[originally just posted on flickr, but hey this is long enough to blog.]
For Julius,
who was shot right around this area a few weeks back.
i don’t know this cat from adam (the guy pictured, or julius), and i happened upon this shot, while walking with rae a few weeks ago. I do remember however what happened, and when i heard it on the news, it seemed so surreal how it was reported. young dude gets shot, homeless man who shot him was questioned and released. seemed odd that this could have just happened, and that was that. i remember thinking that they seemed to treat this dude as if it was a Good Thing he was gone anyway.
There’s always that real, human element to some stuff you hear on the news–i was just particularly saddened; Julius seemed to be dealing with mental illness, and folk around him didn’t know how to recognize it or deal with it. I tend to make a point to talk to a lot of people just kind of "out there". It sometimes does become more of an "emotional burden" than I had initially planned on, but I tend to think that everyone has a bit of worth…
There are probably folk in your life, or around your life for whom you may feel that if they were just not around, it’d make life so much better "for the rest of us". Now, i’m never that cat to tell people what would make the world a better place (only thing i know that can make "things" better is Christ, other than that, i’m a bit of a fatalist as far as where our planet’s going :) but i do know from experience that on an individual basis, it can help to deal with someone as they’re worth a little something (well, because they are:). You may at *least* delay the inevitable downfall of another by a little bit, and at the most, inspire another to inspire others…