caps and lids

an old japanese sir

In back light two pieces of very white and wise hair were floating in the afternoon breeze around the oval of wrinkles and elegant japanese eyes. He walks slowly in my direction and I recognize in the twist of his face some sort of pain while he looks down at a plastic bin halfway in the street.

I turn and close my eyes as my heart squeezes sharply inside me as I realise that he is stretching his hand inside the bin. I just grieve at this world we are living in , where an old japanese man has to live his most mature days to fumble in a garbage bag to get by.

As I try to run away from this scene, I stop and decide to catch this and live through with him the despair of this world. The time I take my camera, he has lifted some washing liquid container.

The time I switch it on , I see that he has get rid of the container and walks away gingerly with the red lid in his hand. Amusement makes its way through my surprise : the old man was in fact trying to correct some careless parisian mistake ; the plastic lids have to be recycled elsewhere in this place ! And he took care of the situation even if at his venerable age and in his serious black outfit he had to put his arms through the garbage... A warm relaxation pervades me, I witness a scene of joy and not of catastrophe. I know for sure that the scene I imagined exists somewhere as piercingly painful as I felt it. I know also that people care and we are not lost. There he walks away with the red cap in one hand and the dangling stick in the other.