On The Sidewalk, On The Surface
He's screaming.
It's hard to hear what is being said, exactly, but it's unmistakably angry.
The air is thick and humid. It's pouring rain. It's an uncomfortable combination.
He's still screaming.
He's a dark haired man, on the corner, in a well tailored suit, yelling in to his phone. Between "you motherfucker!" and "no, no, no let me talk!" it's nearly impossible to catch much else.
A million things are going on around him. The high arcing glass buildings of the financial district line the view behind.
A streetcar stops, it's doors open, a hundred people rush out of every side.
A woman is trying to get her stroller down. A bike messenger riding by stops, jumps off his bike, and helps her. She says "thank you" and flashes him a grateful smile, but he doesn't seem to notice or care, he just gets back on the bike and goes.
There's a teenager standing in the middle of the street, trying to take a picture of something, his arms stretched above his head, his neck craned back.
Everything is in perpetual motion.
The man is still screaming.
I play through possible scenarios.
Partner left him?
Business relationship gone wrong?
Lost his wallet in the back of a cab in a foreign country?
Who knows.
He's yelling, oblivious to anyone around him, while everyone else is just as oblivious to him.
The pace of the city is all consuming, it doesn't care about personal drama or anything of the sort. It just moves forward.
Always. Constantly. Unapologetically.
Watching him, you can't help but wonder how many people have argued on the same street corner. Said nearly the same things, felt the same emotions, moved along.
How many times we have all played through different drama cycles. Each one in the moment feeling new and novel to us, but being completely unoriginal in every way.
It's exhausting. But there's something so human about it.
We want to connect. We get louder when we feel we aren't heard. We get more angry when we feel like others don't care about our problems. We can quickly become loosely hinged, desperate people when we have our walls broken down and our reality altered.
We are not as virtuous as we would like, sometimes. We unwind.
This is one of those moments.
Unwinding. Out of control. Ugly and messy and fully human.
It's probably true that this is not a good reflection of this man. Perhaps he is a great man. Perhaps his anger is fully justified, completely legitimate.
But, we aren't offered any larger context. This is all we get to see. The flicker of rage, the uncontrolled output of verbal assault, the look of fury etched deeply in to his face.
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up."
The kindness is staggering.
He's back at it again. His hands move around wildly, his body language shifting with every different expletive, his face expanding and contracting at rapid pace.
He appears not to notice the rain.
A young woman, wearing business clothes, is waiting to cross the street, standing right beside him.
"What is wrong with YOU?!" His voice goes up at least two octaves.
She glances at him, unconcerned, and gently takes two steps away from him. It's a discrete move, probably something she has practiced before. She isn't scared. She just doesn't care.
There's a purity to her indifference. It's without judgement.
The light changes over, everyone moves.
She's gone now.
He's still standing there. There's tension in every fibre of his body.
A younger man with a backpack on and a backwards hat crossing the street walks towards him.
"Why can't you LISTEN to me?!"
The tone feels more desperate now.
He looks at him and laughs. Blatantly and openly. He's seen it a million times. It's nothing new. Routine, really.
The man, of course, never notices any of this. The world moves around him, and his focus is never taken away, not even for a moment.
And as he keeps yelling into his phone, there's a little kid behind him, maybe 4 or 5 years old, standing on top of a small concrete pillar outside an office tower. It's only a handful of feet off the ground, but it's arguably far too large for him to be on. Comparable to a grown adult walking on the roof of a house.
A woman who appears to be his mother is chasing around her two other kids, who both are sprinting in opposite directions, laughing as they watch her try to corral them.
She gets close to one and the other one jumps in to a puddle and squeals and laughs, taunting her efforts.
The child climbing is unnoticed.
He puts one foot in front of the other, in front of the other, like he's walking on a tightrope.
His eyes are glued to his feet and he moves with a remarkably advanced agility.
One foot, in front of the other, in front of the other.
He plants the heel of one foot directly in front of the toes of his other foot.
He's getting close to the end, but he just keeps staring down at his feet, absorbed fully in the moment.
He's almost at the end. At most, he can maybe take two more steps before falling off.
One.
Does he notice?
Two.
No, he doesn't
He doesn't look up, not even an inch.
He lifts his tiny foot again to take the next step, a step that would send him in to the concrete below, and he doesn't even look up to notice that there's nothing there to step on.
He leans forward, and there's nothing to grab a hold of. His body tips forward, off balance, about to fall, his head outstretched past his centre of gravity, ready to smack in to the unforgiving pavement.
But an arm reaches out.
It's the man on the phone.
His left arm is fully extended. He holds the kid by the chest, keeping him upright, like he's a small bookshelf that is about to tip over.
The kid's face turns to shock, as he realizes. He slowly gets his footing back and balances himself.
The man smiles. He offers a relaxed, calm, encouraging expression to the child. It seems to soften any anxiety that was present. He turns his extended arm so his palm is facing up, towards the sky, his hand outstrecthed and welcoming.
The kid looks confused, mostly.
The man motions with his hand to jump down.
The kid grabs onto the man's arm and jumps down, his weight supported and sustained.
His mother is still chasing after her other two children. They are still jumping in puddles, still laughing. She doesn't notice. The kid smiles.
The man smiles back and waves. A farewell to his new friend.
He's still holding his phone in the other hand.
It's a small act of service, a gesture done in good faith.
And yet, it's invisible.
Never to be seen or noticed.
All a part of the blur.
He turns his attention back to the phone, and he's right back into whatever he was saying before.
It's a stream of "fucks" and "you idiot" and other pleasantries.
The person on the other end of the call would never know.
The mother would never know.
The kid would never grasp the act of kindness that had been bestowed upon him.
And the man doesn't ask for credit. Doesn't ask for any applause.
He's a container of complexity in that moment.
Furious. Gracious.
Angry. Empathetic.
Belittling. Caring.
There is so much to notice, but it all happens so fast.
He starts walking now, the rain beginning to ruin his expensive suit and brown leather shoes with fancy laces.
He puts his arm over his head, in a half hearted effort to stop rain from hitting his face.
It's the same arm that he used to help the kid.
He's the same guy.
In all of it.
But we only see the moments that are brought to us. We don't get to see all of it.
We only get to see what is offered.
The beautiful thing about big cities is that you can exist in whatever way you want.
It's also the part that makes them sort of tragic. You never get to know much about anyone.
It blurs together. Speeds away. Gone.
Perhaps the man is a hero. Perhaps he's not.
It doesn't matter.
There's always more to know, more to see.
We just never get to.
He keeps walking, the rain keeps pouring, and the thick air is filled with more cursing as he goes.
The city moves on. Life goes with it.
There's more than what we can see on the surface, but sometimes the surface is all we get.