If a homeless man sweats and there's nobody to smell it, does he still smell bad?

This afternoon was another rough one temperature wise. While waiting on my first bus; while returning home from work; I noticed a police cruiser criss crossing the main street, in what appeared a canvass of the area.

Just before my bus pulled up, the same cruiser pulled into the convenience store near my stop where another cruiser was using it's PA system addressing someone. I looked more closely and saw the person being addressed, an older man who'd been sleeping in the shadows of the convenience store to get away from the sun.

Years ago Jacksonville had a day center called 'The Center of/for Hope', that was located on Union Street, across from it's downtown historical cemetary. When it operated, it offered phone use, weekly haircuts/laundry/clothes swap, and other needs on a walk in basis. It's gone now, and while some locations claim they offer similiar services...they don't.

Later; at my third and final bus stop in this trip's routing where I waited an hour; I had the chance of being near a gentleman with outbursts of schizophrenia for the majority of the time I was around him.

Even in his state of mind, he posed the question to unknown demons why there wasn't anyplace for people like him to go. He's not able to get a job, without a shower. He's not able to get a shower, without a place to sleep. He's not able to get a place to sleep, without medication to simmer him down to sit in wait lines for days on end until his 'number is up'.

I got on my bus and while leaving him silently to continue his conversations and debates in the evening heat, I thought to myself how many others are on our streets that are never seen or heard.

If they're not seen or heard, then to many they would not exist.