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.