Skip to main content

Opinion : The Zealot Watchers in Strassberg dont leave women without harassing them: Personal Experience in Early Dicember

I was in Strassberg in France and couldnt pay for a hostel bed and because of xmas all hostels were full.  I am what people call a Bag Lady .... i am an artist painter and i carry my Art Work and other things about with me .  I had taken refuge from the rain in a mosque. A woman ex social worker had told me that she could help me .... she took me to another social worker who asked me many questions including why i hadnt been around for some months (as if not being homeless and needing them was not a good thing !) after many questions asked she reluctantly put me in a 115 place in a room with two other women  both from Africa.  Another two girls who were there had been lucky enough to find a friend (a Man) who would give them hospitality what is known is doing "the putain"  which means relying on men .....

Admittedly i had a lot of bags and carried them on two shopping wheels, but i was shaken first by the man at the reception who ordered me not to move my things from the small closet in the room. the atmosphere was heavy and unpleasant .... i had only gone there to get out of the cold ....
Paris had never been a "lager" or given me this unfriendly unwelcoming  feeling.(years earlier i had been to a woman´s center called Femme de Parole  who had been lovely and very welcoming ,helpful and friendly) .

Infact what i had intuited the night before translated itself into reality the next day. As i was going to the ground floor with my first chariot , i left the second one waiting infront of the lift .... and this was because i was in a hurry to get away from the place as soon as i could .... i was looking forward to getting a coffeee with a ten euro note i  had left.  Why had i been so naive in thinking that i would find my second  shoping  trolley where i had left it?  Some one had carried it away and put it into one of the rooms nearby .... that included my last ten euros ,,,, and  my papers and my coat and my food and tent .

I was now left with half my things and a lot of men approaching me suggesting probably that if i paid them i would have my things back !.... that was the sort of protection an elderly roaming person gets from 115 in Strassberg now a days  ....  a lot of this depended on the pycosis of security .... as if people getting run over by trucks depends on the homeless carrying bags .... who ever is doing this pretends to be on the left but is really on the extreme right and out to get the people who are in need .....

These people should be ashamed of themselves !
Later on a watcher approached me wearing  a sky blue raincoat and said she wanted money etc .... she couldnt even speak french and said she spoke serbo croat ....  it was amazing ....

Later on i met a girl i knew from last year .... a very young attractive girl from one of    "those blond countries"....  she  said she was working .... ie she was asking people for money on the street wearing her "Nike shoes" and nice clothes .... she said she was a mathematician and was looking for work . she spoke a lot of languages including Russian and English .  She was still dependant on the 115 for her housing and was living according to their timing (ie years can go by and nothing will go forward in your life unless a miracle happens).

  I asked her why she wasn´t making friends with the locals .... being young and pretty and blond is certainly an advantage to get a life .... she said she deserved a millionaire and she wasnt joking ! Who can blame people for dreaming ?  She probably wasnt aware that millionares stick to each other and are not interested in "nice girls" .....   During  our conversation she said something that indicated she knew what i was carrying in my bags which i  now considered as stolen .....  i had had a fur coat which i slept in because it protected me from the biting cold  ....    i had found it in a rubbish bin together with lots of other good things.  She was asking me "how come you get to have good things and i dont ? "!  It was very frustrating to hear that ... i wanted to tell her , you too should get yourself a tent and travel on foot carrying bags and perhaps you will find some joy ....  perhaps that way  you will get some fresh air and get rid of your mean attitude !

I knew she had the wrong idea about me .... i wanted to tell her that i moved around a lot and wasn t sleeping in a comfy bed each night like she was .... i did things she wouldnt do because she was a LADY  and even now she looked as if she was dressed to go out to a concert while i didnt have the right shoes and was wearing slippers in the cold wet weather for fear of people like herself .....  who were watchers from the Stasi and were always interested in other peoples belongings !

