For months now I've been vaguely noticing the presence of another human being. Not a friend, not a foe, her face appears every now and again on the periphery of my tight concentric vision, disrupting for a moment the illusion of autonomy that shields me from the truth. Her countenance is memorable among the thousands that accost me day to day because of its fierceness. In her eyes there is no giving or receiving. Her jaw is set like steel, and from her throat a synthetic voice arises, run through mechanical filters to keep the life from leaking through.
I watch this angry woman. I watch her and without meaning to, I hate her. We have never spoken. She has never done a thing to harm me personally. And yet her mere presence breathes a toxic fume into the atmosphere; so I lock my face into a gas mask and stare at her through goggled eyes. Once she disappears, I fling my plastic exo-skull to the floor and wheeze in lungfuls of healthy oxygen, rejoicing.
But today I watch her coming and for the first time, I see her. I force myself to see her. My lungs stir, rasping, demanding protection, but I keep inhaling her exhalations, asking myself who this person is, where she has been, what she wants. In the silence I can hear her labored breathing. We cross paths and she yanks her face to the left.
May we look past the life and see the soul, the story of every human being!
ReplyDelete