While driving up to the Don Mills Mall on Sunday, Rachelle and I came upon a woman panhandling at a stoplight. Although we’d passed many such people along the way there was a startling quality to her. She was holding up a little cardboard sign upon which she’d written the words, “God Bless You,” and there was an aspect to her that suggested she was trying to project something out into the world– to add rather than subtract. It felt like seeing a deer step miraculously out of the camouflage of a forest, briefly showing you the interior of things, and for a moment, radiating peace and gentleness, this woman seemed the holiest person on the planet. And then a look of boredom and irritation fell across her face, and from her right hand she took a defiant drag of a cigarette and the spell was broken, the moment of transcendence vanishing as we all returned to our wanting and vulnerable human forms.
