A lot of homeless mentions in Some Things That Mean The World To Me by Joshua Mohr. The first person narrative about a guy called Rhonda takes place in San Francisco, but I have seen some of Mohr's homeless characters here in Long Beach.
There is a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart and tugging another ~ attacked to his back with a bungee cord ~ behind him; another homeless man has shirts for sale hanging on a fence; there is a box of empty liquor bottles on the sidewalk left for homeless to take and recycle; a man asks the couple if they have any vodka to donate to charity, when asked which charity, he points to his mouth; a favorite is the man with "...a shopping cart filled with plastic orange jack-o-lantrens with a sign on the cart "Donate To The United Negro Pizza Fund".
A homeless woman has a dead plant in a shopping cart and says as she offers the plant to Rhonda "Home is where the heart is." I used to say that my heart is inside of me, so where ever I be, I was home. I reminded myself of this often while street living.
Central to the story was a homeless man Rhonda found sleeping on a sidewalk with an open pizza box covering his head. Rhonda calls the man "a miracle" because seeing the guy made him realize things could be worse. Later he thinks he needs a pizza box "to block out every niggling memory." I think a lot of homeless (homed also) use booze and drugs for the same reason. Easy to sing "what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget", reality, often, impossible to do so.
Really, really enjoyed reading this book.
http://somethingsthatmeanttheworldtome.blogspot.com/
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