No. 14

First night, working graveyard at the homeless shelter off Sandy in a vast crumbling multi-story church built at the turn of the century I was immediately in over my head. A 7pm-7am shift, the sky held those dusky vampire vibes, cinematic and surreal as I got out of the car in early November, a gaggle of street denizens gathered at the below ground entrance waiting for the doors to open. A wide basement with full industrial kitchen which split the area between a large hall and smaller dorms the kitchen acted as a kind of command center for the staff with a consistent Veteran of foreign wars population in the dorm side and in the main hall a congregation of ever-changing civilian street population on orange cots.

The real steep sections of the learning curve had to do with the suddenness and volume of the violence that could erupt. First night, before lights out a six foot plus red-faced street wraith raced into the basement in torn up clothing and accosted me for no real reason, swearing and spitting, his voice like a bellowing buffalo, he stunk of piss and old English. With no real training or de-escalation awareness I froze, cowering under his virulent gaze and waving arms. Thankfully a seasoned co-worker, a large gentleman with certain street cred came up behind and simply stood in the man’s face, stern but peaceful, he spoke the man’s name and shook his head. I slipped away, watching from a distance as the man spun down like a clockwork doll, arms slowing their pinwheel, threats and slurs ceasing. The man eventually left, my co-worker telling me the man was a semi-regular and had been barred from the shelter for obvious reasons. That was the first time I’d seen real de-escalation up close. It largely consisted of intense nothing, no words, no raised voice, no reaction, just calm empty nothing on the part of my co-worker in the face of extreme emotional and physical unhinged crisis. I realized the ‘nothing’ was the antidote, the complete lack of reaction was the right reaction. A seed was planted, a kind of dim awareness that emptiness is the key. The key to what exactly I had yet to understand or articulate fully. And this emptiness (sunyata it’s called in the old Buddhist texts) I would find was more an emptying of the ego, like emptying slop from a bucket and myself having lived most of my life on stages and in the spotlight, ego full blown and expanding horribly in all directions. Actually, this was the real learning curve.

But so the building was an ancient church three stories high covering roughly one city block. I quickly learned that the top floor was conspicuously haunted. It also happened to be the area where employees would nap on break. There was an old library room with some couches, a small chapel with an organ and stained glass down the hall. Little used rooms, shadow filled and carrying that deep silence that makes your ears ring, the low hum vibrating at the back of the skull. More on that hum later.

As a testament to how haunted that place was, the guy who hired me and was my direct superior had, or so I was told by coworkers, been in the old church’s sanctuary one night near witching hour when suddenly all the candles in the foyer came alight. He had been crossing the sanctuary at the foot of the stage where the podium sat. He stopped dead still and watched the candle flames like tongues bobbing in the darkness. He’d raced past the rows of pews to the back in a fright. On entering the foyer, the candles all blew out and he was left in complete darkness. Only the faint smell of smoke on the air. There were other stories, sounds and clunks on the stairs, a haunted barely operational elevator.

Imagine Santa Claus, St. Nick but stained with untold layers of street grime, pushing a full-size Costco style shopping cart filled to overflowing, guileless blue eyes that bored through your brain and out the other side. He’d been camped in one of the countless doorway alcoves of the church for some time. A couple of us went out and spoke with him one night, asking if he wanted to come inside. He laughed soundlessly and his eyes shone, I knew instantly that St. Nick was no high society elite hiding out in his arctic fortress of solitude with some grim elves, but that he stood there in front of me smelling of tobacco and dumpster donuts. He said he was called Arthur and with that, rolled his cart down the ramp into the basement. Later, over coffee, he alluded to having been in that particular alcove the better part of a year and he’d seen the comings and goings of various beings of the various realms about the building. I asked if he’d stayed in shelters before, he said he had over the years but only incidentally. His aim that of a kind of floating witness or observer to the world, a kind of western yogi wandering the wastes in search of nothing. His story made little sense to me at the time, though more recently I’ve widened my perspective on what life’s purpose might be, or lack thereof. Meaning vs. Purpose being a kind of wrestling match as it were in these realms. Needless to say, the majority of my training in the social work field has been gleaned from the clients themselves.

I remember one night taking my break up on the darkened third floor, sleeping in the library on a worn-out Chesterfield surrounded by an oddly diverse array of reading material. Earlier I’d pulled down a dogeared book on Tibetan iconography and fell asleep perusing it. I dreamt of small figurine sized humans marching across the large table at the other end of the room, a kind of Eastern meets Wagner orchestral pomp hovered in the air and my body was a pink mist when I looked down and then I heard a knocking on the walls which woke me and I rolled off the couch, heard the knocking again out in the hall. I went out to the hall and noticed the bathroom door was slowly closing as though someone had just entered. I felt supremely spooked knowing that no one was up here or shouldn’t be up here. I raced to the end of the hall where the stairs began. No one. They must be inside the bathroom. I knocked on the door. No answer. I pushed it open. Empty.