heart of a problem

The third year was met with another snub over the shoulder. Small bouquets, compassionate poems, warm candles glowing in the night — all these things have grown steadily through the years. In the U.S. and around the world, there’s a calling of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to perform their Constitutional Duty and hold the criminal Bush/Cheney Administration accountable for their actions.

Pushing my way across the sidewalks downtown where fat cats and rats gun down. I sometimes stand there watching pedestrians stop to pray or just to observe, flickered in the breeze. College students out of education continue to walk the streets lit by a neon constellation where the night sky turns gold due to most gigantic banners and lights that beckon all comers, to exotic lap dances.

Here, retailing is God. A mere hundred metres away the evolving memorial at the Elgin street intersection you’ll often find the bucket men — set on shining the stone to the bodies beating to the shopping frenzy next door. The wailing sounds cascaded over the din produced by other peddlers of materials elevated and prosaic. The Jesus Saves man was there. So were the pocket people for change.

There’s a book that contains "the heart of Islam, a heart people must learn to understand." at the bookstore. Behind a kiosk retailing tourism, pennants, maps, bobble head dolls, was a salesman of racial uplift. And there were other souls lurking about, some selling, most just lumpen, eyes wan from too much time on the street wondering how. But there was talk, much of it voluble and insistent. Death hits us all, but the place was still... alive.