It probably exhibits something that is much associated with Diogenesis' use of wit to put his point across.
Do you remember the story of how he's in the tub or the jar, whatever it might be, and Alexander, on his way through the carins, comes to visit him
and asks if there's anything that he can do for him and Diogenesis' response is, yes, you can just stand out of my light a little.
I'm sure he didn't actually say that, I'm sure he didn't live in a tub or if he did, it was only for a few days.
But the idea that he was so very witty and could challenge the great man, Alexander, I think is the important fact.
The story of Alexander in the tub is very interesting.
Alexander is a man of the word, he's a man of the word, he's a man of the word.
He's a man of the word, he's a man of the word.
He's a man of the word.
He's a man of the word.
He's a man of the word.
The 64-year-old man also likes to spend his days camped out on the bank of the Ottawa
River near the Gatineau end of the Portage Bridge on National Capital Commission land,
and that's an activity that the NCC isn't too fond of, and so Gypsy Jack is being evicted.
But for him, life goes on. I've chosen to be in the street years past, and after a while I had
no choice. Like you get into a wheel and you know you cannot stop a wheel from turning. I wouldn't
sound stuck, but I make it like my mission in life is to stand up for the homeless rights.
If we're homeless, it's not because we have problems. Sometimes other people have problems,
or create problems. It's part of Gypsy Jack's philosophy, and it's a philosophy that's inspired
a philosophically-minded film student. Craig Connelly is a third-year Queens University student
who was taken to following Gypsy Jack around, lately with a camera, and he joins me in the
studio. Morning, Craig.
A few days ago I found this in the garbage. It's a paint cart, so I think it's good here.
I don't think my house is too much of a mess. Here in the back you have the sleeping room,
living room, sitting room, wine, and you have the fireplace, table, counter, couch.
Look, I have nice carpet. It's all free. Here is the back door bell. Every door you have a
bell, so I know when someone comes, if he comes from the back or from the front.
There's a coating room here. So I had these clothes for several days a week, and I put
on there on the top, and it got wet. So in order to have it smell good, I hang it over
here. It's all dry cleaning. The sun deck. That's the sun deck. I showed you my washing
machine. It's just a washing machine you see here. It was there when I come here. It fills
up with water, and I got a soap and I washed it. So that's where you bathed? No, no. I
bathed in the river. At one time I was doing this for dream catcher. You use the roots
from the tree, the vine, and the way you twist it. There's a lot in here. I'm going to have
another sun deck there, and a new beach. I used to have only this little section in the
beginning where I had a kind of mattress, and it was a bedroom. It was a whole house,
but now I refer to it. That's about the tour. Very nice. When I go, I wake and it's dark,
and if I have stress in everything, it doesn't look so nice. It just kind of erases all the
stress.
When you come here, whistle, I'll probably be around.
I put it there.
I want to put a sign, Craig and Christine.
If you show up and you don't see me, whistle, I'll probably be around somewhere in the
mansion.
So the mansion is so big.
Can I ask a question?
Yeah.
So you said a bird in a golden cage is still a bird in a cage?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You cannot put a bird in a cage even if it's golden.
Even if it's golden?
Yeah.
The system wants to put you in a cage.
And me, I don't go about in the cage.
Because we're not meant to be in the cage.
We're meant to be free.
Essentially, it's referred to as a cynic philosopher.
He was a very, it seemed a confrontational character, created great reaction in the society
in which he not so much taught as showed his way of life.
He seems to have believed that the best life, the life of a wise man is lived according to
nature, so the most natural and possible.
And by nature, he included not just humans, but animals, gods, the whole product of the
world of nature.
That brought him into confrontation, of course, with society of the city, the cities that
he lived in, because he was rejecting all what he thought were artificial elements of
society.
We use cynicism, small sea cynicism, to mean a kind of a superior look at how people act,
or perhaps an interpretation of their motives.
Politicians in particular, I think, were very cynical about at the moment.
That would not be, I think, quite the use of cynicism as it was in Diogenes' day or
immediately after.
It's not that direct confrontation to societal norms that the cynics, capital sea cynics,
were presented.
Some of what we assume by cynicism, small sea, I think is contained in that kind of cynicism,
because it might have seemed to a good deal of the people who viewed Diogenes and his
lifestyle, his very provocative lifestyle.
He was, in fact, trying to say how superior his method of life was.
For me, I have had ideas like how to administrate the whole thing.
