"Jumping off the Cliff into Reality"

Story and all photos- copyright, Shelley Bluejay Pierce

October 2, 2008

I came across my collection of black and white photos this morning. I seldom allow myself this image-journey backward as it takes me to some dark and scary places in my life. This morning however, there was a new vantage point by which to view these time capsules captured on film. I decided perhaps it was time to speak on some of these things, for as always, I believe that what you share with others may have meaning for them as well.

The photo above was taken very quickly when I was out hiking. The sky was reflected in the water that had gathered in a rock crevice. The image immediately struck me and I snapped the picture. This morning I began my inward journey with this photo and it caused me to wonder if I had matured enough now to truly judge lifes' realities versus its illusions. I was only 19 years old at the time this picture was taken. I had experienced some traumatic events in my young life but I still believed that the reality of this world was similar to that which my family had raised me to believe. The simplicity of that time allowed me to think that when you saw water in a small pool in a rock? That is exactly what was there...nothing more and nothing less.

I began to think this morning about that simplistic view and how expanded my mind has become in the many decades since I first captured this moment in time on film. Rarely, are things as simple as they may appear at first glance. If you allow yourself to view the world differently and expand your mental horizons, the world is not all that it appears at first glance. What you see as a reflection of reality may be nothing more than your own version of the world mirrored upon the surface of something else... something far deeper and more unforgiving perhaps. For the curious at heart, this journey to explore all the nooks and crannies of the world is uunending I suppose. I know my curiosity about things has certainly never waned. As I looked through the rest of these photographs though, I realized where the journey outside of my reality had taken me and how much that journey had changed my simplistic mindset forever.

In my late teens, I began to see the world with different eyes as I spent more time away from my family and the cozy suburban home I had been raised in. My parents thought I was crazy and probably did more than their fair share of worrying about this new adventure I was on when I was riding the city bus into the heart of the downtown city scene. The rush of bodies, cars, taxis, busses and overall hustle of the inner city intrigued me. The first few visits were nothing more than my own form trying to navigate through the masses. As I became more comfortable with my surroundings I discovered that even with all the thousands of people racing about, there was an odd way that some of them blended into the environment. They seemed to go unnoticed by the general population and were ignored as if they were a type of non-reality. As the rat-race went on all about these certain individuals, they literally seemed absorbed into the scenery often times taking on the very shape of the buildings or surroundings they were near. As was the case of the young woman in the photograph above and my likening her form and posture to the very buildings she was leaning upon.

The further into the heart of the city I ventured, the more bleak the surroundings became. There was a permeating ugliness here and far fewer people noticed each other. Their true selves became even more obscured by the protective walls they had structured around themselves. When I saw this little boy selling newspapers, I wondered if anyone at all noticed him there or if his human-ness had dissolved into the brick wall he leaned upon. Did the average passerby notice his reflected image in one of the millions of storefront windows or was that too an illusion....a thing to be toned out and placed into the brain file that says "unimportant" as its heading? He stood there whistling his tune while taking notice of various things that caught his attention but sold no newspapers...spoke to no one and no other human stopped to speak to him... he was invisible to the masses.

As I arrived into the heart of the "slums," as some would call them, I discovered an entirely new world. I felt like I had been catapulted into space and landed on a different planet. Nothing here related to me. I felt as lost here as I had ever felt anywhere in my young life. People everywhere were doing what they had to do simply to survive. In the midst of their locale was a reflected image of propsperity and the American Dream that every so often would bring a jolt of reality into the setting of an entirely different type. Limosines rounded corners on their drive to the plush hotels that lay outside this area and taxi cabs stopped at street lights with their big-money-type occupants safely sealed behind locked doors and windows. I imagined that the people inside these vehicles felt a sense of security and remoteness to what they viewed outside of their transports. They did not, or perhaps refused to acknowledge their connections to these street people. They did not exist...they were an illusion. One group of "illusions" is represented in the photo above. This group was always together in some fashion and more often than not, the member placed into the center of this line was the most drunk and in need of extra help to make their way through the streets. After several visits into the heart of the city, they became accustomed to my presence and would wave and shout greetings to me. I had become slightly less invisible to them...I was real and inside their brand of reality now and since I seemed to offer no threat to them, they would actually welcome me "home."

I would like for you to meet a couple of special friends of mine, Rose and her little dog, Barney. I crossed paths with them one day while walking past an alley where Rose was digging for their food that morning. I soon realized why Barney was fat and healthy as Rose made sure that Barney was fed before she fed herself from whatever she found in the trash. Meeting eyes with Rose for the first time, I remember so clearly feeling a state of panic wash across me. She had actually seen me! Though I was quite a visible oddity in the heart of the city as I wandered about with a camera dangling from around my neck and dressed quite unlike the rest of my street companions, I had gone largely unnoticed.

