Finding Substance

Today I will talk about the reasons why I chose to write the fifth story in Aberrant Selected, simply entitled, Help. This story tells the story of a young homeless man who discovers a newborn babe wrapped in a blanket, in a park. The setting of this story, a small park in Redfern, inner city Sydney, is where I spent a miserable, cold night trying to sleep during a wilfully chosen five year stint of homelessness. I tried to sleep under some bushes, on the ground covered with wood chips, and only had a thin piece of cardboard to lie on. That night has remained in my mind ever since because while I was trying to sleep, trying to obliterate my destitution temporarily, I was also looking around at the nearby houses, well lighted, and looking so obviously warm on that cold winter night. I eventually chose to set a story under those bushes in that park to tame that demon, to reinforce the fact that I am now in a much better place and will never again choose such dereliction. In fact much of my writing is done to exorcise various demons that I encountered in my five years of homelessness in the inner cities of Sydney and Melbourne.
     Another reason I chose to write this story is because of why the main character, Joshua Andrew Devine, discovers the abandoned infant. Joshua espies the wrapped infant and approaches it hoping that it is a bundle of money. When I was homeless I too was often on the lookout for money that had been discarded. Certainly this expectation was irrational but during my five years of homelessness I was largely irrational and a full blown schizophrenic. I never found any money.
     I didn't end up sleeping that night in the Redfern park, it was simply too cold on that winter's night. But I remained lying down, looking forward to the sun's rising. I only ever stayed there the one night but I have been back to the spot a couple of times to compare and contrast my life then with my wonderful life now. There still was never any money there, discarded or hidden under the bushes. As one would expect.