Life is good. I ate a particularly good waffle this morning. I'm not currently injured. The dead tree is no longer threatening my house. The girl in the store I was just in after being serenaded by her middle-aged white supervisor with a very forgetable rap preceded to handle my purchase and call me "sweetheart" no less than six times as if compelled to by some specific vocal tick.

Then I can across a young man on the sidewalk strumming a guitar in a battle with a seemingly unoccupied car with its door open that was filling the afternoon air with some hip hop song that could only charitably be called noise pollution. He was sitting with his open guitar case next to him. In the case was a sign.

"This is my job. Need guitar strings, cigarettes and a latté."

He had a smile and kind word to go along with his fast and skillful strumming. I had a dollar for the case.

I found myself feeling jealous.

The youth. The Hunger. The willingness to place yourself in the public with only your talent to try to earn a few buck. He sat on a warm day under a blue sky and I know he saw the dark clouds of the impending rainstorm that was heading for him. Still he smiled. Still he played. His songs were sharp and wordless, but you could feel the desire in it. The love for the music. The hours he spends practicing. The Hunger.