The Flaneur

In my first year of uni, we learned about the flaneur (thank you Walter Benjamin and Contemporary Cultures 1). It was such artsy fartsy pretentious stuff we had to like live and breathe for 6 weeks. Every other UTS Communications student I've met has lived through the experience of writing massive essays on the flaneur.

Yesterday I was walking back through Town Hall station. I am a pretty unobservant person and pretty much will go ladidadida while a roaring blazing fire plumes black smoke out of Centrepoint on my way to work. So it was a lot for me to notice that this homeless looking man is convulsing about on the ground. Heaps of people are sort of giving him a wide berth, doing the staring thing at him but then moving on. There's a group of about 4 guys in their late teens or early twenties pointing and laughing at this man.

So when I get up to him and see his eyes rolled back in his head, the uncontrollable convulsing of an epileptic fit clearly taking place and a bit of foaming at the mouth going, I immediately call 000. The ambulance man gets the details, tells me what to do to check on him. The coffee lady who's phone I had to borrow is all freaking out and not serving anyone coffee. At least she cared enough about another human.

The station staff finally arrive. All they do is put a fence around him. At this point he's stopped convulsing but is lying face down into a small pool of spittle. The look of utter disdain on all their faces like he was some scum who was messing up their lunch break or something.

The world is full of heartless fuckers. Worse than the flaneur, they purposely, actively would let someone die. It's not even asking to do someone a favour or going out of your way to do a nice thing. It's common fucking courtesy if you are human to do a very very very simple thing to stop someone from dying needlessly. People are cunts.