A Meeting with a Friend

Not long ago, I met with a friend whom I had known from years ago, long before I became homeless. The meeting became a measuring stick that told me just how much things have changed in my life in the interim. The two of us have quite a lot in common. We are middle aged men who both lived in Israel for an extended period of time. We both are fathers of five children. We both have worked as technical writers for a number of years. Both of us are out of work at present, and both of us are writing novels that we are trying to have published, so there was no problem in finding topics of conversation in the meeting.

Because we had not seen each other in years, I had forwarded to him the photograph that appears with my column so that he could identify me when we met. As he readily told me, I look exactly as I do in the photograph. Yet he also said to me, “You don’t look happy.” Some things I could not hide, namely the melancholy that goes with being homeless and wondering if my situation will ever improve. It was very hard for me to sound upbeat in the conversation when there is so little for me to sound upbeat about in my life. It was very much like trying to make an ugly bride pretty for the photographs: a very difficult and frustrating task indeed.

Thanks to the Wildtech project currently under way at CCNV in which I am very much involved as a writer of curriculum and instructor, I could honestly say that I am working on a project that is keeping me quite busy and that I have opportunity to keep my skills as a technical writer sharp as I put together documentation for the persons learning in the Microsoft Word course that I teach. I also had opportunity to express my frustrations regarding working with Word 2007 and its Web-dependent features. I realized that I had not totally lost touch with the outside world, largely thanks to Wildtech and the work that I do at Arts and Education, for which I felt very grateful.

We then got onto the topic of writing novels, and here I actually found myself taking the lead, as I have approached more publishers and agents than my friend has. He asked me how does a person make a submission to an agent or publisher, and I was able to share with him my experience, which has taught me that while each company has its own way of doing things, in general, most companies will want to see no more than a first chapter in an initial correspondence. He asked me how to submit the chapter, and I told him that most places ask to copy and paste it into the e-mail content instead of attaching it because companies wish to avoid possible viruses that could come in through attachments.

Then the subject drifted to more personal matters, and that was when my friend discovered the reason that I do not look happy. It’s not easy to be happy when the future looks questionable and the present is so unpleasant. I had also received disturbing news from my son not long ago regarding his own living situation, and that was weighing on me as well; the thought that he could become homeless as well was worse than depressing to me.

When we parted company, my friend said, “If I don’t find a job, we’ll be meeting again soon.” I left with an odd feeling. On the one hand, I had held my own in the meeting, but on the other hand, I realized that he and I were in totally different worlds now. That disturbed me more than anything. I once belonged to the middle class quite comfortably; I am now alienated from it by almost four years of being homeless. That’s sufficient reason to be sad.