He sits everyday in a wheelchair, between the corner that joins the church and the post office buildings. The two institutions both equally bureaucratic. He sits there, all day by himself. Sometimes he is joined by another of his "type" (you know, another homeless) and I have seen them talk vividly while sharing a bottle of whiskey. (wish I could hear their conversations) But mostly, he is by himself. His daily companions are a bottle of medicine, from Kaiser, a checkered blanket, the wheel chair and a bottle of whiskey. He has a heavy long beard, maybe the reason why his head is always bent down. His eyes are always looking absently to the floor. They are pointing to that direction, but they seem to look at something else, something that is between him and the sidewalk. Invisible to everybody else. Around him, a city moves as usual: Cars, buses, ladies rushing in their high heels, the mail man, the kids going to school, the guy in the bike, the smoker who comes out of the church once in a while between prayers etc. This is an invisible world for him. He doesn’t seem to see it anymore, or maybe is because nobody sees him anymore either. He is the homeless, the drunkard, the crazy, the waste of society. He is nobody. No titles, no relatives, no name or last name, no phone number, no email, no address, no schedule, no time, no roof but the sky above. He is only known as the homeless. He is from that human specie that is easily confused with garbage. He is waste.
At night, he crawls out of the wheelchair and he finds a shelter underneath the balcony of the church. The sky is bigger to him than to anybody else. He has the weight of a universe full of stars on top of him. He must feel very, very lonely. At night he wraps himself with the checkered blanket, and let his body stretch underneath the slim roof that the church’s balcony provides. He looks like a worm. I have seen many worms like these in other churches, as if the church was a fruit in putrefaction collecting worms of society.
I seem him every day when I go to work in the morning. He is already up sitting on his wheelchair. Looking down absorbed by his thoughts. Just recently I started to say “Hi”. The first time I said "HI" he was a little puzzled. He heard my voice, but it took him a while to realize what was going on. I think he thought I was talking to someone else not to him.
After a while he finally looks up and sees me standing in front of him. Me, a chick from the other side... a groomed and clean girl, one of those who has a job and is part of the worthy people. A downtown "business chick" (yikes!). He looked at me, and I saw his face lit up like saying: "Oh Yes, is for me!”. His dirty looking face, slowly turned into a very clean face. His wrinkles and eyes opened like a flower blossoming in front of me...His honey colored eyes were shining. He smiled, lifted his hand and let out a very cheerful ”HI!”.
It was so nice to see that! Something so forgotten, a piece of humanity that has been discarded, all of the sudden spark some light. It was as if undusting a Christmas ornament. Underneath the dirt, the heavy bad odor, underneath the label of the ‘homeless, drunkard old man’, there was this beautiful shining light.
After that day I made sure I say hi to him everyday I walk by. And now he knows, I am the girl who says hi to him. So when he hears my voice, he doesn’t spend too much time thinking anymore. He immediately looks up and smiles with the same brightness of the first day!
But Yesterday morning, I left the house as usual, rushing to catch the 38 bus that would take me to the financial district. From the house I could see a police car parked in front of the corner between the church and the post office. I knew something was wrong. So I started walking faster. I saw a police man, dressed in authority asking the homeless guy to leave, because there "has been some complains"...he said, and while he was saying this he was looking at another man that was standing at the steps of the Baptist church.
I saw how the homeless guy, with difficulty was picking himself up. I could tell the voice of the policeman woke him up. I stood there looking, and I asked him: “Are you ok?” He didn’t look up, he kept moving trying to get out of there as fast as he could. “Are they kicking you out from the house of God?” I asked him again. And this time, he did look up, he saw me again. And with his bright eyes and face full of light he replied:"is ok, is ok" and he smiled, like the first day again.
