Really, it's not so bad as all that

It's fogged in, but the air is fresh this morning. A man wearing the neon orange vest of a city worker rests against a fire hydrant. He's Asian, well over sixty. His hair, in two long braids, stands straight up from his head like antennae. His eyes are alert and smiling.

A woman at the bus stop beside me must be older than anyone I know. She's toothless, skin wrinkled and cracked. But her gray hair is in a ponytail. She wears skinny jeans and tennis shoes, her hands slotted casually into pockets.

I give up my seat on the bus for an elderly man wearing a perfume of marijuana. He looks at me closely around cataracts, nodding his head. "Somebody raised you right," he says. It's only a little thing, but he's tickled.

A black man rattles toward me on the street, his arms and legs moving loose in their joints. He throws one arm at his reflection in a store window. "Back in your motherfucking box!

In your box!" he laughs, passing me on the sidewalk.