peerer

       At a casual glance, he looked like an alkie who suffered a bad slip and landed face first on a heating grate. A street dressed man with legs outstretched onto the pavement and palms placed on either side of his erratic gray haired head.
        If one paused for a careful glance, then one would see the stirrings and shifts of conscious movement. Slight shiftings of the knees and feet as well as movements of the chest, the palms were there to prop and shade the down-turned head that peered through the heating grate.
        The grate is on the Northwest corner of Simcoe and Dundas, further inward and slightly hidden from the continuous flow of human traffic. The peerer�s clothes are crudely cut, oversized and mismatched and misfitted in the trademark manner of the �mentally ill� who scatteredly wandered the city. Even alcoholics, though destitute still manage to wear clothes that generally fit no matter how threadbare or squalid.
        Still fixated with the grate, he peers, moves, edges, inches sidles his thin dwindling body to the side again further matting street dust on his clothes. Blackened fingers shield outside light from view and he peers again through the grate. It seems as if this begrimed wanderer is looking for something, perhaps some money fell through the heating vent.
        Another instance, in the midst of summer within Nathan Phillips Square an event took place sponsored by two major banking firms for the employees on the lowest echelons, who participate in activities that resemble a primary school activity day. Weighted bloated middle aged adults play competitive games to youthful sounding pop music in some boardroom planned trial to bolster employee morale. Off to the side it seems as if a poorly dressed passerby has fainted...collapsed. Amidst the activity; and ever-present midday business traffic that cuts through the square, stretched out on a concrete slab it looks as if someone had collapsed. The even with all the jubilant people and passersby give no more than a curious glance at the person in order to step over or around the shabbily dressed aged body.
        Slight movements of the chest slid against the concrete to the side and his hands are cupped to the side of his face as he shifts around for a better vantage point in order to gaze through the break in the concrete slab. One is given the impression that he wanders through the city kneeling then pressed flat against the pavement to search for whatever the imagination can conjure.
        Donated clothed persons are given greater license to displays of public injury, suffering and the general right to remain unconscious.