Hard to say exactly what was happening attitudinally, but there I was waiting for my sister in front of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art…and not being nice to the homeless passersby. One wanted me to buy his newspaper, a publication of and by the homeless. Which logically is the very sort of thing self-styled writers should support, right? Wrong. I reacted badly. Maybe I get tired of being so regularly importuned. So I moved 100 m up the street, only to encounter a withered woman in a wheelchair. With whom I had every reason to identify and sympathize. Yes, at that particular moment I found her annoying too.

And what does this all mean? That I can get sucked into the zeitgeist as easily as anyone. And grow impatient with the very economic gulf in which I have landed on the right side. And, no, I do not believe in compassion fatigue. What I do believe is that certain attitudes have trailed me since childhood. Amid family discord, I concocted a fantasy of fixing everything and everyone. And now back to the street corner in front of the San Francisco MOMA…waiting for a family member…good chance I was being pulled into the emotional past.

Good to have some perspective. After all, the nation’s poor are not in the past. They are as present as ever. And I need to be too. Which, it must be admitted, is not always possible. The only thing about the present that is hard to escape involves…the fact that it is hard to escape. Engaging with people who are living rough does remind me of my physical vulnerability. I am at the mercy of batteries. But, let us be wise, I am really at the mercy of very little waiting on a public street in front of a very public institution like MOMA. And if one wants to be in public and part of the public…this is one of the safer options.

As Jane points out, the thing to do is to engage, not withdraw. What are their stories? Just ask people what brought them where they are. Can’t hurt. Or give them money. Give them something. Unless they are genuinely…and rarely…a threat. And meanwhile if compassion fails, vow to resurrect it…and don’t give yourself too much of a hard time when it doesn’t. My Thought For The Day.

Actually, the best thoughts for this particular day come from Montana Gov. Steven Bullock. The guy is a Democrat. And in yesterday’s New York Times he wrote quite convincingly about finding common ground with people in a very conservative state. And remember, Montanans elected him. Seek out people who disagree with you, he urged. Learn how to talk to them. He didn’t precisely advocate an extrovert implant, though for me that would have been helpful. Or maybe not. Listening probably makes more sense than talking in Montana.

This very morning with Jane away overnight for her daughter’s baby shower…damned if I wasn’t getting out of bed on my own. Not without precedent, one might assume. But one might assume unwisely. My sister was visiting, staying upstairs and within earshot. But taking a shot at aging ears isn’t always reliable. Anyway, I was getting myself out of bed and got briefly stuck. And do let me point out that I also got unstuck. Still, a reminder of time’s winged chariot and the ever diminishing number of rosey fingered dawns. Let’s just call it vulnerability. And we can call it that all we want, something in me still doesn’t get it. And this is an odd and persistent confusion. What is the difference between disability and aging? I mean, I used to be able to do stuff.

Yesterday, parking my car only a mile away to extract some cash from Bank of the West, my power steering briefly cut in and out. What to do? I have recently taken the car to a garage. But that’s the problem with intermittent outages. When the outage is out of sight, the mechanics quietly roll their eyes. So you go home and hope for the best.

Hoping for the best doesn’t come naturally to me, but there you have it. And I’d had it, parked at 24th and Mission Streets without reliable steering. The steering committee had simply decided to fuck this cripple. And what was there to do? Well, I thought of summoning assistance. But that’s the thing about a problem that comes and goes. You can count on it going at an embarrassing time. Like this one. So I adopted an uncharacteristically cavalier mood. I did my banking, got cappuccino next door…not to mention a vast and extravagant muffin…and headed back to the car. And drove home, of course, no younger, certainly no wiser…but still moving.