Ottawa, August 6: We’re almost last in the queue, far back in the traffic in the rain on King Edward Street, watching homeless people from the hostel across the way, panhandling the cars as they line up waiting for green lights on their way out of the city. The panhandlers are various – some of them are heartbreaking in their complete abjection. Some are more defeated, heads down, holding a Coke paper cup between their hands, out in the pouring rain in their thin sweaters. Some are crazy, high fiving the drivers, one guy with flapping pantslegs offering every driver a peace sign, not even asking for change at all. And some are crazy going the other way, where they’re furious, actually speaking through the foggy windows to the drivers, gesturing angrily when they get the brush-off. And of course, every now and then the lights change and a whole new set of characters gets to take to the stage.
(on the highways in upstate New York, the road surfaces on the bridges is finished with a different kind of material – it’s paler and finer grade. So that when you drive across the rivers, the sound that your wheels make changes, becomes higher and keener, as if some creature suddenly howls at you from the shadowy space below the bridge. And then as you drive off, the howling stops as quickly as slamming a door)
Leaving Ithaca, August 8: At the intersection, a guy stood on the side of the road – bearded and ragged with an old baseball cap to protect him from the sun, which was mid-day beating down. An old pair of shorts, and beat-up trainers. He looked scrawny and leathery, like someone who had been in trouble and out of it many times. In his hand he held a cardboard sign with clumsy hand lettering: ‘Looking for work – willing to lift, do digging or mowing, need to make some money urgent – can you help’. Every now and then as the lights changed, he would switch position away from the moving traffic, holding the sign out to the cars that had just pulled up at the line, so he walked away from us just as we got close. And then the traffic got moving, and we were back on the highway and lost sight of him. So many people waiting for the lights to change.
