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Blanket Man
Copyright 2021 Don Ray. Feel free to print and share.
Look at the street scenes yesterday! A guy angrily walking along grabbing at imaginary things on the ground and in the air. Another guy walking along waving his arms as if an arrhythmic drum major. Madness becomes more and more evident, and the overtly crazy people grabbing at imaginary things and yelling at unseen demons are no more mad than the masses buying and consuming and spectating per the dictates of the marketers.
So here I sit, staring at growing grass on a hillside, undoubtedly subject to being branded the maddest of all should anyone observe me.
I remain distraught about Jim’s story about poor blanket man, the guy who for years has sat wrapped under blankets on the bench near the park fountain. He got up and fell, hitting his head. When the hospital staff took off his shoes, his toes came with them. His circulation was so bad, he had sat so long, his shoes had been on so long (supposedly three years, though I don’t know how they knew that) that blanket man’s toes simply rotted away.
Imagine the life in which that could happen! There he sat, utterly alone, those years on the park bench. How and where did he defecate and urinate? Apparently people occasionally brought him food. Has anyone but Yeshu (Jesus) ever loved him? Did no parent love him? What happened in his mind there hidden under the blankets? Dear God, his toes rotted off!……while sitting at the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city! Did no one ever talk to him? Was he too damaged to talk? His toes rotted off in his shoes as I walked by innumerable times! What kind of society is this?! What kind of people are we?! What kind of person am I?
It seemed so natural to not bother blanket man as he sat in the heat of summer and the cold of winter under his mountain of dark blankets.
Was there security under those blankets? Was there ever a smile under those blankets? Was it just blank under those blankets?
Isn’t it reasonable to seek shelter under a mountain of blankets when seeing the madness of this world? Was blanket man that much more isolated than the rest of us?
Did the emergency room staff throw away his blankets? Does anyone cry over blanket man? Could any tale more succinctly capture the modern state of our nation? For whose sins is blanket man paying the price.
There may or may not be any hope for blanket man as he tries to walk on feet without toes. But if we can hear of his plight and not feel some stirring of compassion and ask how this could possibly be, there is certainly no hope for us.
Copyright 2021 Don Ray. Feel free to print and share.pyright 2021 Don Ray. Feel free to print and share.
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