Leaning against the wall, the sun warms her arms.  As she feels the warmth, she awakens to the thought that she has not been completely aware of her surroundings.  Engaged now, the sounds of the sidewalk swarm around her, the sun fades the images in front of her.  When she is aware of the moment she is breathing through, time moves slowly.  This is one of those moments.

Slowly her ears tune in to the rhythm of the street.  The man sitting on the sidewalk near her piques her interest first.  It is unusual for anyone to sit on the sidewalk at the bus stop.  Taking in the details she realizes the baseball cap laying on the ground was not a haphazard placement of a possession, but it was meant to collect money.  Looking around, there was a ten foot empty zone around him. 

At this moment there are social decisions to make.  To move away from him is to join the disgust of the other pedestrians and enhance his social isolation.  To stand her ground is to join him in the humanity that he is.  She decides to stay where she is.  Out of respect, out of solidarity.  Or just out of the need to make him feel accepted in this slight moment.

“Anything helps.  Do you have any spare change?  I’m hungry and need to feed my wife and I.  No body cares.  No one gives a damn.  Guess I’ll go to McDonald’s again.”  He speaks softly, with a resignation of repetition and exhaustion.   “Anything helps.  Do you have any spare change?  I’m hungry and need to feed my wife and I.  No body cares.  No one gives a damn.  Guess I’ll go to McDonald’s again.”  He emphasizes the words wife and damn. 

When she looks at him through her sunglasses, he looks old and normal.  Like he isn’t really homeless and hungry.  She wonders what his back story is.  How has he spent his life?  Where is his wife while he is at the bus stop, speaking to a deaf stream of people making their way home for the day, or to a meeting or to happy hour?  Most people ignore him as if he was not there.  Some people glance in fear, some in disgust, and some with pity.  He doesn’t look up at her.

She pulls out her iPhone and video tapes the moment.  Not as a voyeur, but as a way to preserve the human response to each other.  He fills the lower left corner of the frame.  In the top right hand corner of the frame there is a different man under the bis stop shelter. 

He is wearing a sport jacket and a fedora.  He is shaking a tambourine and singing.  She is stunned that she didn’t notice him first.  He is singing in a velvet tenor of soul that demands the rhythm of the old gospel song he has chosen.  He moves her and draws her heart across the sidewalk into his words.  Nothing exists around him but the words he spins around himself.  No one shies away from him, but they stand in the same proximity to him that they would if he were not singing.  When his song is finished he puts his instrument away and takes a seat on the bench.  He slumps as if he has been sitting and waiting for the bus for a long time; his frame tired of fighting gravity today.

How interesting the dichotomy of the two men of similar age, she thinks.  Even more interesting is the way people passing by react to them differently.  She is fascinated by human reactions, by how the brain works and responds to stimulus, and the choices a person makes in those reactions.  Some react in fear, some in compassion, some in anger, and some with neutral observation.

Her bus pulls up to the curb.  While she walks away, there is silence.  He is not asking for money and he is not singing.  As if they were never there.