The Wandering Stranger of Schermerhorn Street

He is a wandering stranger and here he is (once again) on Schermerhorn Street. If you want to get a sense of the NYC economy, visit Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn. The food stamp offices, the welfare offices, the unemployment offices, they all have their lines, their ennui, and their quiet desperation that spills onto the streets everyday. Until recently, a homeless shelter was there also, built under the parking garage on Bond Street. I have been passing through that neighborhood on foot for several years on my way to work in the Heights. Since last spring, I noticed a number of homeless folks camped outside along the side of the garage on Schermerhorn Street, sleeping on broken office furniture, with sleeping bags, rolling suitcases, some who looked as though they had lived on the streets for awhile, others who seemed new to that existence. I read recently that the homeless shelter, I think this one, had been closed. Suddenly, the homeless folks were once again gone.

This week however, the wandering stranger was back. I have seen him camped out, surrounded by a mass of ripped black trashbags with his possessions, sitting on the sidewalk, gazing off into space, or into mysterious universes that most of us will never see. Unlike even the most scruffy of the usual homeless crew on Schermerhorn Street, the wandering stranger inhabits another place altogether. He is incredibly unkempt and filthy. His hair black, matted, skin filthy through ripped clothes. I have seen him over and over again for the past several years. He must travel around the borough, or the city, perhaps the planet. Eventually making his way back to Schermerhorn Street, never bathing or changing his torn clothes. Carrying the same gear, only more tattered than the last time, looking like he is sitting in a pile of trash but actually surrounded by what seem to be his earthly possessions.

He is like a mountain man, surviving, he finds a spot. Once he returns, he will seem rooted to the same spot until he disappears and, hopefully for him, returns again. This time I wondered, is he was waiting for the homeless shelter to reopen ? Each time, in the early morning or evenings, he sits, barely moving, his back to the canyon of new coops and luxury rentals that have popped up on the other side of the street since his last visit, a season or two ago. He doesn't beg and avoids the glances of passersby, as we avoid him. As I passed yesterday, a man was berating the wandering stranger, how he is a disgrace, what is wrong with him, etc. He took no notice. Perhaps he is mentally ill, or perhaps he inhabits a place beyond the material, beyond the need for home or clean, comfortable clothes. Does he feel free, like Jeremiah Johnson, like a mountain man? Existentially free? Pitying us poor fools with our office-cubicle prisons or welfare humiliations? It is certainly beyond my ability to tell. But meanwhile he will remain rooted to his spot, with his trash and his visions, until it is time for him to move on again.

--Brooklyn Beat