Toy Elephant in Simi Valley Homeless Community Tent City

Toy Elephant in Simi Valley

 

Dolls as important as fossils or other artifacts of the landscape. As Amtrak carries me home to my family in San Jose, I see all kinds of tent cities and make shift homes along the highway.  Some have actual windows, and are bits and pieces of trailers and other small structures.  Others are just tarps over tents.  A few have lawn ornaments, and one had a blow mold snowman as a decoration.

 

The saddest, most poignant were the two with stuffed animals.  I couldn’t get a photo, but one was a toy stuffed elephant once pink, maybe.  It was positioned against the hill, near the top, as if it were climbing. The other was a velveteen Doberman dog, almost life-sized lying on its side next someone’s temporary camp.

 

There was a young girl sitting in front of one of the tent communities, around 30, wearing a parka, and lighting a cigarette.  It had been raining, which is rarer than we might think in California. 

 

How sad it is to see people living this way in a country that wants for nothing, and in communities like Los Angeles, Simi Valley and Santa Barbara, with its neighborhoods full of millionaires.  Yet, fate is what it is sometimes.

 

I guess my point is that while it's true things can be replaced, certain possessions define us and make our lives bearable. They are symbolic, like folk art, fine art, or beloved books are. Like fossils, they tell stories of those who came before us, or maybe like the artifacts archaeologists find, study, rescue and display.  To paraphrase Barbara Pym, even an ordinary persons things are interesting and tell a story.

 

Be well.