Blogosphereons
Can't tell you how delighted I am to be out of the hospital. The stint that goes from my intestine to my pancreatic duct had a stalactite of bile crystals causing an obstruction and for me fits of burning abdominal pain and vomiting. I called my doctor, Ramishdi Mahat Patel, Jr MD, who agreed to put me in the hospital in Jackson and have his colleague, Dr. Rahmil Singharett Turner, who is a world famous endoscopist and a classical pianist, take a look at my case. I have had pancreatic cancer for the past 14 years. A very rare slow growing type, and my doctor kept giving me "six months to live, and not a day longer," but that was back in 1996. I find I do pretty well as long as I smoke two packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, sip a pint of Jack Daniels whiskey, and avoid all fruits and vegetables and adhere to a strictly high cholesterol and high salt laden diet. All my fried foods must be cooked in lard. I know, an enigma, a medical enigma.
Anyway, Dr. Turner scoped me and scraped the stalactite crystals off my stint and got the old juices flowing as nature intended it and says I am good to go. Praise Jesus and Allah, and that Indian God whose name I forget. Have I left anybodies God out? All I can figure about my medical curiosity is that my God has left me here for a higher calling and my work with the Urban Poverty and now the Global Poverty Law Center is more than likely my goal and until it is successful, ole Jackie Boy is back in town.
While I was under the light sedative they administer for the scope, I dreamed I was in a black pant suit and seated at a large oval mahogany table, in a large room with windows that over looked the east river. I cannot be sure where it was, but there were lots of men in suits with perfectly coiffed hair all smelling of incense and peppermint. Fashions from all around the world were represented, the burka, Mao jackets, Arab head wear, Armani clad European metrosexuals, camouflage army fatigues with Chi hats in black and burgundy, and a few unfortunates clad only in soiled loin cloths, which had never seen soap much less water. My vision was so real, they even had the flies that drink from the corners of their eyes and lips as props to emphasize their plight as the world's poor and their desperate condition.
The unfortunates who were naked from the waist up, were very thin and had horrible teeth if any at all and were holding their hands out to those of us who were more fortunate on the other side of the large table. I watched as the World's business of the day was conducted in that fancy room and was shocked when the food trays were brought out with all the fancy trimming one might imagine at such a place and the unfortunates were offered a bag of flour stamped with a large blue UN on its burlap siding.
While the beautiful people in the room ate the sounds of their gesticulations were magnified in my ears and I swore I heard the grunting sounds of hogs feeding furiously at the trough, a sound I had encountered many times at my uncle Ocie's
farm when I was a small lad. As I was taking this in, one of the stronger appearing unfortunates, stood up and shouted something which I could not hear, but he was clearly agitated and he took out a box cutter, cut the string which sealed the bag of flour and with all his might lifted the 50 lb bag and dumped its contents in the center of the floor. Then he pulled his loin cloth to the side and began to pee on the flour. The beautiful people at the table continued the feast and no one but me noticed the poor fellow pissing on the UN flour. Though his mouth moved he made no audible sounds.
He began to stamp his feet in the mixture of flour and urine and it made a yellow paste in the center of the pile of white flour.
Then I heard this peculiar statement from the unfortunate: "more suction, dis damn scope is fogging up again! Bob, give him more sedative, he is moving again!"
Then he had a gallon of petrol which he doused himself with as he stood in the center of the UN flour in the middle of that large mahogany table with hundreds of world leaders near by. He lit a match and flashed into a weird kind of third world human flambe. With the initial roar of the flames a few of the world leaders looked up, but only briefly and then went about eating and drinking and shuffling papers as if the spectacle which just played out never happened. He collapsed onto the flour and crackled and sizzled until security came in and with a couple of large fire extinguishers cooled him off. He was burned beyond belief, but would not die.
Next he got up and he climbed onto the table and tap danced three times around the table dropping pieces of burned flesh here and there as he danced. He had to be subdued by those same security personnel who had extinguished his flaming body. Still no one at the table acknowledged him or his presence. The smacking and grunts became louder, and the security guards transformed into angels and spirited the burned fellow heavenward. I followed the man with his angels up and out the ceiling and when I looked back at the table every person represented at the table had a human body with a hog's head. A very strange vision.
The world's poor are invisible and have no voice. However, God is surely listening.
As you can see I have been called to make Urban Poverty Law Center's business fighting poverty and hunger world wide. Or was it the sedative? We will see if we can make a difference. It is time for the world's leaders to make room at the trough!
Thank you for your prayers and wishes for a speedy recovery for it has helped. My work is not done and neither am I.
Jackson Delano Maybolt, PhD President,
Global Poverty Law Center/ Urban Poverty Law Center
"Pain is like money, very hard to appreciate until it is yours." Mother Maybolt 1928-2008
No comments:
Post a Comment