I live next to a hospital.  Which means: I am awoken every night by an ambulance; my car is broken into once a month; and there is never, ever, any street parking when you need it.  But, I willingly trade sleep and intact car windows for a claim to the neighborhood.  That’s the way it works in a city, there’s always a trade off.

     For four years I lived in a quiet apartment in the near-ghetto.  My rent was cheap and my neighborhood was frightening.  When I returned to San Francisco, after a bout in south-side Chicago, I opted for the opposite exchange.  Great neighborhood, high-priced rents and a constant flow of noise and people.  It’s worked well for me.

     After a while, the interruptions blend into unnoticed rote of daily life.  Just as these disturbances once grabbed my attention, the general scenery and even the people around me fade into the background of my own mind.  It sometimes amazes me how aloof one can remain in a city filled with millions of people.  It’s simply too easy say effortless hellos to neighbors and acquaintances; nod acknowledgements at the city workers you see routinely; and say the mandatory and seemingly genial pleases, thank you’s and excuse me’s; all the while having maybe one, two, or none true friends.

     On a regular sunny Sunday morning, I left my home even more distanced than usual to my surroundings.  I had a summer flu and my head was clogged and hazy.  Shivering in my sweats and feeling quite sorry for myself, I noticed a man sitting on the sunny corner of my street.  In a frayed ball cap and dirty working clothes, he bore the trademarked look of the average garden—construction—migrant—worker.  But it was a Sunday, and the clear realization that something was out of place entered my muddled brain.

     I looked a little closer.  Tissues or maybe toilet paper, wrung into tight twists, were piled to his right.  And he wasn’t just sitting; he seemed crumpled—as if a child had dropped a doll on the sidewalk.  He glanced up at me as I hesitated, and I smiled, but worried that it came out as a grimace.  He looked back down and I continued down the street, not giving him a second thought.

     I made my way back up the steep hill from the coffee shop, and saw the man had crossed over the street and had been joined by someone else.  As I passed I noticed the other man was older, an aluminum cane had fallen to the ground.  Leaning over the bed of a dusty, white pick-up truck, with a faint imprint of a 7-Up logo left on its side, the two men openly wept.

     I had a moment of confused empathy, and then I suddenly remembered I live around the corner from a hospital.  I was jarred back into the grips of humanity.  I approached the men and falteringly asked them if they would like some coffee, water—if they needed anything—if there was something I could do to help.

     The older man grasped my hand and in two languages told me both thank you and no.  He, or maybe I, had broken the unspoken, widely acknowledged, city contact rule.  He held on to me as he spoke, clenching and relaxing his grip almost rhythmically, and an overwhelming and startling sense of gratitude pulsed through me.