There's a homeless man (is he homeless?) who passes by my window every day with the regularity of homlessness. He wears a brown coat, brown pants, and a brown fedora, even in the height of summer. Sixty, seventy perhaps - it's hard to tell his age. Walks slowly, very slowly. Pulls behind on a leash the steel frame of a baby carriage. Empty in the morning; stacked with flattened brown cardboard in the afternoon. Takes it to the nearby recycling center. So much cardboard, he can hardly keep it balanced. Sometimes I think he is made out of brown cardboard and it's himself he's pulling on a leash. He must be a stack of brown flattened cardboard. Collapsed.
I feel pity for him, most of the time. Pity is the most pitiless feeling. It immediately places you in a superior position. Pity is the feeling of the stronger toward the weaker. Satisfaction. The spite of the survivor. I pity myself.
Other times I feel annoyed and impatient with him. Why does he move so slowly? Get your ass out of my sight. He doesn't. He keeps on pulling his stack of brown cardboard.