How it happened.
Most of my homeless painting subjects are asleep. I include a few awake, actively scrounging vagrants, because it is of artistic interest in itself. To my sensibility, sleeping on the street tells of extreme distress, starkly exposed to the environment -not to speak of assault. The beggars and scavengers, awake and on their feet, may yet have a vestige of sense to enter a shelter after dark if followed.
Not the sleepers -for whatever excuse. The sleepers are covered by not so much as a tattered blanket in extreme instances. Shocking to say, but to passers-by they appear to have no more sense than dumb animals, deaf as in deaf-and-dumb. It raises disturbing thoughts about what it means to be human, that of both the homeless, and of passers-by.
What happened? A snap evaluation of the situation does not often coincide with what would be expected of an individual having the characteristics of the person observed. Not what the individual looks like, but who the individual looks like. It's difficult to express, because it goes to the very definition of prejudice, but the homeless often—far too often—do not “look” the part.
Admit it. They, or certain similar individuals, may look like you, or me. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Perhaps it is tactless to ask, but why did God, apparently, withhold His grace from these particular persons? That is a rhetorical question, of course, because in every instance of the failure of the basic standards of humanity there is a cause -known or unknown. What went wrong, and when?
For about four years, from 1979 to 1983, I had two psychotherapy appointments a week, until graduation from college, and independent living. Looking back, after the interval of so many years, it seems to have been a brief episode, but remains the greatest challenge of my life. Hardly a day goes by that I do not reflect on the ordeal.
My problems began for me when I enrolled in an out-of-state college, and made up my mind to attend continuously without Summer break, in consecutive semesters. The purpose was to saturate myself in my studies, and by going to school away from home, remove familiar distractions, to concentrate. My plan was effective, too effective, and had unexpected consequences.
When anyone goes down the lonesome road, everything changes, and ordinary features become more than incidental. One begins to feel conspicuous, like a stranger. Accustomed to oft-affirmed recognition, both by direct acquaintances, and by others of one's native milieu who share subtle inflections of speech, when newly immersed in the now wide-open world, a breathtaking chasm between individuals opens.
It's not only unfamiliar actions that are disoriented. It's total submersion in a whole, new, and different world without the accustomed home footing. You could call it being lost. In the interval, I have lightheartedly come to think of it as "going down the rabbit hole," the current idiom for paranoia.
On one occasion, thus saturated with student thoughts (driving home after classes), I breezed through a stop light inadvertently. As if out of nowhere, a police car pursued, his squad car red and blue lights flashing;
“Yes, officer?” -I said.
“Do you know you ran a red light?” -he said.
It was said by the policeman, it should be noted, with as much certainty as I was, inversely, oblivious to what I had done.
That traffic stop was, for me, the first objective proof of a creeping disengagement from reality, of cracking confidence. Rationalizing with myself (I argued), how can I know I am not making other mistakes of equal danger, when there is no police officer to call me out? For argument's sake, take that person over there; he's shaking his head. Did he witness me doing something wrong?
The hypothetical question, “What else do I do unknowingly?” became the first stone of an avalanche of self-doubt. As self-doubt is self-judgment and, so, procedurally invalid, so ultimately it becomes a case of self-persecution (vs prosecution). It is a circular argument, one which can hypnotize the mind into acceptance of all sorts of delusions, dismissed out-of-hand as irrational by the familiar, reasoning mind.
It becomes a case of good intentions foiled. Failed is more like it. The attempt to make sense of the disconnected facts of everyday life is bound to fail most of the time. When circumstances become charged with possible meaning, as they will when as a stranger in an unfamiliar land, the effect on the mind grows out of proportion. Frustration builds. Moments are given to panic.
Special significance is given to ordinary incidents. While waiting for an order to arrive in a restaurant, I flirt with an attractive girl. I look away discretely and, when I look back again, she is gone. She does not return. It's not simply a matter of another restaurant patron paying the check and departing. No, I must have given a bad impression. People will play games. One projects one's own anxieties on others.
Many, and more such minor mishaps become laden with significance. And the exaggerated importance of little enigmas increases the emotional buildup. An accidental spill becomes an ink blot charged with meaning. A fact which I did not understand at the time is that, with practice, routine activities become automatic. The conscious intention need not be present behind every move. It has become automatic, unconscious.
The vague awareness of unconscious motives misunderstood awakens a suspicion of latent powers and, eventually, reaches the point of paranoia. Confirmation bias (another psychologism of which I was not aware) overtakes common sense, and when thought becomes a fixed idea, an unshakable conviction, then it becomes delusion, detachment from reality. The mind becomes preoccupied with explaining to itself the complexity of its own delusion.
Normal routines get pushed aside in the scheme's momentum. When my condition affected my school studies I had to admit I was in need of help. It is a fateful day in the life of a person falling victim to psychosis. Just enough common sense remains to make a rational decision to seek help. Caring persons, for their part, are also only human. If for any reason the needed help is not forthcoming at the crucial moment, hope for return to sanity is in vain. Everyone living rough is lost for that one, momentary, turn of fate.
One-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403