Walking home from work last night,
crossing the foot bridge from 1st Street to the ferry terminal, I
heard a loud crashing clang on the street below.
I looked over the side.
There was a homeless man in his mid
twenties on the far side of the street below. He was jumping up and
down and holding his fist as if it hurt. There was a traffic sign
attached to a light-standard next to him. It was vibrating wildly. He
must have struck it with his fist. That would account for the noise
that I heard and the evident pain that he suffered.
A small piece of cellophane wrapping
floated down from the winds above and landed a few feet from him. He
turned and stomped on it with his foot and then he commenced to
jumping up and down murderously on the piece of plastic wrapping.
He was consumed with rage - Jumping up
and down on a piece of plastic, having moments before struck a
light-standard mounted metal street sign with his fist.
There was no calm moment. He said
nothing. He made no noise save for the striking of the sign and the
stomping on the sidewalk.
I walked on thankful that I was not on
the street below where he would notice me.
---
At night, the homeless gather
underneath that footbridge to sleep. The footbridge offers them some
protection from the Seattle rains. There is often about twenty to
thirty people there bedding down for the night with their sleeping
bags and blankets.
This is a commonplace in Seattle. This
is every night here.
In the morning, the encampment will be
cleared. A few rags and bits of garbage may remain but an inattentive passer-by would not notice anything amiss during the daylight hours.
It is a different place at night.
---
I see these people nearly everyday.
They are for the most part, the same people that I have seen here for
years. This is not a moment of hard-luck. It is not a problem of
poverty. There is something else at work here.
I am sure that most of these people
present little danger to anyone but themselves. Most are only a
danger to themselves in that their hygiene suffers and they risk
exposure from the cold and the wet.
But I wonder about the one that was
trying to murder that piece of cellophane.
