a freedom camping area in my pop top Hiace, home sweet home. Parked up just across in a Subaru boyracer ride that’s seen better days, lives a shy man with his cats. “Rent increased, couldn’t pay, same time got laid off and now I can’t get another job cos I don’t have a fixed address. I got 3 days food from WINZ, still got some rice - I can cook it when the barbecue by the toilet is free”.

Mick(I’ve changed his name), I’d pick him 45 at a pinch, seems a nice guy down on his luck. I give him a jump start to charge the battery, but the gas. Plastic over the broken rear side window and a big sticker on the good part of his broken windscreen ‘This Car Must Be Removed’. I got the shortform, but I ponder what Mick’s longform story is … the things he didn’t mention. More broken stuff.

Freedom camping spots are authentic sociology. You can be parked between the $150k motorhome and the homeless, side by side. Cashed up boomers sitting around fold-out kathmandu tables living the good life. And then there’s Mick.

I’m in there, cashed-up light in my $20k job, and yeah it’s not my problem, well not specifically, but it’s our problem. Most of us look right through Mick. Don’t see him, he doesn’t exist. Too feral, too hard basket.

The internal conversation goes something like this … do I focus just on MeMyself, or do I take a wider interest in others wellbeing. I was a teacher for years, it’s in the job description, giving a shit, so my instinct is to go wider interest.

Freedom camping is an intriguing dance. We’re rolling our vehicles into free digs, first and foremost marking out our temp private spaces on public land, establishing the physical boundaries - I’m getting to know the moves the more I’m on the road.

“You can’t park in this space” says Warren from down south, as I nicely suggest he could possibly move his table and various other outdoor accoutrements to free up the spare allocated freedom parking space. Says he, “my campers too big to have someone in the space beside” … he’s right there, his camper’s a monster, an 8 wheeler, but my van is little, skinny, and I’m a nice guy. I’m picking my personal hygiene is no worse than his, better even, and I’d promise not to play the piano accordion, but no.

So I go park over by Mick. No-one has taken the spaces right beside him.

I’ve got a feed on the make for Mick. He says he hasn’t eaten for a while and he looks it. Sausages, egg, greens, tomato’s etc. What he really needs is more than a feed, he could do with my Hiace, pimped up as it is with a bed and cooker and sink. He needs it way more than me.

Those of us on the leisure moves in our campers mostly don’t engage with the Mick’s. Too downbuzz, and just maybe these fellow humans mirror the less sorted parts of our own selves - there’s the mirror again, look away. Mick and I get chatting until he can’t anymore, re-telling his story is hurtful. His face folds now and then, self worth gasping for air.

He scurry’s back to his car cats and 10 mins later I take him over his dinner. He beams and blushes, gratitude and embarrassment, charity wonderful and humiliating all in one.

Mick asks me if he can keep the plate, he’s got a bowl for the cats but not for himself. Yes of course. I give him the cans in the van, beans, tomatoes, tuna, and $50. I want to load him and his cats into the HiAce and say ‘come on bro, we’ll work something out, just jump in, we’ll top n’ tail.’ And I don’t, it’s not that simple. Getting your wheels out of the sand takes more than a meal and $50.

Still, little things help, if enough of us were to pay it fwd as the saying goes, we could help build not just those doing it hard, but ourselves. Yes, lots of us despite keeping up appearances, have some Mick onboard, living life timidly, a touch trauma’dly - you know the bits of us we like to not talk about. Lalalalalalalalala …

Morning, and Micks up early. I’d question a good nights sleep in a small hatchback crammed with cats and stuff so no room to stretch out. In fact any sleep. He’s standing out in the tide in his smalls, taking a salty bath. I just don’t know how he does it, but he does.

What to do.

We are partitioned by socio-economics, by choices, by circumstance, opportunity and luck. There are mental health challenges across demographics as we all try and make sense of our personal and collective worlds. No surprises. I’d be worried if there weren’t, if we were all bang on with with the current creed of civilisation and the twisted duplicities of life. And god parts of us are So bang on with how the world is working out, those of us with food shelter, savings, whanau that love us, modern medicine to afford should our bod’s give us grief blah de blah. Some of us are living materially in what could be called the best of times. For now.

Surely you feel it, I feel it - as the homeless and dispossessed among us become increasingly visible, the narratives of winner/loser, Us and Them become less palatable and ultimately less credible. We can do better than this as humans. It’s time for a re-boot in how we co-habit - there are various triggers already circling the shire, this is happening in real time. Mick is the canary in the coalmine.

What to do ? How should we respond ? What do you guys think ?

Geezer from the past Buckminster Fuller famously said ‘there’s no passengers on spaceship earth’ … Up off ya knee’s everyone, we gonna be busy, lot’s more Mick’s on the way.