Windows to the Soul

The sun rises and the sun sets. The rains come and the rains go. Drought and pestilence have come and gone yet I still remain. Five centuries spent deaf, dumb, and blind, gave birth to the twentieth. The Victorian era in which I was born, fancied me to man’s desire. Now it seems their desire's changed. As man's perception changes so does my shape. The Greeks defined beauty as being symmetrical, one side the mirror image of the other, this being but the one constant. With a mix of blues and whites, highlights and shadow, a world starts to appear. Figures, I’ve never seen began melting and sliding into, out of, and around each other. Then, with the placement of a little piece of glass, mimicking a lens, depth. Light and dark, A world seen in three dimensions showed life…manufactured. Because of life, we manufactured death.

I was there and saw death. It was early fall, as I started to notice the street fill with ragged, tattered people. Some with a few bags and others looking half burnt, all covered in soot. They acted as if they were lost in a haze. They walked past my window like parts of Henry Ford’s assembly line. The water leaking below their own glass lens helped to wash the remnants for the nights debauchery off streets of Paris. you would have thought I was on the cleanest street around. Two days later the bombs started to fall outside my post. I stared in horror at the damage done, for there was an elderly lady laying mere feet from my location, and I was rendered useless, unable to offer a helping hand nor even a kind word. Damn these so-called eyes. The year, 1914.

I was there and saw the drop of crop prices as the economies of the world failed, starting on wall street. In the Texas panhandle, people began chocking and running in fright as a gigantic wall of pitch-black dust rose in the air and swept over the land as a tsunami cleansing the world. One moment it was a green, lush, happy land, the next, post-apocalyptic. I was forced to stand in my spot and watch a decade of depravity, starvation, and death. A normal healthy family shrunk before my eyes, year after year after year, in both their size, and in their number. Before they left for greener pastures, they would be content if they could kill a rat for food. You know, even the rats were smart enough to leave. Now it's just a place where crops don't grow. A ghost town; all except me. The decade, 1929-1939.

I was there and saw both, Nagasaki and Hiroshima as the world exploded. The buildings blew away in front of me, while people screamed in shock and terror. Everything within a mile radius vanished in a blink of an eye. The radiating heat from the blast site caused fires to erupt and burned the cities to the ground. Over half of the people who would walk by and give me a smile now were cover in burns, with broke bone or dead. They looked to me and wailed, “Why? Help me! Why won't you help me?" I can't cause I am broken and blown as well. Glass and rubble filled my body from the twelve miles worth of this shatter world, but I don't bleed. As I start to melt from the heat, all I can do is watch. The date, August 6-9, 1945.

I was there and saw the sign of the times, as I was remade to man's desire, but I’m now small and frail. This is what man desires? I stand alone in the corner of the shop, never moving, watching, always watching. There is a couple that meet in here occasionally, but they do not act like the rest of the couples I’ve seen. They never arrive together and when they are together, they never stand still but always wonder around whispering in each other's ears. Occasionally, one of the two would hand a package to the other and vice-versa on their next gathering. On this particular visit from the two, the man looked and acted very strangely. Constantly looking over his shoulder at the front door, then down to his partner. Suddenly, he ran out the door, only to be shot in the back by five officer who turned their attention to the store, killing more while chasing a woman out the door yelling, “spy, spy". West Berlin, 1956.

I was there and saw the day the ground shook. The buildings seemed to vibrate as the downward force from the helicopters landing over the city. I watched as people fought to climb the ladders to reach the safety of the helicopters. People were throwing people down, off two-story buildings, in order to take their places closer to the front of the line. If the rocket bombardment wasn’t enough, I watched as the elderly were trampled underneath feet. Two kids grab hold of my legs for comfort and protection when humans became animals, but there was nothing I could do. In horror I watched mothers and fathers begging others to take their kids with them so that at least a part of them would survive. Seven thousand got out that day, but what happened to those who stayed behind still haunts me. Where? The fall of Saigon, 1975.

I was there and saw the terror attacks that broke out around the world. Bologna Italy when a bomb exploded in Bologna Central Station August 1980 killing eighty-five. Beirut barracks, where two truck bombs exploded killing three hundred. Rome and Vienna airport attacks, December 1985. Pan Am Flight 103, when it blew up over Scotland killing two hundred seventy, December 1988. I have watched in basements and store fronts as the bombs were being made; wires stitched inside hems of vests, fertilizer being stuffed in the back of vans, all the while wishing I could make them blow up in that moment. I watched, knowing the destructive power of these devices. Knowing what they are to be used for, but as cursed as I am. I watch.

I was there and saw fifteen hundred troops as they snuck back into Grozny, their capitol, to face down twelve thousand Russians. The city was already in rubble from when the Russians first invaded. Civilians hide everywhere they could find a place as separate roaming pockets of fighting consumed the city. There was a woman making a mad dash across the street in search of food and drinkable water. Regardless of her affiliation, gunfire broke out, fallen closely to where her path had been. I don’t know how long it was after that, but suddenly I was picked up and rushed back across the street from where the woman had come. Gun shots rang out again and I was hit, dropped, or thrown off my path as bullets peppers the area around me. There on the ground staring in my eyes, was the woman. Her hollow eyes pleadingly staring back into mine as she died. First Chechen War, Third battle of Grozny, August 1996.

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. If this is correct than you must be the blind leading the blind. You say you have a soul; how would you know? I may only be a mannequin, but I have been entrusted with eyes. I may not be able to speak or move but I can see. Ever since I was created in the fifteenth century, I have wanted to know about the world around me and the creatures that inhabit it. After what I’ve seen, in just over a hundred years, I would have preferred to stay blind and have hope. Perhaps the next hundred years will prove man's humanity, perhaps humankind will finally put the “e" in human(e). Perhaps I will be proud to have a soul.