Candles

by Robert E Vonne

various instructional lines of work that one of the members wanted to pursue. It was clear that Lester's painting were inspiring to those who know that they can be more useful, yet face uphill challenges in just getting a chance to prove it. Someone suggested that other kinds of illness and disability could be included in his oeuvre - that led immediately to ideas in Lester's mind; he would have a lot of painting to do.

  Twice a month, he would show a new painting to the group, and they always inspired. Their was one of an elderly person helping a family member with baking in the kitchen, applying icing to Christmas cookies; a palliative care patient lying in a hospital bed with a grandson's hand in their own, speaking, perhaps, "I love you," as the title of the piece suggested. He had a profile of a young woman serving customers in a coffee shop with a sincerely warm expression on her face; it was titled Her Secret? The viewer of the painting knows that she mentally ill - but the customers don't know that at all.

  Exalted Mortals became the name of this series of paintings by Lester, and word spread in the hospital of his paintings - there were requests from a number of departments for copies of pictures Lester had painted. All was going well for him, and he had an unfamiliar feeling of contentment in those years. He had found a place for himself in the art world, by displaying all the niches that those with disabilities can be found in. It was the miracle of wanting to contribute to the world, from souls who had suffered so greatly, that breathed life into each painting.

  There would be other vocations for Lester over the years: Math tutor, art instructor, food bank volunteer, and self-published poet. Each would turn his life a different way, and reveal a new way of seeing others. After his parents were gone, he was buoyed by his friends and the meaningful work he had done.

  "You're really a beautiful person, Lester," a friend and admirer of his work told him once. "The Human Spirit is what is beautiful," he replied, "and she gets on her knees to any person who puts aside their own grievances about life, and just wants to contribute."

  There is no monetary value placed on contributing to society; most of the time, you don't get paid for it. What a different world it might be, if people could see through the eyes of the exalted ones: People with special challenges that actually become more generous, more determined, and stronger in their convictions that we are here not only for ourselves - but for each other, as well. Those who came to know Lester, or any one of the millions of handicapped among us, learned to see what we are taught not to see: Love, not money, is the most valuable thing of all.

  Strange Jill

  "Upside-down, upside-down. Has the world gone mad?" There was that girl, from the step-up-the-ladder grade, coming to her at lunch hour, sitting beside her and asking all kinds of questions. Questions about what she likes, what she does on the internet, where she like to go when it's raining. The world flips up on its back with each question - and why, why, is this girl interested?

  Dream's over. Is it time to get up yet? No, it's springtime and the sun is up, but Eva will have to concentrate - concentrate - on staying quiet. Can't make noise by stirring - it would wake mom and dad, and then the bed check would come and all the lame questions about how she's feeling. "I'm alright," Eva always says. Her parents try, she knows, but they can't understand someone like Eva.

  Eva the outsider. She knows that her black leather jacket is cool - so aggressively individualistic that the other kids at school stay away from her. Except for that girl from the next grade, Jill. For a month since the snow melted, Jill has been pestering Eva, and it's hard to see why; Jill is popular, calm, never mutters to herself, and fashionable - not cool.

  She spent an entire lunch hour explaining to Jill what cool really means. It's not what's trendy, though it sometimes becomes trendy after cool people have dispensed with it; it's not popular, though cool people wish it was, for the sake of the world; it's sceptical of what society values and takes a close look at what society belittles or ignores; cool is an outsider, that can see where the herd is going, and who and what are leading it there. The big debate among the cool people is whether or not members of that herd can ever understand what the cool people are saying: Can the clueless be clued in? Eva thinks so, so she's trying to explain all these things to this strange girl that she's taking a liking to. It's obvious to her why Jill is so popular - but what a wasted life she has! Jill's sort is not quite the bane of the cool - she's genuinely nice, at least at this young age - but cool Eva finds her extraordinarily irritating in her acceptance of society's mores and beliefs.

