Vancouver, Out There!

In the dismal grey morning of downtown Vancouver, an echo from somewhere in the streets goes right through my body and thwarts the birds from resting. I Look at the swaying from left to right, and the unstable in posture. I hear hideous howls and see arms flailing about.

IS IT A MAN OR IS IT AN ANIMAL????

I check…it’s a man. This man-beast is louder than city traffic can drown out. Even the rain muffles only a few syllables. Like TNT, an explosion of rawness erupts when evil glimpses his own reflection in a window. I close my eyes. It’s deafening: the screams sound like – “get outta here.” He’s shouting at his own reflection.

IT'S A BUM, A STREET PERSON, AN ANNOYANCE! Or so they say...

He's a junkie. I am sitting now in Tim Hortons and notice he’s still out there. Just like my brother, he’s Out There. In the streets among the street people doing nothing but street business. Now, I can’t stop watching him. When he is not looking nervously around his shoulders, he bends over to check out the holes in his pants. He rocks back and forth like waves in a deep ocean. He must be messed up. What made him that way? Does my brother get like that? God I hope not. My brother would be more normal than that, I think. Have you ever seen dogs try to eat peanut butter? It’s a funny sight, but you also feel sorry for them because they never do manage to lick all that sticky goo off their own tongues. I had the uneasy feeling this guy was trying to accomplish something similar. Lick off his very own tongue, or pick off his own skin or worse, wish himself gone.

I’m still staring at him, I blink and then he’s gone. Was it just a quick blink? It may have been one of those blinks you do when you look unknowingly into space for a while (ponder a bit) and then come back to what you were doing before. In any case he had disappeared and the city seemed quiet. I think nobody but me noticed that he left. Its easy to ignore them when they're not there, right? He's gone to disturb himself in privacy. I hear people say they won’t buy a home in the city because it’s too expensive. The truth is – these streets are drug zones. Nobody wants to live around here anymore period. Can you blame them?