The solemn hush of this part of the city was almost unsettling. We live in the 21st century where you couldn’t find quiet even in your own bedroom, let alone anywhere outside. There was always the constant background noise, the humming of the distant cars, the clicking of the street lights and billboards. The irrefutable whirring of machines near and far, reminding us of the abrupt incline of technology taking over indefinitely.
Even Jody didn’t make sound tonight. Which was strange, she was usually bitching about something. Mostly how we’re all damned, we’re so far in the dark, not even the light of a million suns exploding could bring us back, she’d say. They thought back then was the dark ages, but little did we all know that there has never been a time in human history where we have been as lost in the dark as we are now. A time where we think we know everything, which proves, we really know nothing at all. Simply blind mice being led through a maze, she’d say.
Jody had tons of analogies I felt were somehow embedded in my self-conscious. She had a way with her words that made them really stick with you. Sometimes I found myself using her silly expressions, that I’d otherwise laugh at coming out of anybody else’s mouth.
Jody was different. She was outspoken and loud but in a sort of inviting way. She had an inviting presence and it wasn’t hard to feel like you have an innate obligation to gain her respect. Although she was only twenty-three, she had a maternity quality to her. She was kind in nature but had no problem giving you some tough love and putting you in your place when it was called for. Nobody wanted to do anything Jody may not respect because her respect meant acceptance, she made you feel whole, like there was a sole reason for your individual person to be here on earth.
Nobody was here by mistake and society making us believe as much did it’s toll on driving Jody nearly insane.
People made life so complicated, she’d say, when it could be so simple..
I usually allowed Jody to spring up the topic of conversation, it was usually about something she read or heard, something about the system, the youth these days or population control through a means of controlling the weather: storms, floods, tornadoes… Micro-technology being created to spy on civilians, watch their every move. I would jump on what she would say, sometimes stunned, sometimes thinking she was joking, and it would go from there. Controversial topics, heated debates, sometimes a little frustration, and passionate yelling, at times ending in tears or rage. Most of the time ending in epiphanies and what we called “could be revelations.”
We’d talk for hours, plan, laugh in ponderous excitement about how one day we were going to change the world, one molehill at a time, until we we’re moving mountains, she’d say.
Jody is the smart one, the one with the heart of gold, with all the ideas, and hope for a brighter world. I fell in love with her optimism. For the benefit of the doubt she gave to anyone in her path, her hope for goodness and her way to pick it out where most people would only see darkness. I was and am in such awe of Jody Grinidge Briershield. I know she is a gift to me, and anyone’s life she crosses. I would have never seen the world in the light I do, in so much depth and wonder, if it wasn’t for her.
I am always excited to see what topic she has on mind each day. Today though, she was quiet. It was quiet, everything. The world shut off for once.
We’re sitting in our usual spot, just off interstate 59, on top of town, looking right over the edge of what we call the mountain. Me, behind the wheel of my Dad’s 63 Stingray, Jody in the passenger seat next to me, but today she was quiet. Staring vacantly into the day as if she wasn’t seeing what was right in front of her but instead, through it. In her Elsewhere.
She said sometimes when the darkness got too much and the evil too overwhelming for her heart, she shuts herself off and goes to her Elsewhere. Another world inside her mind, where she could be free of the chains of a constricting, conforming society and where she could be her, stand up for what she knows, what she believes in without the fear of any harm or ridicule. In her Elsewhere nobody could hurt her, or anybody else, the capabilities of man were that of only pure good and she didn’t have to question the intention of her neighbor. She was safe. No longer a little girl on a leash being pulled this way or that but instead in a world with endless paths and no one to set limitations.
I wanted to make this world safe her for, free for her but I couldn’t even begin to imagine how. I couldn’t even strike up a conversation let alone change the world. So we sat in silence. The world shut off for once, we bathed in the eerie hush of the day.
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