Empty Spaces

This is an empty space.

During the mornings and evenings, to some degree throughout the entire day, this space is passed by frenzied flocks of representatives of our corporate society. The masses migrate in an apocalyptic rush to and from Shinjuku Station, to and from their posts of occupation, to and from their homes. The city's participants pass this space by without a second glance, most without even a first.

But this space was not always empty.

He stood there, in that space, in the oasis of sun that snook through the buildings and pavement to reach this sub-terrainean walk way. His hair wretchedly dirty. His clothes showing years of city scavenging, hiding, surviving. Day after day, morning after morning, he stood in the same space, in the same pose; his back to the sun, his face towards the underground walkway, with a cigarette in his left hand and his right in his pocket. He carried a suitcase full of scavenged treasures; half-empty bag of potato chips, remnants of a bottle of tea, a piece of chocolate. The winter air frigid, his teeth shivered and rattled as he spoke, constantly, to himself, to the people passing by, to the nothingness that separated him from everything.

i pass this space with my usual expectation of his presence; a reality check for what this society is and what it does to those who can't keep up. i realize my own sense of disgust or fear towards those that society has deemed sub-human. In turn i feel a disgust towards myself, i feel a certain sadness for existence in general. i keep walking to my office.

But the other day this space was not home to this homeless man. Instead, it housed only the rotating red flashes of an ambulance's sirens.

This space is now empty.