Detachment and Dave

This weekend i collected cans, but not for myself. Let me explain.

It was Saturday night at 2 in the morning and i was outside a party with my friend’s older brother Tony. We were smoking a cigarette when a black man walks up to us with a shopping cart half full of cans.

The guy looked like he was hurting. He appeared about 40-50ish and was wearing a black skull hat, a worn out Carhartt, and filthy khaki pants. Although the clothing seemed sufficiently warm for the weather, he was missing teeth and his eyes rolled uncontrollably in their sockets. He had a limp as well.

The man stayed on the sidewalk with his cart and asked if it was alright if he could pick up the cans that were scattered across the front porch.

Tony didn’t make eye contact or answer him. This guy is from NYC, so i feel that he has a little more of a precautious attitude when it comes to talking to wandering strangers in the night.

So with Tony opting out of the conversation, i replied “of course, let me help you” and together we began collecting the mess of cans in the front yard.

Naturally, i was interested in this stranger, so we began talking. i mentioned how i was collecting cans for a blogging class but i don't think he knew what a blog was. Putting that topic aside, i asked him how often he can hunts, he said three days a week…


“Three days, that’s not too bad, how much ya usually make?”

“Well I s'pose I make ‘bout $300 a week.”

“Really?”

“Yea, yea. $300 a week.”

“Whoa, that’s pretty good money.” says the middle class college student who has a job and ignorantly looks at $300 as a good chunk of money.

“Well it’s not ‘nough fer me ta get ‘n apartment, but once my compensation check comes, Ima get $100,000.”

“Compensation man, for what?"


“Dat’s why my eyes are woabbly. I got nickered in da ‘ead. My lawsuit jus settled and Ima get my check this Friday.”

“Shit, that sucks, least your getting some money from it. How’d it happen?”

“I used ta live in Buffalo wit my daughter ‘nd granddaughter. I was workin’ and got hit in da head. I’ve jus’ been sleepin outside and colle’ting cans, but now wit my check… gonna get me a studio down ‘ere.”

You left your daughter and granddaughter in Buffalo? i’m a hippie and i’m a scumbag, and i’m defiantly not a judge. Although this seemed interesting, i didn’t want to get into any trouble discussing domestic life and by this time in the conversation, we'd finished picking up all the cans.

“Well it was very nice meetin’ ya. My name is Frank, what’s your name buddy?”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, I’m Dave.”

“Well good luck with that compensation check Dave, have a good night.”

And with that, he rolled his cart down the street.

Is this just me, or what? i feel like all the sudden, i open my eyes and stop writing about how i use cans to buy cheap alcohol and what an ocean i've been missing. It makes me tear up thinking about it. Not out of sympathy; sympathy/morality/charity are one of the biggest problems in the world (in this sense) but out of awe. Here is this man who is on the streets collecting cans, waiting for a check to come. Waiting. i wonder what the situation is with his daughter and granddaughter in Buffalo. Did his son-in-law kick him out of the house? Is his daughter even married, does she have anyone to look after her? Why doesn’t the daughter look after her homeless father? Did he just get up and leave them there, without knowledge or note of his current location? Did he realy have a $100,000 check coming his way? How is he gonna get his check in the mail if he's homeless?

i don’t know and how can i care? When you start feeling too much for something you lose your balance. i’m no Buddhist monk, but there are tenets i follow, specifically when it comes to detachment.

Let me explain detachment in this particular sense.

People confuse detachment very easily. i just got in a conversation Friday about this, rapping until 8 in the morning (in a very Cassady fashion if i might be so bold to compare).

Detachment in definition revolves around releasing oneself from all bonds, emotional, physical, and spiritual. To be completely detached one must be isolated.

That’s what people confuse detachment as, isolation, but it is the opposite. Detachment in not being isolated from everything, but simultaneously attached to everything and nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing is the word of the day. Look at the Lao Tzu’s idea of nothing. Everything is everything, but everything can’t be everything and nothing (kinda like how God knows what it’s like to be everyone all the time, but can never know what it’s like to be you and no one). Nothing can be both nothing and everything. With everything you lose the universe of nothingness.

So detachment is like nothingness. Detachment; not in caring about nothing, but being completly affectionate of the nothing in everything, and the everything in nothing, to be at a conitual point of homeostasis.

In my detachment, i care a lot for Dave. i don’t feel sympathy for him, i don’t feel remorse. Our lives are the same, there is no regret. His being and soul are the exact same as mine, and fuck self pity.



…completed at 10:23 pm, October 18 while listening to Pink Floyd’s Animals, released January 1977 by Capitol Records. Special thanks to the tracks "Dogs" and "Pigs (three different ones)."