The homeless blogger

Barbieux is "reflective, quiet, not aggressive in any way," according to Charles Strobel, who runs a Nashville homeless services center, the Campus for Human Development. Jack Davis, a friend and fellow homeless man, called Barbieux "reserved" and "a bookworm type."

"If you walked by him on the street, you'd never have any idea Kevin was homeless," said the director of one Nashville shelter.

Known increasingly as "professor" in his community, Barbieux was the editor of a short-lived homeless newspaper. Now, he's encouraging other homeless people to express themselves through blogs. (Only one has taken him up on the offer, so far.) And he's helping put together a debate for local political candidates on homeless issues. The activity has gotten so intense of late, Barbieux writes, that he barely has time to sleep.

For some readers of Barbieux's journal, this energy is exasperating.

"You've got the brains and ambition to set up this little operation but claim to be homeless. The fact is, we're all homeless. The difference is some of us find the will to get off our ass and find temporary shelter," comments one visitor to Barbieux's site.

Barbieux, in turn, has little sympathy for the "beggars and panhandlers," who so dominate the public's perception of the homeless. These people, he says, are only looking for drug money when they ask for spare change.

Barbieux, 41, has held an array of what he calls "junk jobs" -- as a cook, a construction worker, a telemarketer and a convenience store clerk. Most recently, he helped catalog a 16-millimeter film collection as a volunteer with the Downtown Presbyterian Church, which provides "arguably the best feed going for the homeless in Nashville," Barbieux writes.

For Barbieux, it's important that his readers understand that "the difference between being homeless and non-homeless is not black and white." Barbieux has been living in varying shades of gray since February 1982. Riddled with anxieties and learning disabilities, Barbieux struggled at school, and was a social outcast in his native San Diego. One day, it all became too much. He packed up his Opal Cadet, and headed East.

Barbieux ran out of money in Nashville. Broke and unable to find work, he began sleeping in the Cadet. But the cold weather eventually became intolerable, and so he sought refuge in the city's homeless shelters.

Eventually, Barbieux met a woman, Sarah, married her, and started a family. But "the kind of relationship we had, it was more like being taken care of in a shelter, than actually being married," he writes in an e-mail. By 1995, they split. The couple's son, now 11, and daughter, now 7, went with Sarah. Barbieux hasn't seen them in over a year.

"I don't want my kids torn up between my ex and I," he explains in an e-mail. "I'd rather she have them, than to have us fighting over them. The saddest part is that because we rarely see each other, when we do, we really don't have much to talk about, since we don't have anything in common."

For Barbieux, the separation is searing.

"My every day starts and ends with prayers for [the children's'] health and well being, and for the time when I can be in their lives again," he recently posted.

And it's only one of several sources of pain.

Charles Strobel, from the Campus for Human Development, explained, "Kevin has a real sensitivity that, at times, can torture him."

Barbieux goes further than that, blaming his homelessness on mental illness.

"To function as non-homeless, a person must be able to establish and maintain a certain level of community -- the anxieties prevent me from doing this," Barbieux writes. "I took [the anti-depressant] Paxil for a few months and it helped. [But] I was dropped from the state insurance plan because they could not locate me (homeless people can be hard to find), so I no longer have the means to obtain the medicine."

For years, Barbieux added in an e-mail, he's been "struggling to overcome my disabilities, my inabilities, to rid myself of anything that might give people the perception that I really am stupid."

Receiving a flood of compliments on his articulate, passionate journal hasn't freed him from these feelings. Started in late August, the journal has already had over 35,000 visitors, and is quickly turning Barbieux into an Internet celebrity. Glenn Reynolds, one of the elders of the blogging movement, lauds Barbieux as the "ultimate example" of blogging's do-it-yourself spirit.

"All this attention is really stressful. And when I feel stressed, it brings on a kind of depression," he said.

But Barbieux hasn't given in to despair quite yet. In fact, he said, he's trying to figure out a way to leverage the stature he's gained from his blog, and turn it into a book deal.

He writes, "If it means I'll have to go on the Oprah show, I'll have to be sedated."

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