There is an itinerant who has been sitting just outside the gates to McGill University for the last few weeks. Whenever I walk down rue Sherbrooke, he's there, perched on his neatly-rolled tarp under a scaffold, gazing north. He has blue, blue eyes and red, wind-chapped cheeks. He is immaculately clean, and his space tidy. His shoes and clothes are worn and patched, but well-maintained. He has no cup or hat to advertise his desire for offerings. His expression is alert with a hint of desolate. Our gazes have crossed three jarring times, and each time he looked at me... Not without interest, but completely without plea. Without expectation. With zenlike patience that I can't understand, not knowing that the ladies passing with their Dior bags, fur muffs and clicking heels don't see him - can't see him.
He fascinates me.
It's because he's not like the others, the ones who follow me or jump out into my face with leathery, outstretched hands and eye-wateringly alcoholic breath, chanting "change, change, change..." Others that I encounter during my morning commute who sprawl snoring beside the trottoir, one hand clenched around a bottle and the other lying beside a cardboard sign that could read anything from "traveling home" to "too ugly for prostitution" and even "need a joint." And those who pass me with the rage in their eyes that I can [theoretically] understand, the ones who terrify me the most because I would be like them.
What can I do directly for them that won't put both of us in worse situations?
Why, why why, any of it?
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