Wednesday, August 28, 2002

walking to the office today

walking to the office today I was moving pretty quick - no reason to dawdle - and blew past someone whom I pass almost every day.  She’s a shorter, older woman, kinda heavy, nicely dressed; her legs don’t barely work at all, she can lock her knees and then uses big crutches (the kind that cuff her arms) to get leaning forward, hikes up and swings her legs out in front of her - her feet drag the ground as she moves forward, as if they were suitcases or a stranger’s dismembered limbs she’d picked up on the street somewhere… It honestly takes her about 15 seconds to take each “step.” God knows how far she has to walk that way, but it must take her forever to get anywhere.  I usually am just impressed with how much work she expends.  Today, instead, I felt guilty about going so much faster than she, about zipping past her in a cloud of dust and leaving her to struggle along, as she does everyday, as if I should be offering her help, as if she wanted my help… I need to keep myself from feeling superfluous guilt, I have enough primary guilt to last a lifetime