I’ve been strug­gling with this for the entire day.

I don’t really know of a good angle from which to attack this poverty issue with pas­sion, or with drama, or with the sort of fer­vor or inti­macy that would solicit, from any of the 3 or 4 new web surfers that might come across this site as a result of the bit of source code fol­low­ing this entry, a reac­tion that might lead to action or enlight­en­ment. I don’t.

I’m kneel­ing, typ­ing on this Mac­book Pro that rests on my king-sized bed bathed in light from a lamp I bought at Bom­bay, wear­ing clean white ankle socks, lis­ten­ing to John McCain talk about spe­cial inter­ests and reform and pon­der­ing, as a result of my reg­is­tra­tion with this very well-intended, world-wide blog­ging event, how in the world my life is touched or affected by poverty; and the only thing I’ve been able to come up with — what I’ve been forced to face the entire day — is that I have inten­tion­ally dis­tanced myself from poverty in every sense in a way that I am ashamed of. So I guess I have to write about that before mid­night hits, and hope I reach some­one, or at least come to some sort of a self-realization as a result of all of this, among all of the mixed tenses and run-on sen­tences, that’ll make me feel like less of a loser.

I grew up in Brook­lyn, New York, and spent the early years of my life on the main floor of a brown­stone in Crown Heights before it was fash­ion­able to live in a brown­stone. There were 5 of us — my mother, my father, and my brother and sis­ter, not count­ing the mice and roaches that lived in the walls and made brief appear­ances over the course of the day. We ate steak and pat­a­cones, or arroz con pollo, or white rice with Spam and pep­pers and onions, or canned corned beef, or Chicken of the Sea tuna with tomato sauce and onions, and we saw no prob­lem with any of it. I wore fake Cham­pion shirts, and fake Adi­das, and slept in Lacoste shirts before they sold for $80 a pop and I sorta had a prob­lem with that, only because I would get called on all of those things by my friends. Despite all of that, we weren’t poor (and I’m not allud­ing to any of that we-were-millionaires-in-faith or our-bank-accounts-were-full-of-love stuff here). I saw poor folks near my church as I made my way, crack viles break­ing beneath my stride, to the cor­ner­store after ser­vice. I watched poor folks fight and scream out of the win­dow of my father’s blue Mal­ibu on my way to vis­it­ing rel­a­tives. They existed, and they were close, and I knew who they were — I even had rela­tion­ships some of them — but I wasn’t one of them.

In ’88 we moved to a house in East Flat­bush that had car­peted floors and a porch instead of a stoop and, for all intents and pur­poses, we’d made it. At least in my eyes. It felt like sub­ur­bia to me. Sure the houses were still attached and sure our back­yard seemed a bit smaller, but the entire house was ours and what­ever we owned behind it wasn’t fac­ing an apart­ment build­ing filled with Ortho­dox Hasidic Jews who screamed down at us if the music we played was too loud. There were no more mice, and we could run around as much as we wanted because there was noone beneath us to com­plain about our inex­plic­a­bly heavy footsteps.

But I kinda missed the peo­ple (please let me say here that this is not at all meant to be a pro­found state­ment… it’s just the truth, and it needs to be on it’s own line as it’s own para­graph only because it is com­pletely sep­a­rate, in it’s scope and meter, from the para­graphs before and after it. I am cring­ing as I’m writ­ing this. If you could see me, you’d throw your mon­i­tor at me. That’s how piti­ful I look.).

When I was old enough to get around on the bus and train on my own, I’d run into poverty. I’d look at it, and some­times make fun of it like the arro­gant teen I was, and I’d shoot stern looks at it to keep it away from my coat, or my book­bag, but I’d never speak to it. At some point before high school, I smartened up and started to get involved in the com­mu­nity sur­round­ing my church, which led to a deci­sion in high school to make ser­vice a part of my life (albeit a small part) through the Beta club. I gave my time to peo­ple a few Sat­ur­days at a time. Served food, tutored, etc. Noth­ing big, but it was some­thing, and I felt good about it.

Felt good about it? I’m kid­ding myself. I felt awe­some. Like I’d cured can­cer, or at least chicken pox.

But so what?

I’m con­vinced that, with all of the stuff I’ve been through, and con­sid­er­ing all of the rela­tion­ships I’ve aban­doned, and all of the stu­pid stuff I’ve done to peo­ple, and my past prox­im­ity to the poverty line, and all of the oppor­tu­nites I pass up to spend “qual­ity time with my fam­ily”, I have not even begun to do a frac­tion of what I should be doing to help peo­ple out. I don’t do any­thing now. Well, I donate to the Good­will, and I’ll give some­one $5 every now and then, but… I mean, that’s laugh­able. Peo­ple are dying hor­ri­ble deaths lit­er­ally 30 min­utes away from me in hor­ri­ble con­di­tions and I’m blog­ging about poverty to make myself feel better?

I suck. I feel like a sell­out. You shouldn’t suck. You should do some­thing. So should I.