Working on moving towards, not away
Dateline Winnipeg, Monday, October 29, 2018:
Her pink hat caught my attention and drew my focus to the rest of her - the stance was more planted than a regular transit user normally takes when waiting for the bus, and the space between her and the other woman was a bit closer than I would expect in a public place.
Then I noticed that the second woman was rooting around in her bag. Ah, I realized what was going on. A panhandler. Female (the pink hat gave her away, though it had no pussy ears; it was just a pink toque). With more than an edge of assertion. A hard tension emanated from her.
The transit loop was not empty of other people, but it was still early morning dusk, and an encounter long in the past with an aggressive glue-sniffing woman has put me on perpetual guard, so I moved along and away towards my own stop. From a distance, I kept an eye on the pink hat and, eventually, saw it move with its owner across the street and away.
This was my second encounter in the short morning with proof of the poverty that lives on our streets. Heading towards the transit loop, I had popped into a local convenience store for some milk to put in my fridge at work. On my way into the shop, to the right of the front door, was a man laying on the ground wrapped in a sleeping bag, as if dead to the world. (He maybe feels he is: dead to the world.) A shopping cart was parked beside his form. I completed my purchase and kept moving along.
This seems to be my response: moving. In truth, and in the moment, it is the only option I know how to do. Keep to myself and hope for safety, while railing against the injustice and indignity of what I have seen. Of what I cannot unsee.
This evening, a third encounter. A knock at our front door. The same young man who tries every year to earn some cash by cleaning out eaves troughs. He does a lousy job, and this year I said, No. Thanks, but no. We're good.
I am anything but good in these moments, and I am not pleased with myself for that, and I will keep moving. Moving towards a better me. Moving towards action with, rather than action away.
I'll contemplate what that can look like for me, when I encounter a woman in a pink hat or a man in a sleeping bag.
Her pink hat caught my attention and drew my focus to the rest of her - the stance was more planted than a regular transit user normally takes when waiting for the bus, and the space between her and the other woman was a bit closer than I would expect in a public place.
Then I noticed that the second woman was rooting around in her bag. Ah, I realized what was going on. A panhandler. Female (the pink hat gave her away, though it had no pussy ears; it was just a pink toque). With more than an edge of assertion. A hard tension emanated from her.
The transit loop was not empty of other people, but it was still early morning dusk, and an encounter long in the past with an aggressive glue-sniffing woman has put me on perpetual guard, so I moved along and away towards my own stop. From a distance, I kept an eye on the pink hat and, eventually, saw it move with its owner across the street and away.
This was my second encounter in the short morning with proof of the poverty that lives on our streets. Heading towards the transit loop, I had popped into a local convenience store for some milk to put in my fridge at work. On my way into the shop, to the right of the front door, was a man laying on the ground wrapped in a sleeping bag, as if dead to the world. (He maybe feels he is: dead to the world.) A shopping cart was parked beside his form. I completed my purchase and kept moving along.
This seems to be my response: moving. In truth, and in the moment, it is the only option I know how to do. Keep to myself and hope for safety, while railing against the injustice and indignity of what I have seen. Of what I cannot unsee.
This evening, a third encounter. A knock at our front door. The same young man who tries every year to earn some cash by cleaning out eaves troughs. He does a lousy job, and this year I said, No. Thanks, but no. We're good.
I am anything but good in these moments, and I am not pleased with myself for that, and I will keep moving. Moving towards a better me. Moving towards action with, rather than action away.
I'll contemplate what that can look like for me, when I encounter a woman in a pink hat or a man in a sleeping bag.
I think that you begin to get at the discomfort that we tend to have with these encounters as well as the broader dilemma concerning how we can or should act in these moments. One of the problems is to NOT think about it and then wind up behaving the same way at the next encounter. So, contemplating the problem of the next encounter and having a "strategy" in the back of one's mind is a good idea. The "strategy" needs a way to combat the discomfort--even fear--in some instances as well as the appropriate action.
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