The smell of fried chicken is comforting in its power to overwhelm my senses as my feet plod along the heavily grated streets on my walk to work. I still haven't figured out quite what those grates are for, but the medium-sized glare of the bulbs below illuminate a shallow, cavernous space. Rudimentary flood system, perhaps, to allow water to rapidly fill in these essentially hollow sidewalks and be pumped away to a canal, rather than wait for finicky street drains to shoulder the burden.

The walk had become routine, something to be spiced up every few days: Gravier to Baronne to the alley to Carondolet and the entrance; Gravier all the way to Carondolet and then west towards Poydras; Gravier to Baronne to the other alley to Carondolet and towards Poydras. This was my daily intrigue, with the sights and smells of the paths bleeding into the dynamic backdrop of a slightly depressed city. The first few weeks back sheened with the dampened spirit of a city that felt still closed to those of us try to re-enter and re-instate normalcy. Now, the streets feel more willing to accept our grudging footsteps and the city's characters have resumed their usual posts, propped up against always-grimy stone walls and surrounded by the previous day's garbage waiting to be picked up by the city. By the walk home, sometimes the garbage has been collected but the characters are still sitting. Usually in the same slumped position I first passed them in. And everytime I walk blindly by these people humanity has forgotten the irony of the garbage pick up is not lost on me -- these plastic bags of tangible trash have a courier whose job it is to gather and relocate it while the characters are left to sit and rot without a similar caretaker to gather and relocate them.

Most mornings I tell myself, "Tonight I'll give him a dollar on my way home," but I never do. What will that dollar do, really? And then I feel ashamed because my next line of logic goes something like, "If I give him a dollar today he'll start to expect it everytime I walk by, which is twice a day, and how awkward would that be?!" The day I begin avoiding helping someone out of fear of awkwardness is the day I know I am a hypocrit with grand ideals and no backbone with which to act on those personal values.