The little person

In the ground beneath my feet lives the little person who makes herself a nuisance constantly demanding her due. I hardly ever think about the little person; she is mostly out of sight out of mind. I almost NEVER EVER think about the little person as it happens. Such is the boon of being separated by however many tonnes of solid earth going all the way down to whatever shameful little hole the litte person lives finds herself in that I rarely find myself subjected to her whim.

But then every so often the little person makes herself known. She surfaces truculently. She surfaces to complain, never for anything but complaint. She waddles up from below with her shrewish little face and demands that I make good on some obvious terrible wrong I’ve imposed on her. She is aghast. She is at the end of her tether. She is so so disgruntled that I could have possibly done whatever it is I have irresponsibly and stupidly managed to do yet again. She spits out disgust. The only time I ever hear from the little person is when she wants something, when she’s ready to dispense one of her very personal attacks on my being.

The demands of the little person relate ostensibly - and you might have guessed - to whatever happens to fall down from above into where she is below. There is a distinct above/below split. This can be anything you can think of, anything that could be said to percolate into the earth. The little person has complained about dust, footsteps, sound, but mostly what the little person complains of is me, me and my bogus little thoughts. The little person is convinced that my attitude stinks. The little person does not want me to be in all the manifestations that a person’s being can take. All the minute phenomena that go into a living existence. The little person doesn’t want me to breathe, feel, think, touch, see, have ideas, desire, oppose, be sexual, fear, she doesn’t want me to need, cry, sustain myself through food, to be excited, she does not want to have to hear the clatter that’s produced when I confront my own thoughts.

The little person cannot tolerate any of this. She has not expressly said this but she does not need to - I read it in her bearing.

Most of the time there is nothing. There is no awareness that there is anything below my feet. Call me stupid for forgetting about the little person but why would I spare a thought for what’s underground? For what I can’t hear? I take the ground to be something I can walk on, something that supports my weight. I think that it is legitimate to be able to rely on it without having to feel a debt of gratitude to some fabled entity, let along the little person. I should be able to come and go as I please.

Most of the time I hear nothing. It is silent. It is safe. The atmosphere is not disturbed or tense. But then all of a sudden the little person emerges with that face that she has, with her angry pudgy shrewish little face, with her accusations and demands and I remember that she’s there and that consequently she must have been there all along while I, all along, had been convinced that she wasn’t, all while I was relaxing and taking the earth for granted, and so I get a nasty shock and comeuppance that I’ve been doing all my little things that I tend do without a misplaced care in the world, all my rustling and shuffling, despising, all my self-talk and managing my inner angst, all my slightly maniacal laughing inwardly to myself, and of course all my terrible judging, without even realising that the little person was listening in all the time that she was always, and always had been there, without me remotely thinking that I should have been en garde and more than a little ill-at-ease.

The feeling is so discomfiting. The feeling is to be bludgeoned out of the blue that the little person could feel and hear you all along and that you were under a fair  degree of scrutiny. The feeling is to be reminded that you cannot be at peace and alone, that whatever you do think or feel is at the mercy of the little person and that you are never alone and that you should never for one moment believe that you could be.

Believe me. When the little person comes up with her list of complaints and demands, with her threats, with her angry pudgy little face, I feel I want to understand the little person, I want to feel compassion. When the little person knocks at my door, I am ready, here and now, to talk to the little person as someone I refuse to look down on. I am willing to see her as neither persecutor nor victim, I am fully committed to equal treatment,  but as soon as the door comes ajar and I see the demands, I see the fed-up contorted little face of the horrible little person,  as soon as I feel the entitlement ooze out of  her pores, I cannot feel anything bar disgust, despite my high-minded ideals.

Do I ever actually hear the little person when she’s below, when she’s not absurdly complaining? Can I ever know that she’s there? I wonder now if she thinks like me. If she feels. But why can’t I see or hear her? When you’re underground, how can people know that you’re there? That’s not my problem. If I could live underground with the little person I could understand her. But I don’t know if she would allow it, and more to the point, I’m far too scared to ask.