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It's called free will. This was the conservative argument for deinstitutionalization during the 1980s. It's not the choice I would make, but that's what's great about liberty, each person knows best how to make themselves happy. It's just a shame that he's an alcoholic, but that doesn't negate his preference for the outdoors.
Dinarde is homeless, he often sleeps in the gutter or on the sidewalk, and he has plenty of cash -- a trust fund that at one point was worth nearly $700,000. He draws $2,500 a month from the fund plus $500 a month in Social Security. ... $80 cash every day from the fund.
"I'm rich, but I like it out here. I ain't sleeping inside," Dinarde mumbled through sips of vodka last summer, as he sat with legs splayed in front of St. Francis of Assisi Church. "You can't make me."
Dinarde, a stout fellow with bushy gray eyebrows and beard, was raised in Connecticut and wandered to San Francisco 30 years ago after ditching a carpentry career. He wanted to be a poet, so he went to North Beach, which he heard was a hangout for writers. He's been homeless there ever since, except for the occasional stay inside -- most notably at a small North Beach flat he had for a few months, 10 years ago, with his late wife, Kate.
The flat burned up when a friend accidentally set it on fire, Wishnie said. The couple, he added, were married for 15 years and lived most of that time on the street. Kate, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic, died of a bacterial infection five years ago, and Dinarde still mourns her "as if she just passed yesterday," Wishnie said.
"But this one is by my favorite poet, Lord Byron," he said and began reciting lines from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" solemnly, carefully forming the words through a mouth that has no teeth.
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me. ...
"I stood among them, but not of them,
"In a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts."
Posted by Owen at January 4, 2004 02:54 AM | TrackBack