Just Scenery
Every morning on my way to work, I see a homeless guy sitting on a bench at Bathurst and St. Clair. He's a big guy, with dirty, matted long hair and a beard, and he always wears a filthy long coat. All his possessions, it seems, are piled high in a cart in front of him. I see him on the way home, too, on the same bench, with the cart in front of him.
Homeless people are hardly rare anymore. They're everywhere and we see them all the time. What freaks me out is how we are able to mentally block them from our vision. I guess it's kind of similar to how doctors distance themselves from their patients by taking a purely clinical approach. I guess we have learned to see them but not see them at the same time, so that we don't have to think about why they don't have a place to live, what it must be like to have to sleep outside in the winter, and wonder where your next meal is coming from.
One morning when I was on the subway going to work, a scrawny black woman got on the train. She looked really wired, like she was either on, or in need of, a big dose of crack. She strode to the other end of the car and then she shut her eyes really tight, as if she were in pain, and started shouting, "I'm hungry! Can somebody help me out?" Then she started stalking her way up the car, stopping at each person and holding her hand out. Everyone just shook their heads and averted their eyes. I did too, when she passed me. I just kept thinking that if I gave her money, the first thing she would do is go out and use it to buy some crack. It was really awful. I could have sworn I was in Brooklyn or something.
It's pretty sobering to think that sometimes our biggest problems are paying our bills, finding the right hairdresser, finding just the pair of shoes to go with an outfit. At least we have jobs that enable us to pay those bills, even if we are living from paycheque to paycheque. Meanwhile there are all these people out there living on benches, trying to figure out how to get from day to day. How do they do it? It's a mystery to me.
Homeless people are hardly rare anymore. They're everywhere and we see them all the time. What freaks me out is how we are able to mentally block them from our vision. I guess it's kind of similar to how doctors distance themselves from their patients by taking a purely clinical approach. I guess we have learned to see them but not see them at the same time, so that we don't have to think about why they don't have a place to live, what it must be like to have to sleep outside in the winter, and wonder where your next meal is coming from.
One morning when I was on the subway going to work, a scrawny black woman got on the train. She looked really wired, like she was either on, or in need of, a big dose of crack. She strode to the other end of the car and then she shut her eyes really tight, as if she were in pain, and started shouting, "I'm hungry! Can somebody help me out?" Then she started stalking her way up the car, stopping at each person and holding her hand out. Everyone just shook their heads and averted their eyes. I did too, when she passed me. I just kept thinking that if I gave her money, the first thing she would do is go out and use it to buy some crack. It was really awful. I could have sworn I was in Brooklyn or something.
It's pretty sobering to think that sometimes our biggest problems are paying our bills, finding the right hairdresser, finding just the pair of shoes to go with an outfit. At least we have jobs that enable us to pay those bills, even if we are living from paycheque to paycheque. Meanwhile there are all these people out there living on benches, trying to figure out how to get from day to day. How do they do it? It's a mystery to me.
posted by emily pound at 6:55 AM
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