I could have helped this girl change her life but seeing her stale minded attitude i thought only some "Real Love" and "Divine illumination" could help her ....  how sad to be so set in your ideas while you are in your twenties.

The materialism of eastern Europe is based on a philosophy ....  which is not organic and or flexible and does not consider a lot of human factors.  Sometimes they dont even realize that a lot of people dont have what they have and in a way they are richer and luckier than a lot of other people who never had communist regimes in their countries.
  A girl from Bulgaria was telling me how she was working as a cleaner in a hotel in  a tourist filled city in Italy and she was getting paid enough to send money home and invest in her small retail shop where her sister worked and she  ran the family business  while a lot of young italians i knew could only dream of having a job like hers .....



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Article from "The New York Times" Madagascar and Vanila plantations Photographs and Text by FINBARR O’REILLY AUG. 29, 2018

 Comment:  I once found a bag near a shopping Mall in Paris ....  It looked like a girl owned it because it was full of makeup bits and pieces and there were a lot of cards in it , one of which belonged to a buisness school and this had her name on it.  The student was from Madagascar and i was sighing to myself when i called the school and the receptionist wasnt helpful in finding the person i was looking for.  I went to the consolate or Embassy one morning , spending money on a Taxi in order to give the bag to a safe person working there.  The consolate reminded me of  consolates or embassies representing very poor countries ...   .... where is  all the money and wealth going ? SAMBAVA, Madagascar — Bright moonlight reflected off broad banana leaves, but it was still hard to see the blue twine laced through the undergrowth, a tripwire meant to send the unwary tumbling to the ground. “This is the way the thieves come,” sai...

LA Republica : A Verona lo street artist Cibo combatte il fascismo e il razzismo con i murales

arti visive street & urban art A Verona lo street artist Cibo combatte il fascismo e il razzismo con i murales       By   Valentina Poli  - 31 luglio 2018 QUANDO L’ARTE PUÒ DAVVERO FARE LA DIFFERENZA NELLE NOSTRE CITTÀ: CIBO È UNO STREET ARTIST VERONESE, CLASSE 1982, CHE CON IL SUO LAVORO PROVA A CANCELLARE LE SCRITTE E I SIMBOLI D’ODIO CHE AFFOLLANO I MURI COPRENDOLE CON FRAGOLE, ANGURIE, MUFFIN E ALTRE COSE DA MANGIARE. LA SUA STORIA Lavoro dello street artist Cibo “Non lasciare spazio all’odio”  o  “No al fascismo. Sì alla cultura”  e ancora  “Se ci metto la faccia è perché ho la speranza che altri mi seguano nel rendere le città libere dall’odio e dai fascismi, qualsiasi bandiera portino oggi. Scendete in strada e non abbiate paura! La cultura e l’amore vincerà sempre su queste persone insipide!”.  Queste sono alcune frasi che si possono leggere sul profilo Facebook di  Pier Paolo Spinazzè , in ...

Abigail Heyman’s Groundbreaking Images of Women’s Lives (from The New Yorker)

Photo Booth Abigail Heyman’s Groundbreaking Images of Women’s Lives By Naomi Fry November 1, 2019 “Houma Teenage Beauty Contest,” 1971. Photographs by Abigail Heyman In a two-page spread featured early on in “ Growing up Female ,” a photography book by Abigail Heyman, from 1974, two black-and-white pictures are laid out side by side. The left-hand photo shows a reflection of a little girl, from the shoulders up, gazing at herself in a bathroom mirror. The child, who is perhaps four or five, with dark, wide-set eyes and a pixie haircut, is separated from her likeness by a counter, whose white-tiled expanse is littered with a variety of beauty products: perfume bottles, creams, and soaps. These quotidian markers of feminine routine are accompanied by an element of fantasy; gazing at herself, the little girl stretches a slinky into a makeshift tiara atop her head. Seemingly mesmerized by her own image, she is captured at the innoce...