Dignity

Today I am sitting in the same square at the same cafe pouring coke from a cool glass bottle into a warm glass filled to the brim with ice and topped with a lemon. The ice causes me great distress. You see I am not thirsty at this very moment and the ice is quickly melting leaving no room in the glass for the coke. But then of course the Greek man who served me will no doubt be quite happy to bring me a new glass without ice. I know this because he told me so and his unabashed staring confirms his faltering yet endearing English.
A child's screams reach my ears causing me to instinctively smile, I recognize this cry. It is the cry of one who has scraped his knee and the blood will soak the cobblestoned street today only to be bleached out by the sun tomorrow erasing his existence on the island forgetting he was ever here. His mother rushes towards him taking him in her arms and assuring him that it will be ok everything will be just as wonderful for this child as it was before his scraped knee. And perhaps for this LaCoste clad child it will be. His deepest proximity to sadness being a scraped knee. I mention the clothes because they strike me as absurd. This place strikes me as absurd. It is a place in which one is constantly slapped with the magnitude of nature. If I turn to my left I can stare off into the sea and not see land and am impressed with how insignificant my existence is. If I turn to the right I can listen to the clinking of European riches. I am acutely aware of the wealth of the people because I am acutely aware of the suffering of the poor. A handicapped man wheels through the chairs and table and places some rude toy on the tables accompanied by a card which explains in different languages how sad his life is and how the ability to sell even the meanest of trinkets brings a little dignity to his poverty. Of course I have seen this all over Europe the same prototypical sad man with the same trinket and the same protypical privileged people ignoring him myself included. Here however it makes my heart sink a little more.