Nothing

Not far from my office in Washington is a condominium building of about ten stories that surrounds a small courtyard. You can access this courtyard through a gate of iron bars that opens onto a side street, with of course key card access and an intercom.

It has been a very nasty week around here, grim days of rain, sleet, and ice.

Monday as I walked down the street through a cold drizzle I came across a homeless woman standing at the gate to the condominium courtyard. She had a crazy look about her and was wearing a government-issue gray wool blanket as a shawl. She was delivering an impassioned speech to the intercom. She was not pressing the button, so nobody inside was hearing her even though as she swayed back and forth she sometimes brought her mouth right up to the microphone. What she said was hardly coherent and considered largely of expletives, a lot about effing rich white people. The one thing that came through clearly was, "You think you got everything, but you got nothing."