Homeless treasures by me 26/8/2008

There is a world that nobody knows about in the dark alleys of streets, be it in East Jerusalem, West Jersalem, Beer Sheva, Istanbul or here in New York. It is not writen about in Lonely Planet books. New York city seems to hold out its dearest treasures, not in museums, old buildings, or the tourist sights that people sitting in their New York sight seeing bus view and take pictures of. The city holds a secret part of herself late at night, not in times square that never seems to go sleep, or 5th avenue or columbus circle, but rather in the dark streeets of Harlem, and the darkness of Central park.

It is this darkness that protects, even chaperons, those places from the daylight and its regular tourist, middleclass visitors. I have walked back around 6 o clock in the morning to my apartment, and on the stairs of a st John the divine church, i saw a man, covering himself up with a white sheet. A bit down the street, in another corner, near a bus stop, I saw another black man, sleeping on a hard card board, with no sheet.

He will have frost bites in the winter time or be drunk, fall and pass out, and then be brought to the emergency room where a doctor or a medical student or a nurse would have to start him on thiamine, glucose and possibly benzodiazpene. Still, I somehow cherish this abandonned, homeless street life in New York, perhaps because I recogize how universal it is, how I long for it, and yet how much I fight to escape it every day.