The Street Health Report was released on Wednesday of this week and deserves to be celebrated. Months of hard work and many people interviewed about the conditions of their lives so that we might all better understand the intersection between health and housing.
Ray, a member of our group said it well recently. "Why is it that some people have so much and yet so many people do not have nearly enough to live or eat let along have life's luxuries or life's necessities? Wouldn't it be nice if all of us people could share and live and love and help one another without greed and strife? We all would have a much better place to live together. Through these eyes I can only see what is yet put before me...."
His simple and profound words have haunted me for a couple of weeks. We need to develop the ability to look through the eyes of others, and to see what is before them, what lack exists, what abundance we may be celebrating and could share of. When I see through the eyes of another I begin to grasp another's world, I begin to imagine a life that is not mine. It is easy for us to see through the eyes of a character in a literary work or a film, why not through the eyes of a person of flesh and blood who could challenge our stereotypes of them?
In the photograph above we see a person wrapped in a blanket, asleep in a doorway. Not much privacy. But one would like to imagine that at least there might be safety. I would have to say that safety is not assured when you are sleeping outside. But the liklihood of violence is. And you are definitely vulnerable.
A few posts below us we see another photograph, this time of a bed that has been abandoned for a few moments. Cardboard serves as a mattress, a few possessions wrapped in a garbage bag are the feathers in a pillow... and I wonder how many nights can you sleep here on this stone step? What happens to our bodies, to us, when we are exposed to the elements and are not able to escape them? Snow, sun, wind, rain and draught all effect the homeless and the insecurely housed.
But I won't go on... Come out and see us and our work from the past months at Nuit Blanche in the Nightless City district! We'll be at the corner of Church and Maitland Street from 7:03 pm on Saturday, September 29 untill 7:03 am Sunday, September 30! Oh ya, I take my coffee with one sugar and a bit of soy milk....
