ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE...

August 28th, 2006 at 11:50am rochelle 35

On Sunday afternoon while “catching up” with a friend outside of City Market in Aspen I was disturbed to watch what has apparently become a normal characterization within our society. I watched as an elderly and weathered woman exit the driver’s side of the van, with cigarette pack in left hand and a troubled unfocused gaze. She got as far as the shipping- tape spread across her brown dilapidated van when she completely collapsed to the street. As my friend and I went over to help, a male dressed in an undershirt and boxer shorts quickly exited the passenger side of the van and scooped the woman up and assisted her back into the driver’s side of the van. While, my friend and I continually offered our assistance, we were ignored by both. It was a disturbing scene to me on many levels. First and foremost I was watching an obviously intoxicated person be put into a driver’s seat of a van. Secondly, I remember noticing the van parked on the sidewalk of City Market earlier, and thinking “that’s the homeless” van.

You see, the van had been a fixture on my foot commute to City Market while working in an office on Sunday’s in Aspen. In fact, the first time I saw the van, a few months ago; it reminded me of a vacation I took to San Diego and my quiet morning walk down the boardwalk. On that particular morning, the boardwalk of San Diego was waking up to vagabond artist’s who were getting ready to sell their wares via their vans. As I chatted a bit with the artists and continued walking down the boardwalk one of the “vagabond” artist jumped in his van and drove it down the street following me. Yes, it was a creepy experience, but I kept my wits about me and when the van actually stopped and I chatted from a distance, I could see that an empty spirit lied within him, and I always wandered if his actions that morning were perhaps motivated by a moment that morning where I took notice of his existence…and I wandered was he just usually ignored?

So flashing forward to Sunday afternoon, while walking by the van to enter the City Market from the corner of my eye I noticed two people in the van, and I wandered how did they get there?  When did society forget to notice their existence? When did it become okay to state “oh that’s the homeless van” and go on with our lives?

After watching the for mention scene unfold before my eyes, I decided I couldn’t just “go on with my life”. So I made a non-emergency call to Aspen Police dispatch. As the way things were left I feared that the occupants of the van would drive the vehicle. I also worried about the state of the occupants. I wander if it’s possible for adults to be made “wards of the state” for the health and safety of themselves. As it is obvious to me that our society needs to move beyond the characterization and to acknowledge the real existence of a human spirit that lies occupied in a shipping-taped dilapidated brown van outside of City Market.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, Pitkin County