The night air still, a lone car park light beam cuts through the fog. Like a stage spot light the main character sat on a jumbled mess of blankets, a pillow and his life packed neatly rolled into a make shift swag beside him. I was walking with a group of friends going on a night out on the town, the chatter lively our pace brisk until I looked to my right and saw this figure of man who was somebody at sometime in his life and now he was just someone existing between the cusp of humanity and the ethereal. Time suddenly slowed down where my vision fell upon this lone soul. He wore a white well worn out singlet, his hair a beehive matted which had seen better days. There a lonely soul had turned his back on society, a life once lived and loved in. He was hunched over his body wavering back and forth between the ebb and flow of life itself, his right arm steady as he was focussed on the veins inflicted by pain, torture and relief. He slumps forward then as if in slow motion he slides onto his right side, his ordeal eased by his remedy of choice, it pulsates the course with every platelet latching on to it's foreign passenger then speeds off to it's central destination a mysterious abyss to infinity. I did not see his head touch his pillow as our group passed the chain link fence of that dimly lit space but what I had witnessed in a matter of seconds turned into a memory forever etched, "yes, I saw you. I will remember you for years to come. You did exist on this earth and by God I hope you still are and well." Like the light that man sat under, so too my hope for him that perhaps he made it back into society, with his circle of friends, work colleagues and perhaps family. Hope, what else is there? Without the light.
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