Freezing to death.

Yesterday I watched a police car, ambulance and fire truck rush to a man lying wrapped in a red fuzzy blanket on the sidewalk two blocks from my house just before the Bins. The policeman sort of just stood over him waiting, I guess, for the rescue team. I couldn’t tell, of course, if the man had died, was in hypothermic shock or who knows, just being picked up under some vagrancy law (but then why the ambulance and fire truck).
The sort of thing you try to tell yourself “this isn’t TV.” But, then you see how your brain can’t process the magnitude of it. First block; your eyes water. Second block; you tell yourself that by the third block you’ll forget but you’ll remind yourself because it’s so real. Third block; you remind yourself it’s so real and feel guilty for needing the reminding. Fourth block; you’re back to thinking how lovely the cold sun makes the sky.
And then, of course, I can only process the emotion through pop culture references. Like how that kid in American Beauty filmed a homeless person freezing to death and talked about how beautiful it was and it reminds me of the guy who made a documentary of all the jumpers off the Golden Gate Bridge for one year and did nothing to stop them and is that beautiful? Oh, it’s art? No thank you, I think. I don’t think this is really like the movies at all.
And then last night I find myself playing the “would you rather?” game, the game like that book of questions with the one about saving yourself or all the endangered whales. And I’m thinking about cold weather, I’m thinking “would we rather it be so cold everyone got to see that spectacular comet the other night or this man not die?” Would you rather, would you rather? As if there’s a trade off.
And then of course I write a blog about it. So we can care so much. Be aware that these things happen. Extend our useless empathy. Maybe even make a donation to a soup kitchen that will feed people but give them nowhere to sleep. Because really, we care so much. I mean, I do. Don’t you?