You see them everywhere, yesterday, and now that some of them have my stuff I've taken a little more of an interest.
So & SO (homeless, see him downtown every day), leaning up against the public toilet in the shade, he's sweating, staring into space, shaking, he's just shot up...
...and down along the lake, a trio with their backpacks, another group of homeless, addled, jiving along like that "Wish" version of Johnny Depp, they've just had theirs...
...and the little drummer boy on Baker, he's back at it, now, more, the older drummer man, but he's back to his air-drumming on the street, not as intense, but when I pass him he looks straight ahead and catches my eye and I'd swear he was lucid...
***
This morning, parking lot in front of thrift shop, a man splayed out on his back. Michael and I approach, make sure he's not dead. His boots are twitching, in each hand there's loosely clenched a crack pipe, the same as I found in my car, and I'm looking over his possessions, he's a flower pot and watering can, useless rubbish, a Bowie hunting knife beside the crack pipe near his right hand in case he's rudely disturbed...suddenly he stretches...Michael and I make haste to leave, he's fine...
***
They're everywhere, a few I know, most, imported from Castlegar and Trail after they eradicated their homeless camps, these are the dodgy ones...downtown, plenty of new homeless faces, the fat girl that commutes every morning from Balfour to sit on a corner all day begging money, strangers stopping to beg a cigarette, the tourists, the liberality, it sucks them in, and they don't want to leave and the town, it needs a strategy to help them move along, maybe something along the line of what Ralf Klein did when he bought all the welfare bums a one way ticket to BC (Balfour, I'm thinking, was a popular destination), only now we need to be returning the favour, sending the junkies along to Alberta with promises of new and friendlier faces...
***
Tonight, after work, a couple of Vodka in and I pop out for a cigarette. Cops are swarming the thrift shop, the door's been left open. Text Michael, he comes down to lock up. No signs of a break in, but the truck's been rifled a few times, you can't leave anything out, the tweakers will have it and the government, it has no strategy to deal with this...