Robert E. Brown. Street Zombies, Lost Gods and A City Full of Ghosts

All you have to do is look.

I relinquished my car after the nasty breakup with my first fiance. For the last eight years I haven't had the insulating sanctuary of my own four wheels to escape the crush of urban humanity and I'm glad. Public transit and long urban hikes have been my primary form of transportation, this has allowed me important moments with the cities most alien underbelly.

Urban denizens have always fascinated me, the homeless, street walkers, loitering drug addicts, the mentally ill and abandoned low income elderly. All unwanted and turned out to wander the streets with nothing to do but let time pass by. They are American untouchables who inhabit a cityscape in a primitive existence completely separate from "the real world." Most functioning members of society don't register their presence as they speed past in cars or brush by on foot with eyes averted. I am not a social critic or activist. My place is that of an observer who believes in realities and worlds constructed by the viewer. Their world is like an alternate ghost world that doesn't need a magic key or a wardrobe portal to enter. All one has to do is stop and LOOK- and you're there. But the civilized are wise in averting their eyes, most aren't ready or equipped to focus and engage those ghosts who stand all around them.

After becoming the fixated target of the Sansom Street Witch simply by making eye contact, you might think I would start averting my eyes too. (see previous entry entitled Sansom Street Witch) My crime against the Street Witch was that I acknowledged her, thereby entering her world. During every encounter she screamed. "I see you." But I'm not one to look away, I've found myself keenly, continually aware of this alternate shadow, this reality inhabited by those who don't seem real.

The things you see when you LOOK while living in a city are almost enough to drive suburbanites and residents of Palin's America into madness. Once my wife contended that you haven't really lived until you've stepped in a warm pile of human feces on an underground subway platform. I contend that while this is true, one doesn't achieve true enlightenment until one WATCHES another human being taking such a shit.

I was walking out of 30th street station and there he was squatting in broad daylight just feet from the door. Commuters were passing by this invisible troll completely oblivious. Not a cop in sight. I pulled out my ipod and turned up the soothing sounds of James Brown. A sound track for his shame as he squatted bouncing and jittery. Like a nervous bug in human form, hissing and waving at me because I didn't pretend it wasn't happening. Because I LOOKED while other's around refused his existence. But my eyes weren't a spotlight on his crime, they were an acknowledgment of his reality. By doing this, the crime is mine.

I recall sitting at a bus stop watching a tore up disheveled transvestite hooker beat a homeless crack head bloody with a 6 inch stiletto heel. She was swinging the shoe down on his head like a high fashion sickle. They were three feet away from me, him on the ground trying to fend off her blows with limp low energy kicks while dragging himself away with one arm, the other in the air defending his bleeding head from her attack. He scooted down the street while she hobbled after him with shoe in pursuit, screaming "die mother fucker die."

A girl asked me once "What did you do?" What did I do? I ate my Doritos and I watched. It wasn't my place, it wasn't my world. But it was important to me that I saw it. For a brief moment I peered into this portal, into this other reality.

No one else wanted to look.

My Company