waking life

There's the same homeless man down there on the street that I've seen around here before. Dressed in filthy rags and covered in dirt. He stares at a couple of Japanese tourists eating hotdogs and gestures wildly at them. They aren't watching him. He takes out some money from his pocket and counts several notes. He asks a man for money. He gets no response. Opposite him, across the street, there's another homeless man who has staked out a little patch of territory where he sleeps. He knows me and I know him. I leave food or water for him every now and then. Yet only when he sleeps. It's easier if he doesn't know it's me. He calls me 'brother' and I call him 'man'. I'm pretty sure it was not him who was pulling his pants down the other Monday morning preparing to defecate between two parked cars. I looked away before seeing anything. I think it was the other homeless man who sometimes is passed out near the entrance to the bank. Once, myself and a Japanese business woman called the ambulance because we thought he was dying. But he suddenly woke up and staggered away. The ambulance was cancelled. I think it may have been him that was squatting between the cars. I think he might be a junkie. These homeless men are all black men. There is a white man, across the street, on the corner of the block. He is often cursing and spitting out words which are hard to make sense of. He drinks. And he is covered in sores and filth. He is usually lying down holding his stomach. A building near where he sleeps collapsed some months ago and I was surprised that he was not found dead. In the apartment next door someone I've never seen practices classical piano. It's a beautiful sound to focus on. Like the echo of a dream.

back in the u-s of a

so I caught zee plane back from sydney..I feel a million miles from starting the day wandering in the shallows of beautiful Clovelly Beach...anyway, was going to be holed up in LA for most of the day but managed to get on an earlier flight...and here's where my gripe begins...Why, when Qantas does fly into NY, and I have purchased a Qantas ticket do I have to take an inferior domestic carrier 'American Airlines' from LA to NY? The staff were rude, hostile, and downright....hmmm....american. I had such a lovely experience on the Qantas flight - apart from the inflight audio needing to be a bit louder...So..during the american airlines flight I was returning from the bathroom (not really a room) to my seat. A hostess had the food trolley in the aisle and she moved it into the kitchen galley for me to pass. Then she, leaving it there, went to attend to something. However as I was passing the trolley a steward told me never to move or touch the trolley again. I asked him what he was talking about and he said, rather too dismissively, 'You heard me. Do not touch the trolley.' I told him that I did not touch it and he had the audacity to remark, 'well how did it get here then?' To which I responded by telling him to 'Come here mate!' Once he did I pointed (yes pointed) at his co-worker down the aisle and told him that in fact it was she who had moved the trolley. In this I was backed-up by the gentleman seated in the row behind me. The steward said nothing...Now this steward was the same one who I had earlier asked if I could pass through the galley to access the vacant toilet in the aisle opposite and had told me that no-one was allowed to pass through it...although during the flight he allowed some people to pass through it and yet not others...In short he seemed to be making all white people walk the long way around....what the hell? was this some sort of in-flight racism...Anyway, I wasn't that disappointed when during a spot of turbulence he landed on his arse and an open cup of coke fell from the galley bench and soaked the back of his shirt...which he had to wear throughout the flight...