I could be a good president, but I don't want to, because I'll pass either for a fool, or
they try to say things wrong.
If you're a good man, if you're a good person, they try to destroy you, because they like
it the way it is.
You know, most people are blind, they sleep, they like it like this.
It's like a routine, but not no routine.
What is interesting, I think, about some of the aspects of his lifestyle, apart from
the very difficult way it was achieved.
He lived off the land, or lived by begging.
He lived in very simple circumstances, very simple clothing.
I think what's admirable about Diogenes is his emphasis on equality.
We are here for more like repartition.
Take from the rich, give to the poor.
The rich, they don't want that.
The rich, they want to exterminate the poor, so in order to have more.
Even if they have more, what they can get, more happiness?
Money don't buy happiness.
Because mother nature, she doesn't need money.
When she's tired of all this corruption, she comes out, Rita, Katerina, she destroys everything.
She said, I don't fucking care, you fucking money, you're worth no shit.
And she destroys everything.
I believe in mother nature.
Katerina is my friend.
Rita is my friend.
And when she destroys, she means that you are not correct.
You're not correct.
You're poor to retain, you're destroying, and vengeance.
It's the vengeance of the sea, because the mother nature is avenging.
And here she comes to me to say, hey, you old man, be careful.
She can destroy like that.
You have to respect the mother, otherwise the mother will destroy you.
No matter how rich you are.
One of the questions, of course, which comes up for all of us is,
how do we actually deal with the conditions under which we find ourselves?
How do we deal with the world which we haven't actually created for ourselves?
We need to start off by accepting the nature of reality in a sense endorsing it, saying, this is the real.
It can stop us berating the world and grumbling and complaining in a rather helpless, resentful way
against things which, in fact, we are fated to confront and live in.
It can actually be an argument for finding a way to have a constructive response to the world.
We are born into a world and we actually have to accept where we find ourselves at a moment.
Without, and therefore, that we do not get full of resentment about where we are,
without endorsing that world, to accept what we are, how we are, where we find ourselves,
can in fact become a launching off point for change.
My mother found it hard to accept.
When I started in 1968, travelling and at the road, finding my sister told her,
listen, you choose to live this life.
Oh, I don't want to see my son in the misery.
She thinks I live in misery because I'm poor and I accept it to be poor.
I accept it to live this life.
Okay, I have no problem with that.
Well, okay.
So the thing is, sometimes I just put the music on so people believe there's lots of happening here
and now over there, just laying in the sun.
Do people ever come through here at all?
No.
You know, I wouldn't hurt a fly, but people are scared of me.
That's the whole fucking problem.
People have difficulty accepting the difference.
We talk about acceptance.
And what's the difference?
What do you think is the difference?
Well, you're not like a hip hop or a yo.
People identify, oh, I'm a yo.
I'm a freak, I'm a redneck, I'm a punk or a skim.
People like to identify with something.
You have to belong to some kind of stereotype.
Me, I don't care.
I'm just trying to be myself.
And I don't know if nobody likes me, but I have lots of fans.
Lots of people love me, but some people hate me.
I don't know.
I think that goes for everyone has that problem.
Everyone has that problem.
I told you, oh, yeah, you have a problem of acceptance.
You start to accept yourself.
Now I'm just like, oh, yeah, I'm just, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what I'm about to do.
I'm just kind of stuck there.
If they take the stuff away, then it's finished here.
I turn the page.
Actually, I have turned the page.
One of my things is turned the page.
It's time to turn the page.
You read this book, and then it's time to do it.
After that, we're going to go home.
I don't know what I'm about to do.
I don't know what I'm about to do.
This tree was mangé, coupé, chopped by the beaver.
The beaver's house over there.
So they couldn't do the whole thing.
So I did head them out.
Finally, when the retard came about, the tree falls.
So it gives me the wood for firewood.
And they come after the job.
Given his rejection of society by living outside its boundaries,
by living his little, self-sufficient life,
in that way, he's Diogenes.
The fact he's living, however, on government land is an interesting one,
because like Diogenes seems to have done,
he's acknowledging that there is some role in which he's dependent on the state.
I always find that tension a very intriguing one.
We can reject, but only so far, perhaps,
because there's some part of that community that we need.
So in that way, Gypsy Jackman accepted the Diogenes,
and the government and the NCC would be the state of Athens,
or the state of Collins, or whatever.
