One day last summer I went down town with my assistant. The day was sunny and warm and I was feeling excellent. We came to a department store, where I had an appointment with a friend of mine. As soon as we entered the department store I felt an unpleasant pinch in my stomach and I had to go to a toilette at once. My stomach was churning and I had a feeling that there will be a change in the day program.
In my country there are official guidelines how a toilette for handicapped people should be built. One of the basic accessories in disabled toilet is hand held bidet shower.
Many years earlier I had given the department store feedback, because they did not have bidet shower in the handicapped people’s toilette. The people in charge contacted me and asked me, if there is something else they should consider in this issue.
At that moment it occurred to me at once that the department store has also a small toilette for disabled people, which didn’t even have a proper water point. However, I didn’t bother to mention about it. I thought that it would be good enough, if they install a bidet shower in the main toilette.
What you leave behind will you find in front of you.
Now, on that summer day I was exactly in that small toilette, which did not have a hand shower. I felt I was sitting up to my neck in shit, and I had only myself to blame. The toilette had only a small water basin for hand washing, and the water was running only when one kept hand under the tap.
My clothes were dirty, there was no water, and with every movement I managed to increase the mess around me.
Fortunately I had a phone with me, so that I could call my assistant to help me.
In the toilette there was also a call button, through which we could contact the caretaker of the department store.
After pondering a while what would be the easiest way to get out of the mess, we decided to move to the toilet, which has a bidet shower.
The caretaker brought me some garbage bags, we cut a hole in one bag to serve as neckline, I pulled the bag over myself, and we made our way to the water.
In the end of January I was reminded about this incident, as I fell in my flat and couldn’t stand up. I was lying hours after hours on the floor.
I became a touch in the life of the people, to whom that is everyday life.
I became a feeling that the Valentine’s Day, when we remember our fellow men, is just a perfect moment to remind people of the millions of people, who don’t have running water or who are lying exposed day after day in piss and excrement.
These are only experiences of the body, but everything is stored in our collective memory, our collective mind. They are there to remind us that despite of the awesome technology we have, we make our own life and that of others very difficult, because we don’t bother to do that, what the voice of reason, the heart tells us to do.
Sometimes when I think about this world I feel, as if we were sitting up to the neck in shit. In order to get out of the mess we should only jump over our shadow, pull a garbage bag over our ego-friendly body and move to the waters that give life. It will clean every mess that the ego-friendly body of ours produces.
See also:
Google Images:
Hand held bidet shower