On the street below my window a man pulls up his pants. He's having trouble. He's hiding between a pick-up truck and a bright blue Recology bin. He doesn't know I can see him. Now he's digging through the bin for cans and bottles. Today is just like any other day, except maybe someone came by with a styrofoam box of turkey and mashed potatoes, the fixings. Maybe he got one and maybe he didn't. He's gone now, and so is the recycle bin.
Walking down Sixth Street towards the SOMA Whole Foods on 4th and Harrison one man races by pushing a wheelchair with another man in it, both singing, "We gonna take you HIGHer!" A woman standing in the middle of the street does the crazy, look-at-me dance in front of cars stopped at the signal. Her face, like the other faces we pass, is scrunched, missing teeth, the contraction of all expression into one that says, "I am lost beyond all hope."
There are dramas on Sixth Street as Ian and I walk by. If people see us they don't pay much attention. It's like we are in a parallel universe when we dodge SRO residents arguing, step over the lumpy spit on the sidewalk in front of the Bayanihan House, everybody waiting for evening to come so they can return to their rooms. If they have a room. We weave around a black woman holding a big, fat white poodle on her shoulder. "You heard right! Now, give it to me!" she shouts.
The people with facial tattoos fascinate me. The man walking up the BART stairs on Market and Seventh the other day looking up with intense expectancy, his gaze passing right through me. What is the future you make for yourself when you tattoo your face? What is the past you come from that brings you to the decision to tattoo your face? Could I ever be that sad, or feel my choices were so limited that I would decide to tattoo my face? I can imagine it.
When Thanksgiving is sunny, and everyone inside Whole Foods has money to buy readymade gourmet mashed potatoes and organic kale, it makes you think no one is hungry. Then you walk two blocks up to Sixth and it's another story. A man asks for a quarter; I give him an organic Pink Lady that cost me 98 cents. He's not happy. I realize he may not have enough teeth to eat an apple but I keep walking.
An angry skinhead screams racial slurs and tips over all the trash cans into the street on Stevenson.
The security guard in the Ninth Circuit Court parking lot across the street opens the hatch to his Dodge Caravan and starts fixing his lonely dinner. On the other side of the steel gate a bearded man walks with purpose holding a cup from Starbucks. I can't see his face but I know what it looks like. It's hollow and anxious. His teeth are gone. He's hurrying to nowhere.
I will whip organic cream past soft peaks and sprinkle a dash of rapadura sugar into it and bring it with my pumpkin pie to the potluck down the hall.
Walking down Sixth Street towards the SOMA Whole Foods on 4th and Harrison one man races by pushing a wheelchair with another man in it, both singing, "We gonna take you HIGHer!" A woman standing in the middle of the street does the crazy, look-at-me dance in front of cars stopped at the signal. Her face, like the other faces we pass, is scrunched, missing teeth, the contraction of all expression into one that says, "I am lost beyond all hope."
There are dramas on Sixth Street as Ian and I walk by. If people see us they don't pay much attention. It's like we are in a parallel universe when we dodge SRO residents arguing, step over the lumpy spit on the sidewalk in front of the Bayanihan House, everybody waiting for evening to come so they can return to their rooms. If they have a room. We weave around a black woman holding a big, fat white poodle on her shoulder. "You heard right! Now, give it to me!" she shouts.
The people with facial tattoos fascinate me. The man walking up the BART stairs on Market and Seventh the other day looking up with intense expectancy, his gaze passing right through me. What is the future you make for yourself when you tattoo your face? What is the past you come from that brings you to the decision to tattoo your face? Could I ever be that sad, or feel my choices were so limited that I would decide to tattoo my face? I can imagine it.
When Thanksgiving is sunny, and everyone inside Whole Foods has money to buy readymade gourmet mashed potatoes and organic kale, it makes you think no one is hungry. Then you walk two blocks up to Sixth and it's another story. A man asks for a quarter; I give him an organic Pink Lady that cost me 98 cents. He's not happy. I realize he may not have enough teeth to eat an apple but I keep walking.
An angry skinhead screams racial slurs and tips over all the trash cans into the street on Stevenson.
The security guard in the Ninth Circuit Court parking lot across the street opens the hatch to his Dodge Caravan and starts fixing his lonely dinner. On the other side of the steel gate a bearded man walks with purpose holding a cup from Starbucks. I can't see his face but I know what it looks like. It's hollow and anxious. His teeth are gone. He's hurrying to nowhere.
I will whip organic cream past soft peaks and sprinkle a dash of rapadura sugar into it and bring it with my pumpkin pie to the potluck down the hall.
