Tim's Live Journal

A forest. I descend down a path covered in yellowing pine. A woman with a smile more of acceptance than happiness greets me, and we continue our walk together. As we walk, more and more houses come into view, as if built around this single path. The 'town' looks more like a campground with small cabins, giving it a sense it stands alone from the rest of the world. And yet there is a sadness in the air as if it were not by choice but banishment. There are people, but they rarely make a sound. They work together mostly in silence. It is not until the woman explains that all the children are sick that it starts to make sense. The absence of their sound, the uninhibited random laughter of play which would normally be heard is absent in this town. Their are beds outside some houses. Small forms swathed in blankets which cover head to toe. The woman explains that the brown blankets signify the sick while the blue are reserved for the recent dead.

We enter a large clearing which appears to be the center of the town. The air becomes heavy with death as I watch a procession of children being pushed in old, rusted wheelchairs. They form a snake-like pattern which we cut carefully through. Some of the children are awake, but none of them stir. Attached to each antique wheelchair is a rod from which hangs an IV drip - the contents of each vary in color between brown and blue. It is not until I have come close that I realize that the procession has been formed to refill the bags with the 'medicine'. When it is told to me that there is no cure, I ask why they keep them alive in pain. The response is that their parents want to let go on their terms and not God's. It's hard for them to accept that their children, who, upon birth, introduced to them a new sense of purpose and love, will die before them.

In this town everyone has been infected and will die and yet hope is the first to go.

they hudled around me in anticipation as i suddenly came up blank and said, 'I can't explain it...'

I woke up with lost and longing in my heart and the past laying beside me.