Healthy Hobos

Downtown, where the water goes, where the knotweed grows, where Philip and Sven and John take out their money and count it out to see who has the most. Seventeen dollars is the winner. Walk around the corner to the window and pawn some gold, aluminum, some copper wire. It adds up and the seventeen is now twenty-four. Eight bucks a piece and a boxcar to sleep in. The goal is to get out to Walla Walla, Washington, where the willows weep more gently and the worms burrow a little more intently, making the soil soft as a pillow.

The basil and purslane get chopped up fine, add a little lamb’s quarter as well. Then you have a nice green mix. Add some olive oil or, if you’re on a budget and out in the trainyard, then rainwater will do. Spread that on some Saltines, maybe add a can of beans if you got one, that’s all you need.

Without wine, things were moving a little smoother. Of the three of them, Philip had the hardest time making the switch, but once you get over the hump then everything gets easier. Jesús had turned the water into wine and then Sven came around and turned it back into water. He also brought about a new day by introducing the other fellas to the sauna. They would sit around finishing their saltines and greens and beans, and then build a little fire and find some big rocks and heat them up all nice and hot.

You may have seen them featured in Healthy Hobo magazine, the web edition.

Once upon a time, John the Scotsman had been told to share his story with people, open up, lose that dour expression. “People will see you as just a bear or a bluejay or a buffalo. Uncross your arms, open up. Relax your face. Loosen up.” This was way before the Mindfulness Movement and way, way before Taco Tuesdays. It took the Scot a long time to slowly and somewhat deliberately believe in the absence of self. He rejected the idea of a lifelong identity, a spirit animal.

It, the self, was more like a library for him, many rows of qualities and characteristics that one could access. Some you could check out and renew, others you had to return, or more aptly, you wanted to return. One could be a bear and a bluejay, and also a whale or a wolverine. Sven poured some water on the rocks and the steam and heat flew at them. They were sitting tightly together inside of an empty refrigerator box. The rain kept falling and the water ran through the fields and the mud, into the gutter, the sewer and back into the river, flowing on.