It’s a Farked Life!

You jackass.

I stayed in New York City for three years taking photos mostly of homeless people around the city. I didn’t see it as taking advantage of them, no, that had already happened. I wasn’t selling photos of them. I wasn’t exploiting them any more than they had been at the hand of their creator already. I was taking photos because I was disgusted that god - if it exists, and I’m not sure at all - could let someone become so destitute that they lived on the street. I took tens of thousands of photos over the three years and I got no closer to understanding the mentality behind creating the possibility of such squalor and mental illness.

Yeah, yeah, they made the decisions that led them there - but, holy hell - WHO made us capable of making un-wise decisions for ourselves? Is it improbable that we all make many of them? Hell no, it’s probable. Better than that, it’s fact - we all do make many decisions that lead us nowhere - and some that set us back. Just because the homeless made 20 such decisions and I only made 10, that is the difference between them and myself?

See - if there’s a level of idiocy that exists in each and every one of us - and there is, then any of us could end up homeless with the right circumstances. You might have had a great childhood environment and all the right chemicals in your head doing the right things. Many other people DIDN’T.

That might be all that separates you from them. That might be all that separates you from being homeless. You may have had some breaks that turned out well. They might have had some that turned for shite. So - are you better than them? Did you make more great decisions, more moral decisions, more wise decisions?

Not necessarily.

I wanted to thank god in this blog post for creating the mentally ill. What the hell were you thinking there? You gotta ask yourself sometime, “Didn’t I fark the world up enough already? Did I really need to screw up the chemical balance in some people’s minds just to give them an EXTRA challenge to overcome?

WTF?

Here’s a woman in Manhattan, a homeless woman. She’s wearing a heavy winter coat, shawl, wool pants, a heavy denim skirt over the pants,  heavy boots, hot hat, she was wearing gloves when I first saw her, and pushing a cart with wheels that have deteriorated and aren’t round anymore, but obviously quite broken. She’s mentally ill. How do I know that? It was 98 farking degrees that day and she was sweating profusely and yet didn’t have the common sense to remove the heavy winter clothing and wear something cooler.

Did this lady do something to DESERVE mental illness? Hell no - some of us were given a head full of roses… others, a head full of of profound disability.

Which side of the coin did you get? 

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