Adventures in Poverty #1 {03/19/09} By FilmHeroin

Adventures in Poverty #1 {03/19/09} By FilmHeroin

One of the realities of poverty is that it wears you down. Minute by minute...Day after day...you can feel the small pieces of humanity...and hope...being torn from you.

You stand in the sweltering heat waiting for a bus that is never on time. And, despite your best efforts...as you watch the happy people in their SUVs, Hummers, and BMWs...You always end up asking yourself: 

"Where did I go wrong?"

I board the bus...it's so full that we're jammed together like cattle headed for the slaughterhouse. The air in the bus is thick with the acrid stench of a heady combination of body odor, cigarette smoke, piss, vomit, drug sweat, alcohol, and desperation.

The young man directly in front of me is a meth addict. I watch him as he twitches and shakes...his limbs and head jerking violently. He's locked in the chemical St. Vitus Dance of the Meth Monkey.

In a futile effort to regain control over his body...he tightly embraces one of the safety poles. It's then that I notice- with my artist's eye- that he has beautiful hands. Even with the dark, caked dirt under his fingernails...he has the hands of an artist. I knew that he, too, despite his best efforts...always ended up asking himself: 

"Where did I go wrong?"