The Art of Begging

We all beg in different ways.Well, I just wrote about two pages on how begging has changed throughout the years and how Hobo-dom differs from Homelessness and on the craft of begging, all spawned out of a line I read in Waiting for Nothing and somehow my ramble was posted as lasdkljfdksjfd... Ah, the wonders of technology.... I will attempt to sum up what I should have saved to my computer. It should still be in my brain somewhere. I saw an old woman standing on the street in Williamsburg the other day. She had been standing there begging in the same spot a year earlier. A woman selling [hideous] art nearby informed be that she was there every day. I then thought about all of the homeless people that seem to blend in with the surroundings of New York. The "spare change" man in front of delion. The "traffic director" that warns us to get to class on time at Washington Square Park. The man on a bench in front of my building. How different these "beggars" are from the Hobo generation of the 30's, on the run place to place. Breakfast in a diner one day, dinner in a different state the next. You can see where the romanticized view of this lifestyle comes into play. A woman standing on the same corner for a year, that's a sad story. A woman (or man in the case of Waiting for Nothing) traveling place to place, meeting people, hopping train cars, now that's a story. It's not having nothing that gives the hobo lifestyle its romanticism, but the idea of going from one place to another, never staying put for too long. For that is a worst curse than any, being trapped in the repetition of everyday life.