From Vollman’s “Homeless in Sacramento” in the March ’11 Harper’s:
I sometimes seek to categorize whatever freedom it is these people have that I do not, a freedom that I also do not want. I don’t know whether they wanted to work and couldn’t, or chose not to work, or needed or expected anything. For their part, the only need most of them expressed to me was this: a place from which nobody would move them. Could it truly be that they had everything else they required? They were healthy, watchful, and at ease with what you or I might consider discomfort. You will quickly see that I am foolish to try to describe them or their surroundings at all, since these changed more rapidly than I with my homebound concerns could follow.