Maybe you'll talk. Probably about dope. Or the war, or anything else you can talk about that ends up "Shit man" with both of you shaking your heads back and forth. But pretty soon you'll probably get bored or uptight, and will stand up, maybe shake hands, and then walk off. But the other guy will still be sitting there, because he's a street freak and has nowhere and everywhere to go. You have a place.

Ask someone on the streets why he's in Cambridge and maybe (if you're lucky) you'll get a mumble. And he's right, because that isn't really a question. I mean, why is anybody anywhere? People used to give idealistic answeres, about finding themselves, or looking for truth, but that was when it was still romance. Everybody knows better now.

There is only tentative being; treading icy existential waters. Maybe it's just wanting to be left alone. Maybe it's wanting to see yourself reflected in a world as passive as a mirror. Or wanting to be rid of responsibilities to places or things or people or jobs. Or, just as likely, and just as untrue, it's wanting to create a new world. It's unfortunate that trying to destroy an old one takes up all your time. But these are questions that people in the streets will not listen to. Living in the streets means precisely that one is no longer willing to put up with such questions. And they're right, because any answer has to be bullshit.

Ask Flash, and he'll give you an answer. That's probably because he's done it so many times before that it's become his thing. He's maybe 15, with suspenders and great big braces on his teeth. Flash has been on the streets for about three years. He gives interviews all the time.

Flash says that 700 new people have come to Cambridge in the past week. Some sleep in the Cambridge Common. Some are lucky enough to find a place in someone's house. Some maybe go right back home. "For a girl," says Flash, "It's pretty easy. All she has to do is stand there and ask guys and one will take her home. It's a ball for a bed. But for a guy, trying to find a place to crash by asking people on the street is like trying to smoke a joint rolled in cellophane."

"Why do people come here? They

think that there's good dope, and they've heard that the heat isn't so bad here. The law, that is. "Which opens up a pretty touchy subject. The heat didn't used to be bad here. Since the Harvard Square riot, in April, it's gotten much worse. Flash is pissed at the polities. He says they're all from Harvard and M.I.T., and marched into the Square and fore shit out of it without thinking of the people who live in it-like Flash. But here Flash is probably the exception. Most street freaks probably think of themselves as revolutionary vippies now. The Weatherman Declaration of War that came out of the Underground a couple of weeks ago said to look for the Weathermen all over America. wherever there's free love and dope. "Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks." Or, as a member of NAS put it in cautioning SDS against holding a rally in Central Square. "A lot of street people are into trashing now." Go to one of the "Summerthing" concerts in the Stadium and you'll realize the volubility of kids with nothing to do and nothing to lose, who also hate America. Think about it. What do they have to lose by going to jail? Or, what does a speed freak really have to lose even by getting killed? Hippie is dead. Everybody knows that except Reader's Digest. But what that means is that kids who just a couple of years ago said Peace and Love Baby and put flowers in soldiers' rifles, now say off the pig and mean it.

The heaviest part of all is that deep down nobody really thinks it's going to get any better in America. There are just too many who can't understand that its no more ridiculous to yell off the pig than it is to work at a job and pay taxes to a war you can't understand. Polities is happening because it's happening. And you know, someone will say to you in the streets, revolution is far out. I can dig it. I hypothetically answer. Even though it's crazy, and maybe even wrong. You have to accept a lot of craziness these days. I side with the craziness of young people because it's in some way a response to the original monstrous craziness of the Vietnam War.

There are other responses besides tripping out. They are probably much better. They require a confidence in who you are and how what you do relates to America that street people probably don't have. I doubt, for example, that Quakers feel an existential need to riot to serve the Vietnamese. Nor must they take acid to prove to themselves the disparity between their world and that of their fathers. Their fathers are probably Quakers too.

And although frustration and despair are valid responses to a world so clearly out of control, there are places where one can give time and concern and see results that don't depend on a particular theoretical analysis. What this means is putting the pieces of the world that you still recognize back together inside your head, and then sharing your wholeness with others.

One such "place" is called Project Place, and it's for runaways and street people who don't have any other one. They operate a 24-hour 7-day-a-week emergency switchboard, and a referral service to get kids shrinks and jobs and bail, and all the other things kids tend to need. They also have a crash pad and a runaway house and a drug education program for high-schools.

The give-away is that Project Place was started by seminary students from the Harvard Divinity School. It is concerned, motivated, hard-working, and liberal in the way that any program that tries to give people anything more substantial than ideas must be. Project Place has to do things like go to Mayor White and say. "Look, these kids need help," or "they trust us." It would be easy to say that such statements are counter-revolutionary - who in the world really wants to talk to Mayor White anyway? -if they weren't also true. What about 14-year-olds shooting up dope? How groovy is that? What about a horde of middle-class kids invading a city? Are they supposed to make a revolution so they can have a place to sleep?

Abstracts get jumbled out in the real world. Divinity School students get things done because they have an answer to THE BIG QUESTION. They are also very kind people. I talked to a member of the staff at Project Place named Aram Shiller. He seems to live a sort of informed passivity, and says in the middle of a long day. "I won't call what I do fighting. Our philosophy is that you don't have to be where the person you're talking to is at to help him. You don't have to be strung out to help someone who is. You don't have to have tripped to talk to someone who is having a bummer. We sit in the middle, trying to get people to be sensitive to each other."

Everyone agrees that Cambridge is going to be pretty heavy this summer. The University, not wanting to play the fool again, closed down the Houses this summer to keep street people from staying in students' rooms. There has already been a mini-riat. More are promised. Drug rip-offs are happening all the time. People have gotten shot trying to protect their stashes.

Flash says that Cambridge needs a Community Center. Shiller says so too. There may be one soon. A new project called "Sanctuary" is opening this summer at 9 Mt. Auburn St. It will do some of the same things as Project Place, and may also have a hostel, where kids can crash for 25 cents a night.