The opponent, the society that he's trying to reject,
but can never quite get away from it.
You don't have a cell phone?
No.
Well, actually, at the top, you're there.
I've been waiting for a couple of hours, I waited for you.
Well, the thing is, it told me 10 o'clock.
Okay.
You haven't seen anyone around?
No, I've been waiting out front.
Okay.
You knew I was coming?
Yep.
I didn't know you were coming.
I assumed you were going to be here.
I don't want to see that, but actually, I have to assist them.
I wasn't going to do nothing,
but actually, a friend of mine, Jerry, who told me,
you have to fight for the homeless.
So, I fight for myself, and I fight for the sight,
and I want to see how they're going to destroy that.
I tried, I called the sun.
They have no time.
I was to call a radio contender, or whoever,
media, but you're there.
Diogenes had to kind of accept some of society's
institutional assets in order to get his message across.
Using literature, you mean?
Yes.
Right at the same time, using it as a kind of
subversive instrument.
So, he's accepting it in part, and rejecting it,
or using it to reject it.
So, I've read the article, but whoever is interested,
just look here.
CH.
Look, the nice man there.
The best you could do.
Dirty.
He lives in the street.
He is the dirty one.
You have never allowed to live in the street,
live on the park, except on the clouds.
That's what I told him.
Where do you want me to go?
He used literature then in some way, perhaps,
subversively to challenge society.
He's a learned man.
If he wrote that republic, then he knows exactly
how to present his gaze in a literary form.
It's interesting that there's, at the heart of his cynicism,
a kind of attention, I think,
using the form to challenge the forms.
We at CBC often get our stories from the newspaper,
not all the time, but when a good one like this comes along,
we jump at it.
I saw the pictures, I read the story with great interest,
and it just seemed like a natural radio story to me,
a natural TV story as well for them.
First of all, we were incredibly lucky to find them.
We knew that it was somewhere around the Portash Bridge,
we didn't know exactly where,
and we just ran into you guys on the pathway,
so that was lucky to start with.
They're probably giving me a break.
Can you put that up on there?
Sure.
You are?
H.
H.
Who used to be the new R.O.?
No.
No?
It's...
Yeah, sometimes we read the newspaper.
I'll get that for you.
You can put that on your belt.
Yeah.
No.
If you have questions for me, it's better because...
Sure.
I always...
I'm repeating myself.
This article in my paper.
I need new questions.
You are a venture.
I killed my friend there.
Oh, there.
Hi.
I need a venture.
You need a venture.
Okay, well, maybe we'll get a tour.
Yeah, maybe we'll get a tour.
When I first arrived here...
You can tell me if you want.
Yeah, I don't want to know.
They put...
Not tried to...
They tried to...
Put a burden on me or...
I don't know how to explain this.
When it comes the time to go travel and enjoy...
No more...
No more...
They tried to find something.
Everything was going right.
Then...
They steal my stuff.
Another day, everything goes right.
Something happens, something bad.
I don't know.
Do you think that in your lifetime that...
Some of the choices you made has led to where you are right now?
I made a choice once.
And I realized...
There's no way to go back.
I chose to defend the homeless cause.
I chose to be a homeless.
And that's why you've been...
Is that why you've been homeless for 30 years?
Well, I'm not a real homeless, to tell you the truth.
I'm not a fake homeless, but I'm not a real homeless.
Like the way we see homeless is being on the streets.
No clothes, no belongings.
I don't see no...
There's no mission there.
The NCC is driving over there.
Only they have something else to do.
Maybe they don't want to hear it.
Actually, you know what?
We're on the movie.
I found out they have a camera over there.
Every time I come here, they know.
They know everything about me.
That's why they don't bother.
Because the whole men don't do no wrong.
I'm a good person.
I do no wrong to no one.
I don't understand why people do me wrong.
That's the thing I wanted to explain before.
I don't do no wrong to no one.
Why people keep doing wrong to me?
Maybe it's karma.
Maybe in the past life I was very bad.
I was a tyrant.
I was really bad.
I had to come in this lifetime to pay.
Pay back.
Pay the bill.
Maybe that's what I understand from all the bad that's happened to me
is that paying the bills of the past life.
It's a big question as to how far one can reject society.
Does one have the right to challenge society?
To that extent would you become offensive to them?
Why not?
Why don't you become offensive to them?
Why don't you become offensive to them?
Why don't you become offensive to them?
Why don't you become offensive to them?
