It was a few days ago, in an afternoon’s summer heat, that I walked across a grocery store parking lot. I have done it hundreds of times before, incident-free. This time, there was commotion: a middle-aged grocery store manager was shooing away a homeless man at the curbside. I immediately thought of shop owners, from long ago, in aprons using brooms to brush cats away from their front entrances. I was far enough away that I couldn’t hear the words, but the manager, by his body language, looked embarrassed, maybe even ashamed.
But like T.S. Eliot in his poems, it was the human voices that woke us to our drowning.
Emerging from the air-conditioned store were three female customers who swaggered with a belligerent confidence that I once believed was reserved for the schoolyard or the pub at closing time.
“He’s a junkie; kick him out.” Sneering, they said the homeless man was a bum who wasted other people’s money on crack or booze. Whatever they said after that, I couldn’t hear because the shriek of wheels from a buggy boy’s train of shopping carts muted their strident sanctimony.
My eyes glanced towards the homeless man as he struggled to his feet, and I turned into the store. I didn’t give it another moment’s notice until I was at the self-serve checkout. Beside me was the homeless man purchasing two cans of beer. A female store attendant was speaking to him kindly, the way a sister would speak to a wayward brother.
The homeless man didn’t say anything while she talked and looked at the checkout machine. After he paid, he said, “See you later.”
When he had gone, I turned to the attendant.
“You’re alright.”
“I try. When I was a girl, he lived across the street from my parents’ house. People don’t know what he has lived through, but I do.”
The memory seemed to upset her because her eyes looked the way the sky does before a soft spring rain falls.
So I left with a “Take care” and let her get back to earning her living. Outside, the homeless man was ahead of me on my walk home. Near the top of the hill, he turned around and saw me, then disappeared into a treed section near the railway tracks. I hoped he did it to drink his beer, not because he thought I was going to give him trouble or judge him.
I can’t mark the day when society crossed over into this brutish cruelty. But I know how it metastasised.
Society fell into a social media rabbit hole, where people were radicalised into intolerance towards the vulnerable by the oligarchs of Meta and X. Flash mobs erupt now not to sing songs from Mamma Mia! but to incite hatred against outsiders, whether they are homeless, refugees, or Muslims. People proudly display their animosity towards anyone or anything unlike themselves because social media made it acceptable by presenting falsehoods as home truths.
I cross paths with these soldiers of stupidity and cruelty every day. Just last week, an old woman outside my building watched a young Nigerian man pushing an e-bike with his daughter beside him.
"I wonder if we paid for that too," the old woman said, as if she were exhaling cigarette smoke rather than racism.
As I walked past her and into the building, I asked where she had learned that shit.
“Facebook.”
As always, thank you for reading my Substack posts. Rent for August is due tomorrow. I am fighting to make sure I can pay it. There is still a shortfall of C$125.
Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and keep me housed. So, if you can, please join with a paid subscription for just £3.50 a month, or take out a yearly or gift subscription. There is also an option to tip, and yearly subscriptions are 40% off. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful.
Take care,
John
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.