The Dweller on the Threshold
The title is borrowed from the Bulwer-Lytton novel Zanoni. The novel has been ridiculed for its Victorian pretensions. As a novel conceit of my own, it seems to me that the story might be read intertextually, within the global narrative of homelessness. The homeless person reminds me of The Dweller on the Threshold.
Despite its mockery, the book was well received among Theosophists, and spiritualists in general, for its allusion to the esoteric doctrine of the past lives of the soul. The object of such belief being the conclusion of the cycle of birth, and rebirth, once the soul has atoned for whatever was causing it to be reborn.
As spiritualism fell into disrepute as being incompatible with the emerging social sciences, the faith-based humanism of Western tradition suffered. The human condition is more than a social problem to be solved. Although it grieves us, to be rational is to admit that the problem of homelessness, meaning the homeless, will never go away.
The homeless are a constant reminder of their unfortunate state, compared to us, of what happened to them to make them homeless, and of what is to become of them? The eternal homeless come to us as an existential shock, more, as a static shock, to Western sensibilities. How can anyone live that way? The sight of the homeless is enough to cause mental anguish. They must be insane.
We, in the Western world, have a deep fear of insanity, of going insane. It is brought on by our reliance on Cartesian epistemology. It is more than the fear of the insane. It is an apprehension of going insane which disturbs us. What if one were to become insane without knowing it? To awaken, one morning, having lost, in the meantime, the reason we need to function.
It is taken for granted that the homeless are insane -or are going, insane. The fear of insanity has less to do with debility than loss of dignity. What we find shocking is a creeping suspicion that the homeless may know something we do not, which, if we knew what it was (rationally), would make us insane, as well. A secret that must never be told, as it were...
We assume the homeless have no further need of sanity, as they appear to have abandoned the necessities and conveniences, safety and security, of conventionality. They don't want help. I have asked, as have others, with whom I have communicated. They could get help if they wanted it. They are deathly afraid of becoming obligated, of being tied down, of being confined. They literally hate being indoors. All they really want is to be left alone.
Death lurks, for the homeless, on the threshold. It is always but a step away, a final exit from a life of suffering, never to return. Everyone thinks about death. For the homeless, it is a main preoccupation. While they hate life, they would no more commit suicide than they would commit murder. They are not criminals. They wait, and wait, for the fatal day.
What puzzles me is where they die. One would expect to see as many dead bodies in the street as derelicts. I once asked an attorney, informally (over drinks), what one should do if one stumbles over a body on the street, whether to report it, or carry on, minding one's own business. The look he gave me was priceless, looked right through me. He said there is nothing moot in the law, and that I was already a suspect and, further, did I want to come clean about anything in particular? He wasn't smiling when he said it.
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