Intermission

I have spent almost twenty Sundays in the city talking to people on the streets while sketching their portraits. I am wondering why? What is my interest? Am I hoping to find some nonconformist community, there?  Do I idealize homelessness? For a while I was observing my subjects unaware that I, too, became a subject of their observations and judgments. When I was painting Dan one hot day at the Rittenhouse Square, a man lied down on the bench in my full view. He pierced me with his eyes; his pose was suggestive. I thought that he wanted to be my model, too. Maybe he hoped for a tip or maybe he was an exhibitionist, I thought. But then I was crossing from the 21^st to the 20^th through Moravian street; one of those narrow Philadelphia passes unattractive to traffic. Two guys with large duffel bags were talking next to the garbage cans. They saw me approaching, and one walked my way. We both scanned each other; I, on the subject of painting; he, who knows why. The other guy was still waiting next to the cans. I scanned him, too. “I spit,” he rapped in the high pitch. “I spit, I spit, I spit.” I slowed down looking directly in his face, thinking if I want to paint him. “I know what love is,” he continued his tune, “I have been in love, my heart is broke, all I am saying I spit. I am forty nine years old and I understand love…” “You are not forty nine,” I said, ”you are twenty nine.”  “Twenty nine, that’s what I said, I didn’t lie to you, miss,” he called after me as I walked away. Who am I in the eyes of my subjects, and who are they in mine?