Systems and the Door
Lost in Abstraction, Reminded Back
“Being handicapped is a pain in the ___” he said, fixing me with his good eye.
“I’m sure it is.”
The doc messed him up at birth. He’s angry. Wouldn’t you be? But he shows up, and “dances” in his motorized wheelchair when I spin Charley Pride records.
“I hope you don’t mind that I do that” he said, and I told him I a thousand percent didn’t.
“You know that you do a lot of good, don’t you?” I asked, explaining how weak the world has become outside those sliding glass doors he can’t leave anymore. “It’s good that we see guys like you, showing us how it’s done.”
***
Two shows later brought me to the dementia ward. Susan bobbed around to Elvis, almost like she was back home instead of ceaselessly wandering the pastel halls.
I sat on a speaker, and watched. I wonder how I could pipe music into all of the homes across all of the world, so they could dance again.
It’s an admirable thought–maybe. Why the rush to systems, man?
My natural M.O. for writing: There’s a speck in your eye. Read all about it.
My first reaction to seeing a cauldron of souls slowly boiling alive?
Institutional reforms.
Why? Maybe it’s easier than hauling ‘em out of those depths. If nothing, it’s a way to avoid reality.
I wonder if the soldiers thought of artilleries’ stratagems, grand plans, their roles, and Eisenhower while they were in their foxholes in the Hürtgen. I heard they thought about God and cried for their mothers. That seems like a better approach, and tested at 900 meters a second, the velocity of a Panzer round.
Isn’t the door to kick always in front of my foot, and aren’t my boots laced tight enough? Who knows what the grand plan is.
“The plan is kick, soldier, so kick.”
So I danced with Susan when she wandered over, and she was normal for two minutes and forty five seconds while the song played, even though she couldn’t speak a word that wasn’t gibberish. But she could dance.
Later, she grabbed me when Sinatra sang about New York, with a hand on my shoulder, and danced close and we swayed around the room.
The song blared to a close, we all clapped, she wandered off, and here I sit, thinking.
I found a penny on the sidewalk today. It’s on the desk, a reminder to look here.
–Josh
