so you think i'm a worthless flounderer

there is a man who sometimes lives under the metro north rail before you get to my train stop. i say 'sometimes' because he does not live there in the winter, or when it rains really hard, or in the evening. he lives there during the brightest and warmest spring, summer, and fall days. actually, most days i think i am wrong to even say that he lives there because i saw him sitting on a stoop across the street once, and i have also seen him on the train talking on a cell phone.

this man confuses me with his shopping cart full of oddities like blankets, musty, yellowed paperback books, and cigarette butts. the creaky old wooden palette crate he perches his folding green and white woven lawn chair upon is like a throne, and his tattered baseball cap with a grizzled ponytail snaking down the middle of his neck creates a sense of someone who chooses to exist on the fringe of 'normalcy'. i have often seen him engaging passersby in idle chatter, but i have also seen several people perched at his feet like disciples, listening with rapture as he smokes and speaks.

who is this man? why have i never spoken to him? who am i to assume he is/was/chooses to be partially/fully homeless? maybe he was once a great poet, historian, painter, scientist, mathematician, father, or activist. where does he spend his days without the overpass and stranger-friends? does he comb the streets for treasures, or continue to make modest, or valiant, attempts to integrate into the world that passes by? for after all, this is new york, and everything is always just passing by. maybe he just wanted to stop living this life, without ceasing to exist. perhaps this life would not let him live. why did he choose to stay?

i think about this man and the barrage of questions he raises to me as i sit lost on the n train. i think about the assumptions we make about other people and how hard they are trying. how hard it is to keep trying - all of the work we do that goes unnoticed, masked by a final product, or by no product at all. i think about this man and i wonder who he depends on, who he needs, what he needs, what i need, and how wrong i am to assume anything at all about where he lives or does not live, what he does or does not do, how he tries or does not try.

i think that the next time we meet i will talk with him, and i will tell him i am sorry for the judgments i have made over this past year. and i will tell him it is admirable that he still tries, despite all of it.