You ever notice how beauty
always seems to somehow have some kind of attendant darkness with it?Like, you
have a nice flower, but of course to grow it there is all kinds of mud and rain
involved. And even with human endeavor, any great work always comes on the back
of someone. Which is what I was thinking about, sitting on the roof of my office
where they have a very elaborate roof deck with a garden, grass, flowers and
an amazing view. The splendor in the grass somehow reminded me of a particularly
wretched homeless guy who approached me yesterday. This guy looked like he was
from a biblical epic, wearing rags that were all uniformly dark gray shreds,
and his hair was matted down. Somehow, in movies, homeless people never look
like real homeless people, because they can’t fake that kind of weather beaten
sorrow. Not that his having fallen on sad times was any fault of the roof garden,
and I guess that they aren't really connected in any meaningful way at all,
but, instead of just enjoying the roof garden, I was up there thinking about
how a colleague just pointed out a new employee to me as he passed. He had gone
to school with her at Georgetown, and he looked very clean cut. Apparently,
the last week of school, he and four others had raped a girl, and taken photos
of it which got distributed. The victim was passed out cold and no charges were
ever brought. There is something kind of ugly about the whole topic, because
he looks all fresh and fits in with everyone else, and who knows what the raped
drunk girl is like these days, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the deception
of appearances. I guess the word I am looking for is guilt, both because I was
sitting in a beautiful spot while on the street below tons of guy were eating
garbage and suffering, and also vertical living makes you feel a little insulated
from the rest of the world. Although it doesn't really logically fit, the rapist
in my midst felt of a piece with that feeling of being in an ivory tower of
sorts, especially since he was wearing a white shirt and all dressed up, where
it seemed like he should have a big R on his shirt, and somehow, in my mind,
the homeless guy deserved to be clean and have a job. I say that knowing that
he could easily be a rapist as well, or worse, but it was just a thought, not
necessarily a rational thought.