Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Image from Hawaii

My mother and I went to Hawaii in the mid-80s. While we were in Honolulu, we decided to walk from our first hotel to the Ala Muana mall. As we strolled along, during the warm afternoon, we passed what I remember as either a storm ditch or an overpass. There was a homeless man with his shopping cart hunkered down next to the ditch, close to the sidewalk. I hadn't seen many homeless people yet- there just weren't many in Montana in January- or any time then.

What really stuck in my memory was that it was probably in the upper 70s, and he was wearing a down jacket. And his shopping cart was filled with bread bags. No bread, but just the bags. His jacket was black.

The juxtaposition of homeless and Hawaiian paradise really shocked me. I had to look at the whole thing for the first time in my life. We saw more in a later trip to Mexico- but this was something that I didn't expect to see in a place like that. And it made me really uncomfortable. And helpless. There was nothing I could do for him. Not a damned thing.

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