She pushes the cart wildly, it has an unruly wheel, and it bothers her. She yells at Bobby, because he never helps, with anything. He just sits there, and complains.
“Why don’t you get off your ass and help me, God damnit”
Bobby never answers either, certainly not when she confronts him like that. He is far too proud to respond to such behavior.
“I have to do everything myself!”
She yells, frantic.
“Can’t you see I’m exhausted!?”
She shakes her head in disgust. Thick clumps of matted hair slapping her cheek as she shakes. Almost trying to slap sense into her.
“You people are no help! I’m being attacked in my sleep!! They cut my hair off, you know, while I’m sleeping!!! And you guys just sit there!”
She said this with hurt in her heart, her friends, or so she thought.
“So, wear a hat to bed?!?!”
Angel, someone that also “accompanies” her, yells.
“Why don’t you shut your damn mouth Angel, nobody asked you!”
The woman laughs…
People passing by mutter and stare at her. Feeling mostly disgusted, with a side of frightened. Although she reeks of piss, and, filth. She isn’t unlike any of us. Perhaps she is the gifted one? Perhaps the people she talks to, the ones she herself can only see, are, really there? Perhaps we as the “civilized “ones, have yet to attain such a state. A state to allow the souls that roam this earth to penetrate our closed, structured, minds.
Insanity to the un believer. And yet, the believers, seem so insane.
She walks around with only the filthy clothes on her back. And the trash she has now taken in as her worldly possessions. Parts and pieces. This and that. No coffee table or magazine rack. But she has found purpose and value in the cigarette butts and discards of the civilized man. The ones that toss their trash, with no regard for its landing, into the street.
Molly is her name. She’s in her late fifties, although she could be twenty, and very, very dirty. But I doubt it. Molly has been abandoned by life, or perhaps, she abandoned it? Whatever the reason, Molly has, in our minds, lost her way.
She has abandoned wealth and hygiene. She’s found purpose in the useless, and become a way for the clean ones to feel good about themselves. And, for the regimen they call their life. Molly talks to the people, the voices, in her head. She sleeps in doorways, screams at the sky, and collects snippets of other people’s existence.
In her cart she holds tiny pieces of lives that have passed her. And found friendships in the confines of the tiniest of places. She has also found refuge in the unwavering state of what we call, insanity. And, in a way, Molly has escaped what every human being falls victim to, living.
Molly has an imagination only children are blessed with. An incredible way of finding beauty, and purpose, in things like pennies, and receipts, and footsteps left in the street.
Insanity could just be perspective. I find “normal” and the relentless pursuit of it, insane.
We all hear voices, we’re just convinced we hear our own. To save ourselves from branding, we call it thinking. And mostly keep it to ourselves. Another voice, to the same chatter, out loud, and you are Molly.
Perhaps in her abandonment, she has reached a level of spirituality where cleanliness and possessions bought and owned, are useless. Perhaps she actually sees the afterlife. The one so many talk about, and pray towards. The one so many of us can’t even fathom exists.
Who knows…
All I know is Molly makes a lot of people during the day feel important because they gave her change. People don’t give money to the homeless to help the homeless. They give money so they can feel good about themselves.
Molly laughs, out loud, an awful lot. She’s not concerned with the way she looks, or how people feel about her. And she entertains me every time I see her.
Molly sings, and cries, and feels, everything. She’s never alone, and has a silence in her stillness that looks like peace.
This insane you speak of, inane, to shame, to drain the veins of the needy. To fill your ideas of what looks like life.
Coffee tables and paper napkins. Paper towels and hot running water.
Gifts? Or Gatorade?
Sugary syrup on a one-way ticket to rinse and repeat.