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Kate Chandler's avatar

It occurs to me now I read this that nearly all of the homeless people I hung out with in my youth had learned how to "just be" ON stage due to having no backstage options. It was what attracted me to them as people in the first place - their rawness, their realness, their inability or unwillingness to hide the parts of themselves that people in polite/civilised society usually hide because they don't play nicely with social mores and expectations: to sit among them and be part of their experience was refreshing and consistently eye-opening to the sheltered, teenaged version of me who was just beginning to learn about and become fascinated with the dark underbelly of reality.

In my naivety, I had assumed that most were homeless/outcast because of that quality making them unable or unwilling to fit into regular society, rather than that quality existing in them because they simply had no place private to be their secret selves. Now I think of it, nearly all of them had some kind of substance abuse disorder, which suggests the latter: because they had no real sanctuary available, they couldn't "just be" without inducing an artificial sanctuary to take refuge in, one that both temporarily took away the reality of the shared world and shielded them mentally and emotionally, if not physically, from the hate and harassment they constantly received.

Maybe I did intuit that at some level, because I did try to offer a couple of them an alternative place of refuge - if not a home, then at least a safe space, emotionally as much as physically. But it was too late for them: the substance already ruled, and the inevitable inevitabled.

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Jurassic Barry's avatar

Sorry for the random comment, was trying to track down an email, but came up with nada. Will you ever continue writing tales with Nolan and Co.? I read a lot, more than I should, and somehow The Anomaly has remained the pinnacle of fiction for me in the last decade. It even got me to travel cross country to Newspaper Rock. Point being, please explore that world again? You’re the man.

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