Rose and Barney were not going to avoid me nor place my presence so casually into their brain file called "unimportant." I remember Rose walking quite briskly straight at me with an angry look on her face as though she had an agenda. After the initial tongue lashing mixed with the paralyzingly strong odor of booze wafting my way with each sentence she tossed at me, I remember her stopping and simply staring up at me in silence. To this day I don't remember what she said to me with that first encounter for I was quite honestly terrified. I remember saying to her that I was a college student on an assignment from my photography class to take pictures somewhere I had never visited. I distinctly remember her saying with a deep laugh, "Well girly, you sure picked a shit-hole to come visit!"

Rose, Barney and I spent quite a bit of time with each other after that. I never asked her any questions and she rarely asked anything personal about me, at first that is. As the weeks went by Rose shared more about her life and how she came to be living on the streets. We didn't spend lengthy amounts of time together but in the few minutes once week or so that I shared her world, I learned a great deal about the reality of this life. I learned quickly about just what an enormous illusion I had carried around with me from my safe home in the suburbs to this new place beside Rose.

I remember the last time I ever saw Rose and Barney. We sat down to rest on a bus stop bench. Rose was rubbing her arm and I asked if she had gotten hurt. She smiled and pulled her shirt sleeve up to reveal the most ghastly scar I had ever seen. She told me that it hurt quite a bit these days but that she didn't worry about it because it was stronger than anywhere else on her body. Curiosity pushed me to ask what she meant by that since this arm clearly was causing her pain.

Rose explained, "I used to be a nurse back in the good days. I took care of all kinds of wounds on patients over the years. I learned from the doctors and nurses around me that when the body suffers an injury, the healing process will form a scar over the area as it heals. But, as the injury heals, the skin that makes up this new scar is stronger, tougher and more difficult to penetrate after the healing is complete. So girly, the wounds we suffer through this life just only make us stronger. Remember that."

That was the final thing I ever heard Rose say to me and the last time I ever saw her. I looked for her and asked others on the street about she and Barney but no one knew who or where she was. She left me with the greatest gift that I may have ever gotten. In the decades that followed, I frequently reminded myself of the wisdom Rose had shared with me about scars. I garnered my good share of them that is for sure, but I never forgot to allow those wounds to make me stronger, no matter what kind they were.

Now, please meet Frank who I discovered in our conversations was a Purple Heart recipient in the war. He never spoke of the details of his having received this award during his military service and I never asked. Upon first glance, the average passerby would have refused to look in his direction...he would have been immediately "invisible." In taking the time to listen to Frank, I learned very quickly that he was quite a bright man with a clever and dry sense of humor. He spoke with such clarity and determination that I was intrigued to know everything about him. His story was like many of the people in this inner-city home but his attitude about it all and his reasons for having arrived there were quite contrary to the norm. His meals may have come from dumpsters but his courage was nothing short of remarkable.

This was the last photograph I ever took of my Grandmother. I was struck by the texture of her hands and the similarities to her deeply wrinkled dress she wore that day. I remember her catching me take this photo and she started laughing. She wanted to know why in the world I would want a picture of her wrinkled and arthritis-bent hands. All I could barely speak out of my mouth was, "Because they are YOUR hands Grandma."

She chuckled and then grew quiet before finally stating to me, "Just never forget that when you get old, you had better have hands that are even more wrinkled than mine. Every wrinkle is a 'love-line' of some kind. Every moment of every day in my 85 years of life, these hands have worked hard, lived hard and loved even harder....all the way through. These aren't wrinkles, they are 'lovelines.' "

Today I stepped back in time and I allowed myself to see what these photos truly mean to me. I suppose I never put all the pieces of this puzzle together before today. I am often asked how I can face my life-difficulties with courage and determination. Perhaps because I learned that nothing I face is ever as difficult as what faced Rose, Barney and Frank. I frequently encounter people who refuse to see through the illusions surrounding them and run from the realities in this world. Stepping outside of our comfort zone can be a frightening thing indeed but the possible insight you gain from having done so may change your world forever. I have never forgotten the wisdom Rose shared with me that day when she spoke about 'scars.' Perhaps the understanding of that allows me to embrace others who have their own 'scars' and defense mechanisms up to the point where few of their fellow human beings will wait long enough for the inner un-scarred human to finally reveal itself.

If the leaders of this world spent time walking the streets where the "invisible" people dwell and truly embraced what they encountered rather than race past the realities in their limos and locked-door-taxi-cabs, we might make some serious improvements to this place we all call "home." There are growing numbers of homeless people on our streets and that number is growing every day.

There are increasing numbers of our Veterans who cannot get the medical help they need or the employment opportunities they need to survive outside their military careers. There are thousands of people addicted to all sorts of things that keep them locked in a vicious cycle where they too, become the "invisible" ones in our society. Our prisons are overflowing with those who become "invisible" to the rest of society when they are safely locked away and their problems no longer stare us in the face.

For most, life is far easier to deal with if the status quo is protected and revered. Life's journey is more predictable if we choose to stay firmly seated upon the rock and stare at the clouds reflected upon the water in the rock crevice than to lift our foot and bravely step across the illusion into another reality.

I am grateful that I chose another reality.... and broadened my scope of thinking and understanding so that I would have room in my mental-files for the beautiful people like Frank and Rose.