Sans Abri
05.20.2012 
One offers, the other demands.
One smiles, the other grimaces.
One is silent, the other assaults your ears.
One of them has created a tableau for your viewing pleasure, the other borrows red and gold roosters and pokes them to perform until she tires of caring for them a few days later.
I stop to look at the assemblage he has fashioned on the sidewalk.
Très créatif, I say, très surréaliste.
He smiles shyly, extends his paper cup.
I usually carry change in my pockets for the homeless. But I've just spent the last coin. I walk on, inspect the office chairs in a shop window. The least costs thirty times the amount that would buy him a meal.
I return, ask him permission to photograph his creation. His eyes shine, yes.
Et vous aussi?
He nods yes.
I put a five Euro bill in his cup, enough for dinner.
He asks me where I’m from.
Les États-Unis, I say. Mais je vis ici maintenant.
I’d like to ask him where he is from, how did he come to Paris, did he fight in a war? but he barely speaks French. I settle for, Et vous?
Bulgarie, he says.
His head is covered in flowers instead of hair, his face round with a silver beard, he might be in his 60s. You can see his spirit shine in his creation, you can see it in his eyes.
Photo: Kaaren Kitchell
* * * * *
I never give her money. I can’t. She is so aggressive it hurts to pass her on Blvd. Saint-Germain. She sits on the sidewalk, skirts puddled around her, yelling at everyone who passes.
Bonjour Madame! Bonjour Monsieur! As people approach, her voice rises in volume.
Most people ignore her. She cuts their backs with her sarcastic Bravo, Madame! Bravo, Monsieur!
She is full of energy, a manipulative actress. Swift changes pass over her face like clouds across an orangey moon—hopeful, self-pitying, grotesque, furious, bitter.
I fantasize saying gently to her, If you want to receive more money, try being less aggressive. But I’ve learned from experience that it’s a mistake to speak frankly with narcissists. They are only interested in looking into their own mirrors. No light comes from her. She doesn’t care if your arms are loaded high with fruit and dry cleaning. Doesn’t notice if you are deep in conversation with someone else. She is pure “Moi! Moi! Moi!”
Very few people stop.
Reader Comments (25)
K & R,
I find this to be a precious and powerful principle:
"There are people who are "moi, moi, moi" when they have everything. The same people are "moi, moi, moi" when they lose it. Others are creative and sensitive to other people when they have everything, as well as when they lose it."
Principles, or universal laws, really work for me, in caring for myself, which often times, and I mean, every day often, requires clear boundaries with others. As I love and care for myself, I have a better sense of the most fruitful situations and people to invest in. This approach keeps me free of resentment, in turn, enjoying being in my own skin.
Focusing on principles above personalities also assists me with the compassionate understanding that Joanne so eloquently inquires into in her post above.
P.P. always seems to direct my focus to the joys and richness of life, with an intention of connecting with others in the most humanely kind ways possible.
I love you and appreciate the generous sharing of your gifts.
Marguerite
Dear Dawna,
Isn't part of what we dislike about terribly aggressive people that in shrinking away from them, our own generosity shrinks too, and we feel smaller. I can't harden my heart against this woman, but I can't break through the barrage of hostility either. The saddest thing is when people perpetuate hell, but are convinced that it's out there, being done "to" them.
Maybe when you're in Paris, we'll go around and interview a few homeless people, then print out the interviews here with them to give them.
We love the weird too!
Thank you and big hugs,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Dear Marguerite,
Thank you for such a loving message! Yes, clear boundaries are essential, and I think it takes women longer than men to find their own and establish them.
I love Nietzsche's writing about resentment--that it's a slave emotion, ignoble; that it's nobler to clear one's mind of resentment. That's why I so dislike passive-aggressive behavior. Better to speak clearly, honestly, and keep your psyche clear of muddiness.
Principles above personalities: that's eloquently put. And yes, Joanne is super-compassionate. Pisces Sun, the fish, the Christ, the last sign which encompasses all the others, and understands them.
Really, Marguerite, don't you find that the joy and richness of life is so evident that you'd have to be deaf in the soul and blind in the heart not to see it?
We love you, too,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Dear Kaaren,
Thank you for your long (lost) response... It's floating out there somewhere. Perhaps that major Eclipse zapped it. And, thank you and Marguerite both for your kindness. Pisces sun … equally prone to depression and darkness. These opposites in all of us and it can take work to balance these “forces” For me, there’s “a whole lota striving going on” to rise above some of these tendencies. It’s not been all light and flowers. So, recognizing this in myself gives me more understanding of others.
None of us (oh so “sensitive poets”) like aggressive behavior, it reminds us too much of a not too distant past in our human history. So, love really is the answer. As we send love out, that is what we are experiencing. Become a transmitter.
Love to you and your wild Paris streets,
Joanne
You stimulate such deep conversations here on Play through word and image.<;-).
Dearest patient Kaaren & silent observant Richard: I hate to tell you there's another typo I missed. It now reads:
“What evidence to you have?” they asked
putting on snarl cougar masks and
Should be: "What evidence do you have?" NOT "to you have..." ugh! I must be slipping... (I've posted it on my poetry blog with an audio reading of it: www.ecstaticxchange.wordpress.com, which is where I caught the "to.") I so appreciate you letting me comment with poems... Vous sommes les mieux! (?)