Perennial madness

A mad man came to my door this morning, as I undressed from my morning shift, angry, tired and worn. He jangled the doorknob and pressed the doorbell consistently. and I was left wondering, who could it be that is in such a hurry to see me.

I opened up the door to behold an elderly; wanton darkened and disheveled man peering at my door with a black shirt and a bag full of nonsense. I shrieked with shock and utter amazement, instantly shutting my door behind me. “What do you want?” I demanded to know.

He politely asked for a cup of water and slice of bread if I had any food to spare. I looked around my subdivision and eyed the other houses before me that he had so carefully neglected. I wondered, was it just me, why did he feel the need to come to my door, to shake up the knob and to ask of my help in alleviating his hunger.

I asked him these questions as he stood there awaiting some sort of response from the helpless female at the door. I asked, “Have you been to the others, or is there something on my face that details come in for a place of solace?”

He was not the least bit surprised at my question, and I watched faint laugh lines form on his creased forehead, then he took a step back from me to spare me the ooze of his dead breath and he said, “I knew you would ask that question and I have an answer that you just might like. It is just this simple, you are the only one in the whole block who has her door hinge unlocked I know this because I have tried all the doors before this one. I could have come in without your permission but I wanted to know if the owner of this house would be so wanting and so helping to listen to my needs, my concerns and to my lamentations. Maybe that is why she has her door ajar.”

I did not know what to make of this response, as I am sure you too. Maybe I am so wanting and ready to listen, but maybe I am the maddest, craziest person to have my door open. But whatever it was, I had no idea why a mad man’s soul would want to consort with mine. I had no idea why he would have been the least bit drawn to my door.

Maybe he felt our souls need to converge to find a meeting point and a solution to our perennial madness, or maybe he could sense the unnerving madness lurking inside me and felt the need for us to converse, openly and truthfully. Honestly, I do not know, and I have no clues as to how to know.  But maybe in all our souls there is a person that needs to be comforted with one of its kind.  And maybe that is why I had to let the mad man in that day to have breakfast with me. Trusting that I might not regret my kind gestures and that we would find solace in our mad energetic minds.

The mad man left that day without giving me his name and location; I daresay that I did not see him again. Not that I expected to. But the mad man did leave some special message to me, which I would love to relay to you, and it read: to an open door. And I felt that open door might have been me.