What caught your eye today?

Sitting in my parked car on Solano Avenue, I observe the middle aged man clothed in shades of grey, khakis, extra long sweater and a jacket over it. His body language catches my eye. With a slightly unsure posture, he is standing on the sidewalk. People walk by and he looks attentively and kindly into each person’s face, greeting them silently. The ruddy face exudes a sweetness… I feel moved. A woman, a man, another one, each by-passer is avoiding him. Not meeting his eyes is their goal. As if they can’t see him. He seems unsure, vaguely looking for someone. For someone to meet him? He finally takes a few steps, hesitates, looks far across the street to his left, then walks slowly across the small plaza, and across the street, hesitating again. He is Caucasian. Despite this fact, he seems to not exist to others. Is he perhaps looking for himself?

Pondering what makes him invisible, I realize he is exuding an air of poverty, and of being lost. Something we all greatly fear, consciously or unconsciously. To my disappointment, I have to get home for a telephone appointment. Backing out of the parking space, I take him with me, praying for his safety, for his happiness. I don’t know his story. But I can identify with his state. Many times in my life I have felt so unsure, so lost, so waiting, so unseen, not just when I was young.

He could be an un-housed individual, mentally disturbed, confused or on drugs – or a prince, or just a person waiting for God? Outwardly he is like a character out of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, one of my favorite plays when I was a teenager. I see myself also in the person rushing or avoiding, and I don’t like it.

What would have happened if I’d been able to let my curiosity guide me and had tried to make a connection with this seemingly lost soul? Sometimes i do just that and it has gotten me into trouble. Other times this has opened a window into the mystery of life – simply by looking a strange stranger into the eye, connecting without defense. Sometimes light would pour forth. Or stories, and sometimes an unfathomable emptiness would speak as if from the outer edges of the universe.