This Place is Filled with Hope

A man in the corner with a bag of colored pencils and a pad of paper nodded in my direction. He took a moment to study my face like a math problem, then turned his pencil to the paper. 

I studied the place around me.  It was nothing like the Miami world I was used to. "This place is filled with hope" said the faded bumper sticker plastered to the industrial door which lead into the sleeping room.  Inside, thin green mats lined the concrete floor reacking of the bleach they had just been sprayed with.  The plain room was dimly lit with fluorescent lights and bunk beds lined the walls in an almost prison like fashion.  This place is filled with sadness, I thought.  

Yet in the room over, real life was going on.  People came in and sat down to laughed with one another, huddled under coats and tired eyes, blank stares and smiles.  These were people, just like all people, who carried stories on their backs and thoughts in their pockets.  Some turned to watch the television as Barack Obama descended a plane and shook the hands of some overly welcoming bureaucrats.   In the corner, I caught the man with the colored pencils studying my eyes.  The president was filled with hope, too.

Someone directed me to stand behind the food counter and pass out cookies. In my mind I kept comparing everything to my own situation.  Just several hours before at school I had the option of eating as many cookies as I wanted.  Here, the cookies seemed stale and pathetically small. The rule was one per person.  And who made it like that?

And who made this like this, too?  That I carefully study someone else's situation as a part of a project, as if I were studying their needs for my own personal benefit.  Here, take this cookie while I watch how you react.  Let me note your facial expression while you take it from my hand. Will you give it away?  Will you ask for a second? Sit down quickly so I can keep listening and watch you.

The man in the corner scrutanized me carefully.  I smiled awkwardly in his direction for a moment, and then resumed my own art project of observation.  Watch and listen.  See the shopping basket she carries?  See the dirty torn jeans he wears?  See the hungry eyes those two have?

The man in the corner approached me.  In his hand was the piece of art he had drawn.  A portrait of me.  He had shaded in the tired spots beneath my eyes from a night of late studying.  He had drawn almost perfectly the freckles I had about my nose and eyes from summers spent at the pool now long past.  His pencil knew my frizzy irish hair and the necklace that I loved. 

  I smiled and thanked him, and wondered in my head if there would ever be a time in my life where I could be capable of making art that pure, if I would know how to serve someone (someone who was supposed to be serving me) so selflessly with my art and passion.

They say stereotypes are broken down through art, through the sharing and exchange of human expression.  And as I stood there awkwardly watching these people, I became filled with op that with this "project" that is something I might be able to do.