I Helped A Blind Lady, Because I Saw Her.
{Photo: zengardner.com}
I helped a blind woman today, not in a momentous life-saving way.
Perhaps in helping I harmed her. I will never know. My intention was as pure as it was quick; no time to ponder and ruminate or walk away like a good New Yorker.
However, we do tend to be particularly amazing when shit hits the fan. I know, as I was in Manhattan on 9/11. And other times I’ve seen goodness flash out unexpectedly.
It’s just the rest of the time…
In cities, are they all like this now? Humans who are morphed; in relationships with plastic. Humans who prefer plastic.
The movies like Day of the Triffids and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Such innocent fun. So quaint.
We didn’t see them coming, till it was too late. Perhaps a foreign sound gave the aliens away, or a glazed, slightly less human look. No one believed the protagonist that something just wasn’t right!
It was always subtle, this clue that revealed the imminent threat to society as we knew it.
“Invasion now. Invasion now!” My mouth is open, and I point — but it’s silent, and in black and white. No one hears, while all around they walk on, in color.
They gaze up only when they are about to bump into me or you. (Or have you turned too?)
I deliberately let them walk almost into me, they sort of startle — straighten upwards a bit. Prior to the near collision they were curved over romancing the screen, eyes locked onto that… light.
That romance. I interrupted.
They immediately continue with the digital foreplay that fills the empty minutes walking from here to there. From subway steps to office. From office to the smoothie place two blocks away.
The lady, the blind woman, was a large, middle-aged, Muslim woman, and wearing head-to-toe bubblegum pink. Only her light brown face and the tips of her feet peeked out.
She swung a can, in a huge arc (the kind I’ve almost tripped over.) Swinging back and fro, while yelling to her child. The child, maybe five years old, tiny, too young for the task. “Stop the bus, they always keep going,” she cried. The little girl looked bewildered as the bus pulled away.
I was not mid-romance, my eyes were up. I grew up in the Bronx (a borough of New York City) in a fairly bad neighborhood. Perhaps just hyper-vigilant, I scan the streets as I walk.
I enjoy seeing the incredible pastiche: tourists clutching maps, mid-westerners, Europeans, the Rastafarian construction worker getting take-out, the elderly lady with her grocery bags and a worried look.
I leaned out to catch the bus driver’s eye, waving my arm wildly. Sometimes they ignore you, once the door is closed. It’s New York after all.
The driver looked annoyed. But I looked desperate, as if I’d step out in front of his vehicle and possibly mess up his retirement plans. Thin and weary-looking, he stopped and opened the door. The woman was still muttering, “They always keep going, they always…”
“He stopped, it’s here,” I said, as she moved towards me.
I gestured, “There’s a blind woman…;” he didn’t seem to see her yet and she moved slowly. The little girl moved forward to step up and he saw her…
I watched as she boarded, I didn’t want to touch her, though I wanted to help (is it rude to suddenly touch a blind person? I think it can be invasive.) She was on, and the bus disappeared.
I won’t ever know the extent to which I helped. What if getting her on that bus led to a tragedy later that day? One that could have been avoided if she had stayed on that silver bench with the child, waiting?
I felt good as I walked away, remembering one of my Buddhist teachers. He said, it’s okay to remember and recall when we acted with compassion, that it will strengthen those muscles, and so it’s a good thing.
I do know very few seemed to see her, her needs, the simple problem. In a city to millions, there are so many little problems we could solve if only we were really there, in the flesh.
The invasion was in full swing as I rushed forward into the crosswalk to catch the light.
*****
Vivinne (Kala) Williams, a Creative, blogger and a Yoga teacher since 1994. A grad of Spirit Rock’s ‘Mindfulness Yoga & Meditation Training’, Kala has studied with Burmese monastics, in six week-long silent retreats. She’s known to be chatty, yet loves the silence of meditation. Loves the energy of NYC and the energy of trees. Yoga/mindfulness saved her after job loss and severe depression. She is based in NYC here. She may be ghost writer for your blog/website if you have a need.
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