  "It's like Einstein said - we're going to need a fundamentally new way of thinking if we're going to survive." she prodded Jill once. Vertigo struck when Jill replied, "Why?" as though she hadn't the slightest idea what human history and all the retained features of civilization in the present mean about the likelihood of of all-out war someday. How could a straight-A student, seventeen years old, be so stupid?

  Not stupid, but thoughtless, Eva amends her description of Jill. She glances out her bedroom window now to see pearly clouds doing a slow race across the sky. Soon, mom and dad will get up, and Eva can then fill her demanding tummy. For now though, she ponders what it is that she's learning through her bizarre acquaintanceship with Jill.

  Blonde Jill. Denim-wearing Jill. Cute Jill. Latest tech gadgets, latest styles, and always fashionably late for home room in the morning. That's Jill. Jill who is going to be a lawyer (and probably homecoming queen) and wants to write novels someday. How infuriatingly mesmerizing Jill is to Eva - how upside-down the world is that people like Jill are considered to be the bright and promising, the wise - the future leaders of society.

  Of course, those that follow the herd also flatter it by following, and so the members of the herd bestow honours on the conformists - such is the vanity of herds. Someone like Eva, who is tolerated but not liked, able to speak but not listened to, and granted citizenship but not wanted, feels powerless to try to inform her society about what it's doing that is fundamentally wrong, and that spells disaster for the future.

  What a bizarre, macabre set of sensations Jill's visits have brought Eva in the last few weeks - She's quite ill, Eva thinks in her penetrating way. It's only a matter of time before they put the blood-lust in her. She wants to like Jill, but she can't; Jill is the apotheosis of what ought to make a person valued and popular in our world. Not like Eva, who lives almost happily as an unwanted outsider. Maybe something she's said will make sense to Jill someday - that's the only way to influence the trendy and popularity-oriented people: A few words thrown out that they may remember when the absurd nature of their world jars them. Not many wake up and leave the herd to see what it's up to, but maybe Jill will someday stand aside and recall Eva as an early mentor.

  She stills herself and becomes absolutely silent as she listens. Yes - her parents are waking up. It's okay to go downstairs now and get that bowl of sugary granola that she craves each morning. Into the kitchen and out from a cupboard comes the bowl, from a drawer comes the spoon, the milk is then delivered from the refrigerator, and from a top shelf comes a vitamin bottle filled with Eva's secret medications. Always with a little hesitation, but without fail, Eva pops her antidepressant and antipsychotic pills - no one knows about her condition except her parents and her doctor. Not that the privacy is crucial to Eva, but living without stigma is easier than putting up with all the put-downs and dismissals that would come from the ignorant and the fearful. She stands at the kitchen counter, and with the glee that comes with well-chosen rituals, she devours her granola and milk.

  After a while, "Good morning; g'morning, 'morning," the three say in the kitchen after her parents arrive there. The usual grounding stuff goes on in the kitchen before school. It's as boring as can be, but Eva can't live without it - after all, it's only boring because it's familiar to her, and having that familiarity means that you're in tight with your parents, and everything is sailing smoothly. One difference this morning - d
ad asks, "Anything going on at school?" Eva decides to shake them up a little.

  "Yeah, I've made a friend recently."

  "Oh really?" her mom says, "Is this person nice - okay by your standards?"

  "No, and yes," Eva offers her pleased parents. "She's still nice at this age, but she's not okay. Her head is filled with the usual delusional stuff, and she's really good at conforming. She thinks she's a big success." Her parents' grins evaporate, but they listen for more. "I'm trying to wheedle a little perspective into her head - maybe she'll come around someday and get clued in. Maybe something really good'll happen to her and she gets thrown out of college - maybe she'll marry a complete jerk who makes her think about what's wrong with the world - or, hopefully, she doesn't have to suffer so much, and just has her eyes opened by good experiences and people like me."

  Breakfast was consumed, dishes washed and put away, turns taken in the shower, and now the three of them leave together in the family sedan. Unbelievably cool, is how Eva feels about her life. Even outsiders need family, and she considers her half-clued in parents, whose hearts are still in the right place,