I met the Christ two weeks back.She was sprawled out on a worn-out strip of grass in front of the Coronilla, sniffing glue out of a small plastic container that once held Tolavi sour cream.It seems a rather outlandish thing that she should be doing something so unbecoming now that I write it out so plainly, but at the moment it seemed perfectly expectable.She was lazily awaiting dusk, the time when the vocation of those young girls at the Terminal generally begins, when I encountered her.
This isn’t the first time for me.Once, I sat with her late into the evening on the curb of Cordova in downtown Vancouver talking about a strange church where street kids hang out and shoot up in the bathrooms before the service.Another time, in Kitchener, I followed him to the house of a widow from Czechoslovakia where I changed a light bulb and heard a heartbreaking tale in a language I did not understand but in tears I knew too well.
Each time, sadly enough, I left the Christ where I had found him (or he had found me) and I moved along.For some time I have seen these encounters as moments of turning or change meant to direct my path or something spiritual like that.Now I am questioning this.The problem is, when I go, Christ stays.
Tonight, if you would believe me, the Christ is walking the streets here in Cochabamba, glue in hand, along the same route she has walked these past seven years.Tonight, she will feel again the Passion that has been inflicted upon her all this time, and drift off to sleep alone, cold, hungry.And tonight, as always, I will fall asleep with effort trying to not think of her lest I Awake and do something Foolish.