And I Stared Away...

Have you ever avoided the stare of the pauper begging for a coin at the entrance of the McDonalds on 13th street? In your haste to avoid any contact with that blighted expression of humanity’s lowliness, your barely hissing whisper “I have no change,” falls on his empty extended hand. Those words fall like an unforgiving dagger on those ungloved fingers as Mendicant trudges back to his position where it becomes OK to solicit from the next more fortunate act of fate.

After my encounter with Mendicant, I mentally justify my snobbery of his shivering tatters. “He has life and limb, shouldn’t he be looking for a job?” “Why doesn’t he step into the restaurant and apply for a job?” "Why should I support his beggarly subsistence?” Little do I realize that my puny 35 cents can barely feed my furry pet at home one meal. Of course, having never walked in those beaten down, holed shoes in the waning days of a vengeful autumn, I find my own solace and comfort in my desire to soothe my uncompassionate conscience. “At least, I have a conscience.” That is my other attempt at refuge, from my self-startling hard-heartedness, as I cross the street into Banana Republic to benefit from the largesse of fate.

For fate is the thin line which separates me from him. Fate has a compassionate hand in my hardwork, fate is the cornerstone of my drug free existence, fate is my refuge from the wild. A flip of fate would throw me out into the cold begging my way through the parsimonious trash cans of the fortunate… and the man shivering with an extended hand in the cold would be walking through the closed doors of Banana Republic, ignoring my plea for a magnanimous chance at one meal – one meal which would have to sustain me through to the next largesse of the more fortunate.

I have never exchanged a word with Mendicant and know not where he is coming from, nor where he is headed. My tussle with conscience could be eased if only I exchanged a few words with him. However, the insurmountable wall of fate below which I avoid eye contact and above which I cannot even see my own aloofness, provides the walls which around which my conscience will forever remain captive.