Leading the Blind #2

Leading the Blind, installment #2: Chimba awoke to darkness. He then opened his eyes. More darkness. He fought a valiant battle against the soggy leaves and a couple inches of snow, emerging to a rather unpleasant view of New York City’s Central Park in the dreary month of December. He stood up on shaky, uncertain legs, which swiftly became certain that they did not want to be used. Chimba was thrown back onto the ground, and after several increasingly pathetic attempts at righting himself, he decided that there was nothing up in the air that was so interesting anyway, and conceded victory to gravity. He then propped his head up with one arm and commenced a study of his surroundings. Snow covered much of the ground, though most of it was no longer white, happy snow, but gray, belligerent snow, that had been tracked in by pedestrians from the dingy streets of the City. There were the usual accoutrements of a city park – benches, scattered trees, now bare of leaves, and numerous signs telling you never to walk on the grass, or always walk on the grass, or that you can only walk on the grass “if you are this tall” – or something like that. By the position of the sun in the sky, Chimba could tell that it was pretty early in the morning, which in part explained why he was alone in a public park. Almost alone. Which brings us to the other common feature of city parks, namely, the crazy pigeon-yelling man. “Crazy Joe,” the people called him, and aside from that, they generally left him alone. (Actually, his real name was Crazy Max, but he just didn’t have the heart to correct them.)