everything you know.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the courtyard writing and thinking about the ways a city makes us ignore people. And how the activists and campaigners outside my building play on the guilt that ignoring induces. There is a real living person there talking to you and you're just going to ignore them? I do. Across the street, in the alcove in front of the drugstore, there is usually someone begging. Head down, cardboard sign. They've written out the story of being sick and homeless, trying to make it West, trying to eat. I walk by someone there almost every day. I read their sign out of the corner of my eye and feel so wrong for ignoring them. Ignoring a human being. Everything I believe about myself, humanity, love - it is all caught up in that one moment. I never even hesitate. I keep walking.

For several weeks there was a man outside the drugstore collecting signatures for a petition to legalize marijuana. I passed him every evening as I left work and every evening he asked me to stop. Sometimes I'd mumble something, I'm running late, I'm in a hurry, I can't stop today. Other times I'd just walk on by.

This is all a good source of constant guilt for me. And I need some guilt if I'm ever to think hard about life and what we will make of it.

***

Yesterday, I sat down and told myself to write down everything I knew about guilt. That is how I started. It's good to think about things that make us cringe sometimes. Emotions are emotions and they are running our lives and our world. Are they? Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. If there is such a thing.