Claudius
Lowell Brook

I pull my truck into a space next to People's Park and scan the scene. This is the spot in Berkeley where the flower children, the hippies and war protesters, stood facing government troops and daringly slipped daisies into their gun barrels. Now this is a site for demonstrating the struggles between the "haves" and the "have-nots".  I am a "have".  I have an education, a home, health and family. I see cardboard boxes and shopping carts and piles of blankets, the belongings of "have-nots", strewn around the edges of the park. I am not comfortable, and I want to move away.                                        

I zip up my purse and sling it over my body diagonally as an automatic security measure upon entering volatile territory. I stride purposefully towards Telegraph Avenue to pursue my errands, wrapped in my own definitions and intentions.

Suddenly, there's a man in my path. He's standing facing me. He's thin and frail looking. I see "a street person," weak ... poor ... no vitality. At first I don't connect, then my eyes rise up to meet him face to face. He has classical round African features ... large soft eyes. Slowly my attention comes fully present, and I recognize him.

"Hello Claudius," I say.

We stand a long moment, not knowing what to do after our greeting. He's carrying a couple of sacks which hang so heavily that his arms appear to be stretching. He asks if we can sit and talk a while. I don't want to. I want to zip untouched through my business, but I can't turn away.                              

"Oh Claudius ..." Sadness, resignation and helplessness color the words. I am having to face what I don't want to see. It has come up to me, close, and personal. It has a name now, and eyes I recognize.

"I know ..." he says, his usual aloofness seemingly swallowed up by shame or confusion. We turn into the park and find a bench. I am coming unwrapped.

I have known Claudius for over two years. He is a regular client at the Center for AIDS Services. He is an unusual man: refined, defended, eccentric, arrogant, and solitary. It took us a long time to learn to trust enough to converse. Slowly, over months, I'd convinced him we could relate, simply by being with him, even if he met me with disinterest. He would sit alone with his few things in an old doctor's satchel, maintaining his isolation with an impervious cool exterior, while I met and interacted with other clients. He would not watch TV, family style, with other folks. Once I commented on his distancing behavior, and he responded simply, "I'm in pain."                                 

Despite the inner chasm we had to span, we almost always met in conversation. I would join him, and he would talk in his low resonant voice about the efforts he's making to learn the subtle magical intricacies of alchemy - about transmutation - about the books he's reading - his plans to recreate the altar he used to have - about being arrested for walking at Lake Merritt at night, and his fear of the courtroom - about how he can't sleep with gunshots and violence going on all around him, and how does anyone expect him to heal in such a destructive environment - about the impeccable lifestyle of prayer and purification and herbal remedies he will live as soon as he gets his own place.                        

Our common ground was openness to magic, and respect for the unseen and unknown. In Claudius, however, apparently wholesome ideas were poisoned by radical distrust and alienation. What might have been healing and visionary, seemed in him to be delusion and paranoia.

His uncommon interests prevented ordinary intercourse with common folk. He breathed only rarefied air. He would not allow connection.

I asked him once, "Claudius, where did you come from?! You act like you're French nobility before the revolution!" And he concurred, "Yes, I know ... when I was in France I kept going into museums and castles and feeling I belonged there."

In this life he was born Black and Gay and survived a childhood with a full measure of abandonment and abuse to end up homeless and unemployed, with AIDS - lost on the street, lost in the underbelly of Oakland - untouchable, and by most standards a bit mad.

Today, for the first time in our acquaintance, he is unwashed. His usually straightened and dramatically streaked hair is chopped off, thinning and matted. He has itchy sores on his torso and arms which he keeps touching, from one to another, as he talks. His chest is in and his belly out. He drifts across subjects like a needle across a record as he despairs of his condition.

He suspects that all people and systems are lined up against him, from the doctor who he thinks won't tell him the name of his sickness, to the waiter who he thinks spat in his soup at lunch. He is numb with pain. In his state of weakness and vulnerability, he finds the public shelters unclean and unsafe. He tells of "having an accident" in one at night. He couldn't get to the bathroom and didn't want to pee on the floor so he used a glass, and now he can't go back there any more. Whether he can't go back because they asked him not to return, or because his shame blocks the door, I don't know. He is not able to process questions.

So, here we are, sitting in People's Park. I listen to him ramble pathetically, the disintegration of his whole being undeniable, dementia scrambling his mind, no posturing possible.

He says, "I can't believe this happening."

I respond, "I can't believe it's happening either, Claudius." This is our shared moment ... our moment of truth. Then, barely pausing, he continues his litany of banishment from all things right and lovely, and I ponder the depth and breadth of my disbelief. I can't believe Claudius might die alone in the park, here surrounded by humanity, and that all we can do in our wealthy country is to leave him untended. I can't believe I am going to walk away from him. 

I stay perhaps half an hour, scouring my brain incessantly for ideas that might make a difference in his cruel circumstances. I search for guidance through spirituality, psychology and physiology, karma and medical care. I am not willing to utter platitudes or flaccid, wishful thinking. He knows more than I do about social services--actually he has exhausted or declined what's available to him and I am not willing to take him home with me.

There are pots of food and piles of clothing nearby where we're sitting, though they're not what he needs. I just can't give him what he needs. I will only say what I mean, without pretense. Finally I say, "Claudius, I'm so sorry you are going through this."

Then, when I can't stay any longer without faking attention; I say, "I am going to leave you now. Thank you for waking me up ... for helping me remember"... this last sentence is getting wobbly and fading out as tears flood up from an overwhelmed heart.

I walk away.

(Soon after this day, Claudius connected with a woman who had been like a second mother to him when he was in high school. She cared for him until he died.)

If you enjoyed these reflections, we invite you to discover other thoughtful and personal writings in the pages of The Best of Pilgrimage and Pilgrimage Vol. 26 and Vol. 27. These can be ordered directly from this website; please click on "How to Order."               

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