I want to start with the blind man. The first time I saw him on The Word, was just a few days after the tv reception got better. I still thought everything Bobby wrote was a story he was concocting for my twenty first birthday and I was still pretty much still just Jenna or in my original skin. I thought that he was using his disability to make money to survive as has been the case throughout history.
After that and a few more, I tuned him out for other things that the show began to offer but now back to him, I understand he's spreading the Word
His location on city streets from garbage strewn empty streets speaking to no one to a few, now to intersections filled with people sitting, standing or in opened windows. Before he was always shown from the back with long brown hair next to a white cane speaking slowly, carefully pronouncing his words but now his head is shaved, sometimes arial shots of him still in the lotus position speaking to large crowds without the white cane. City locations change, the size of his audience gets larger, and now interaction with people asking questions.
After hearing from some who made an effort to go hear him, I made sure to check back. Every few hours he repeats his story to the gathering.
'My dearest fellow time travelers who have braved goddess knows what to be here, I truly am blessed and find comfort in your presence. Only a few months ago I was destitute, taking whatever offerings were placed before me but despite my inability to see, I managed to survive both in shelter and food. I would also say that blindness doesn’t prevent awareness to which I became ever present. One very early morning as I was using the water from the pail to wash my face and hands, I felt another’s presence and then small hands on my shoulder. A child. I listened in stunned silence as she said these words..
'Hi, my birth name is Ruby, my taken name is Lily. Don’t be afraid sir, I have seen your dreams and listened to words and wish to offer you the gift of gods or we say, goddesses. Even though I can make this offer alone, I have asked and received acceptance so if you are able to trust me and are amenable to this gift, I would ask if you could open your mouth to please accept our grace.
'I nodded, not quite sure what to think or what was about to happen when I heard ‘swallow’ from Lily’s tiny voice. Nothing but a little saliva that I swallowed and then asked her what would happen. She’d left. My first thought that it was an obvious prank, I suppose what any blind person would believe unless deeply religious which I am not.
'During that day not only couldn’t I forget what happened, but an inner voice kept asking questions. Would a small child be so cruel? Would a young girl who sounded so intelligent and compassionate be able to do that in malice? How could someone that young create such a story, sound so sincere, without thinking she was doing something special. And so on. After a few days of no miracle cure, I went on per usual, listening to the only station that came in on the old radio called the Word, went outside with my pot, sat down and rambled on until I got tired and went back inside.
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'The first thing that was strange was that the garbage on the streets became to bother me. Then it really bothered me to the point that I asked if anyone could clean it up. Sound was next. It was like I had been auditorily challenged as well as blind, a different kind of blindness to the incredible myriads of frequencies and range available when enhanced. Two weeks went by, and I started to have what they call karmic dreams and not just ones from my own past but from my genetic heritage. After a troubling one that spooled out over a year one night while I was a recruit for the southern army during the civil war and an abusive marriage and premature death of a daughter, I woke up crying, shedding tears in the darkness of what looked like another dream until I began crying louder when the impact of real sight hit me!
'I couldn’t stop, try as I did until the fact found home and curiosity got the better of me. Sight! And outside I came to witness my six-month stage on the world bemoaning the end of times. I crumbled again on the filthy street and swore to that child that I would pass it on, this miracle out of the blue'
Even to my evolved not just Jenna, that was intense. Now, as all things seem to move, he is now on a large clean Broadway Street with an ever-growing assembly of seekers, speaking his truth and taking questions for as long as anyone is there. There are now musical interludes from The Oracles, an old dystopian band, Ragnar?k. Instead of doom and gloom, their repertoire includes stories of hope and inspiration, music that’s been missing from the current hellscape of Meltdown.
What caught my attention was the head of a Dire Wolf on the large drum. My protector. While writing this just now I hear Nimba’s howl a few miles off in the good forest, as I do often now.
Fubar is at my feet purring, carrot cake is in the oven, the cacophony of scents from the maturing garden triggering a heightened sense of pleasure, the scent of this old farmhouse and a few generations of hard living, all the words pushed out in here, all the emotions of life’s passages, the aromas of thousands of things baking and simmering, meows and barks and even a moo or heehaw.
