Artooz Fungie

I met a homeless man in New York City while working an internship at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with the Omega Liturgical Dance Company. I was 20 years old, trusting, naïve, and impressionable. The young, skinny black man, just a few years older than I was, captured me with his eyes as deep as the ocean. He didn’t speak very much, but when he did, it was always something profound. He hung around my office and offered a thought from time to time. Periodically he’d ask me a question and seemed to ponder my replies. In time, we became friends. He sat silently with me whenever I went to the Cathedral gardens and watched the peacocks. Between long silences, we talked about the goodness of humanity in spite the violence and injustice all around us. He was a mystery to me, and his resilience impressed me greatly.

He drew pictures and gave them to me as souvenirs . He signed them "Artooz Fungie". I finally learned that his name was Tino.

  A few months into my internship, I went to volunteer at a youth center in Harlem that was actually housed in an abandoned building shared with drug addicts. My friend, Tino, walked me into and out of Harlem every day. I never knew where he went while I worked with the kids, but he never failed to show up when I was ready to leave and he ensured I that I never walked in Harlem unchaperoned by him. I was moved by his kindness and naïve enough to never suspect that he had an ulterior motive. He never gave me reason to doubt him; and now, nearly 30 years later, I still do not doubt the sincerity of his kindness.  

Still sorting through old boxes and settling into a new home, I recently found this poem in my New York scrapbook and I’m pretty sure I wrote it about Tino. It’s terrible, but nonetheless, I am sharing it because it represents a young woman’s tender, safe, and protected experience in a potentially dangerous environment. I am older, wiser, and much less daring now than I was then, but the questions remain about that young homeless man and really, about humankind: what is anyone’s source of perseverance and endurance? What makes any of us move and love and think?    

Oh righteous man of mystery’s tempting wink
What makes you move and love and think?  
Cast a dream upon the moon
a  wish of silence to hush the human’s dangerous brood.  
Oh righteous man of humble peace and quiet rest,
what is your source of breath, your heart

beneath your breast?

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[gray hair remedy]

He is a living legend, A silent giant.