Monday, January 22, 2007
shame where shame is due.
i'm late on the name-calling, but this guy who's suing a homeless man for hanging out near a heat-grate in front of his upscale antiques shop just takes the fucking new york cake. i hear that this particular guy is no cupcake--apparently he regularly tells passersby to burn in hell--but.
one of the things that's weirdest about living here is the lack of certain insulating layers--you're pushed right up against the richest, oddest, most maddening concentrations of wealth and you share the subway with people whose lives make you like minor royalty. nothing seems so apparent as the permanence of the distinctions and the determination of the havesomes and havenots just to keep moving along. i don't mean to call out people who don't do enough; i'm one of them. it's just that i never had to know this about myself before i lived here, that i was the kind of person who could look someone in obvious need in the eye and refuse to help them. repeatedly. maybe panhandling happens everywhere, but in new york--and i guess this happened in san francisco, to some degree, too; maybe it's more about cities in which i don't drive everywhere--people are asking for help all the time, all the time, and they smell bad, and your heart hurts, and you're tired of telling yourself you'll send a check to urban pathways. all the truisms about what they do with that dollar and that cardboard sign is a lie aside, when the person next to you with no shoes begs for help and you don't give it to her, and it happens every day, that makes you different. sometimes it makes me want to get out of here on the next train, and sometimes it makes me feel like everyone should have to live here, just to see the problem.
one of the things that's weirdest about living here is the lack of certain insulating layers--you're pushed right up against the richest, oddest, most maddening concentrations of wealth and you share the subway with people whose lives make you like minor royalty. nothing seems so apparent as the permanence of the distinctions and the determination of the havesomes and havenots just to keep moving along. i don't mean to call out people who don't do enough; i'm one of them. it's just that i never had to know this about myself before i lived here, that i was the kind of person who could look someone in obvious need in the eye and refuse to help them. repeatedly. maybe panhandling happens everywhere, but in new york--and i guess this happened in san francisco, to some degree, too; maybe it's more about cities in which i don't drive everywhere--people are asking for help all the time, all the time, and they smell bad, and your heart hurts, and you're tired of telling yourself you'll send a check to urban pathways. all the truisms about what they do with that dollar and that cardboard sign is a lie aside, when the person next to you with no shoes begs for help and you don't give it to her, and it happens every day, that makes you different. sometimes it makes me want to get out of here on the next train, and sometimes it makes me feel like everyone should have to live here, just to see the problem.
