The Mystery Man

I was walking past the various vendor booths at this year's Afro-Punk Festival in Brooklyn, eyeing the trinkets, jewelry, clothing, vegetarian food items, and body oils and lotions, when I happened on an initially frightening object.

This man----->

This head is an art piece that appears to be composed of aluminum cans, plastic containers, and other miscellaneous items you would find on any busy city street. This picture does not do the head's size any justice. If you look closely, you can see that the height of the head reaches the hood of the car it's propped up against. I saw a woman who appeared to be tending to it, but I don't know if she was the artist or someone equally as struck by its appearance as I was. There was nothing like it around, it stood alone near a table of trinkets.

I'm writing this blog post on "The Mystery Man" because of his facial expression. In it I see sorrow, pain, deep thought, and, if I may be so morbid, human decomposition. I stood before it a few moments, wanting to touch it, but out of respect for its status as "artwork," and because I was a little unnerved, I didn't. I took a picture and walked away.

But I didn't forget him. On the ride back to DC, I imagined what I would write if I were shown his picture in a creative writing class and instructed to "tell me about him." What would I feel inspired to write? Honestly, I couldn't come up with anything.

But as I'm writing this post, "he" just spoke to me. Wanna know who he is?

His name is Jeremiah. He's what's known as a "gymadan." Gymadans are cursed because of actions in a past life and are born in spirit form only. They have to earn a physical body one part at a time by answering complex riddles posed by The Creator. The Creator poses a riddle only once a year. If a gymadan answers wrong, he or she has to wait two years for a retest. Sadly, Jeremiah has earned only his head in the twenty years of his life--his problem is that he overthinks his responses and can't "see the forest for the trees" for lack of a better analogy. In contrast, a gymadan who answers the riddles correctly typically earns a full body in six years.

Jeremiah's chance is coming up again and he's desperate to earn his neck, and, if The Creator takes pity of his plight, a torso. There is rumor that The Creator will ask Jeremiah a very tough one this time: Why does a caged bird sing?

If so, Jeremiah will answer, "because it can do nothing else, for it is caged."