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As I descended the steps of the train station as I often do and turn the corner to enter the red brick tunnel, the tunnel that warns with sheet metal signs SLEEPING FORBIDDEN, I came to a man who opened his crusty lips and in a low hoarse tone asked, "Hey man, you got any spare coins?" People would call him a Panhandler, Crack-Head. Deviant. Not worth our Time. Dangerous. Former Criminal. Disgusting. Ugly. Not Beautiful. Not Human?
I can remember when I was younger, and looking out the window of the car as we drove through New York City, and all of those "bumps" I would see. I heard that term used by my father and a few other older men in my life. So I just used it, and was given the impression that I should be afraid of them, that they would take me into an alley and beat me, kill me. And so I was always afraid. But now, for some reason, I am drawn to them for some reason, wanting to meet with them and hear from them.
But they are not just "them" or "they" or "those people" for they should not be identified in that way. They are "human," they are "Al," they are people with a history and names and full of wonder, men and women who took risks, who made mistakes, who are in places most of us are not, and being so in a place that isn't as hum drum as ours might be sometimes.
The life in enigma, in a vertigo, suffering, but a life still it is, and a face worthy to meet our own face with, like Christ going up to the leper, his soot-like skin flaking away, peeling away like you do a potato or an apple, and touching him, yes, touching him with his hands. The crowd stands back like the fire trucks warn us, 500 feet. And we know the rest of the story. A healing takes place.
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Daniel Brophy
Homelessness. Poverty. Hunger. Men under bridges with rain dripping on their scruffy faces.
Every day I am exposed to these tragedies. I can't help but to address them, somehow. But in them, in the corners, in the cracks of the paint, or on the walls in graffiti, their is some message of hope for the viewer. I guess what I want to say is this - in our darkest most depressing of times, there is hope, we just have to find it, to look at our life, to listen to it, and find it.
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