The Quiet Voice Which Moves Mountains

(Completely unaware of the rising crime of online network targeting, during the first year of this current predation which so severely limits her parking spaces for safety, the poet wondered why all of her room renting landlords changed their attitudes pretty much upon her entrance to their households.

Some of the individuals involved will be found to be presently or until very recently still connected to this predator’s online/data ring.

Made homeless by these mysterious happenings, the poet spent a whole year, still working away online, completely homeless before reader contributions purchased her minivan and its DYI conversion, home to her continued seven day per week literary labors for the past year.

~ For details on ventilation, heating, storage, condensation control, food management, social survival, useful clothing tips and other insights on the processes she developed, type the words “Tiny mobile space” into this site’s search bar. ~

The events written of here occurred two years ago, just at the beginning of twelve months which very, very nearly killed her, and surely would if ever attempted by her again)

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Recorded Reading: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ox3po00yriy8hc/The%20Quiet%20Voice%20Which%20Moves%20Mountains.mp3?dl=0

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The Quiet Voice Which Moves Mountains

“If you just want the whole head shaved — all at one length — I can squeeze you in this afternoon,” she offered.

“That would be wonderful,” I sighed.

Having escaped the drunken entrance of my erstwhile landlord to my room — uninvited and while I was in bed (welcome to the world of low budget room rentals) — by grabbing my two prepacked bags (I’d seen trouble coming) and abandoning forever both premises and all remaining possessions, I’d been left with only a pair of scissors and single charge on a household Norelco trimmer with which, afterward, to attempt my first homeless trim on a head routinely shaven for the entire twenty years prior.

Let’s just say that it hadn’t gone well.

With only one mirror no larger than the palm of my hand in which to view operations as they progressed, the sissors has left zebra stripes all over my head, which the Norelco had then sharply accented, by shaving the trimmed sections right to the skin without having any effect whatsoever upon those less trimmed.

Homeless people have odds of talking to policepersons way too high to be looking like the perfect candidate for a funny farm if asked to remove their headscarves for purposes of identification.

“My hair hasn’t been washed in weeks,” I told the lovely young woman outside her hairdressing shop now, “but if you’ll just show me the sink, I’ll be happy to scrub it myself…”

“They won’t let us use that sink now, with the COVID regulations,” she told me regretfully.

“Oh.” I suppose my face fell a little. “You won’t want to do it, then. That’s okay.”

She gazed full into my eyes.

“I’ll shave your head for you,” she said.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t smell nice,” I assured her.

Without removing her eyes from mine, she smiled. She spoke softly, but very steadily and surely.

“We’ll get it done.”

And we did.

Clearly past master of the fine art of putting nervous customers at their ease, the thing I remember most about my time in her chair is not how (very) sorry I was that she was having to deal with my zebra-striped homeless head, but rather the fine, high quality of the conversation we shared — peaceful, rueful, humorous, very feminine, and very spiritual. Very aware.

As she laid aside her clippers (doubtless due for an immediate alcohol — or perhaps Prussic acid — bath), she told me, “You don’t have to pay me. It’s okay.”

I looked at her in disbelief. To have put up with special restrictions, special inconveniences, and have been so wonderfully gentle and brave and reassuring about it all — and afterward to refuse even basic payment!

… And then, she pronounced six words.

Six resounding, prophetic, magnificent words — words I wish I might mount some building, from the rooftop of which I would be heard everywhere, so that I could record the beautiful soft strength of her lovely voice and play it back over and over again into America’s spacious skies; echoing from our mountains’ majesty; falling to bud upon our fruited plains.

Words we all need to hear — and to speak — so, so badly right now, all over a nation, and a world, groaning with miseries which, most, do not come to us from any fate more inevitable than our very selves, our fellow men and women.

This is what she said, in the quiet voice which moves mountains:

“I have made enough money today.”

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This poet is physically disabled. Public housing being insufficient to her medical and creative needs, she is presently living, in order to continue working, in her minivan, publishing all of her works using one thumb on the touch screen of her smartphone at an income of a fraction of her nation’s poverty level. She would treasure any donation you might care to offer ~ http://www.UgiftABLE.com ● #72D-31S

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