Poorest of the Poor

~

In the place where Ollie sat, he stood above the entire area because he was the poorest of the poor. The entire area wanted to be poor. So they would throw out anything new and opt for junk.

“Look what I found!” one of the richer ones yelled, “An abandoned freezer solar generator and all. There is enough food in there to feed us all for a time and a time and a half!”

But Ollie who was always listened to was in shock. What a horrible thing! Who could be poor and have plenty to eat for a time and a time and a half? He closed his eyes but tears ran down his face. He knew what would it meant.

“Take it to the edge of the ravine that no one has been able to descend let alone come back from and throw it in!!!” he shouted.

“With that much food?” they exclaimed. “We're rich!”

“Would you really want to forget all about me?” Ollie roared with sadness in his tone. “We can't be rich and poor. That would spoil everything and you know what the rich are like. Beat the generator to flat iron pieces and disconnect it from the freezer. We don't want anyone else coming upon the horrible outcome such a thing would give them.”

They all murmured but they beat the cast iron generator to broken misshapen pieces and disconnected the solar generator and flung open the door. Then they took a rotten piece of ply board and set it all on it and the army took it to the deepest part of the ravine no one had ever tried to descend and thew it over all but the rotten piece of ply wood.

The area gave up a cheer after the silence of the loss of such great gain left them and they were happy Ollie was the poorest of the poor again and his rival's wife brought him a large chunk of moldy cheese and a nice big slab of raw liver that had turned and smelled terrible.

“God!” he shouted, “Don't you ever tire of trying to kill me?”

But God he remembered had told someone in something he had read somewhere that it didn't matter what you ate so long as you ate something and he kept going until he had consumed them both and lay down expecting to die not believing his sources on the one hand but not doubting God on the other.

For days the struggle in Ollie's body and spirit went on and he praised his rival that he should die and being even poorer than he was now. But in the end his faith in God won out and he survived. He looked like a zombie he was so gaunt and yellow yet with jaundice but people cheered to see he was yet the poorest of the poor like he had always been.

Even his rival shook his hand proud he had been beaten by the best when a beach ball filled with helium adrift in the wind knocked Ollie down he was so frail. Who would think, a beach ball filled with helium? There was no telling how far it had served as a balloon to come to him. But he took it that he would be wealthy and borrowed a knife for he did not own anything so much as the mat he moaned on and cried himself asleep on and he cut it open and all the gas came out at once right in Ollie's face.

He spoke in that funny voice helium causes one to speak in that has inhaled helium, “Oh, how awful!!!” he yelled as everyone laughed but he continued anyway for at least his neighbors were laughing at him for his foolishness, “May nothing valuable ever come to me again? Even the breezes have cursed my will to be poor. Take the ball and burn it and let the acrid fumes be down wind around me that I may suffer and choke on its deadly smoke.”

They did glad Ollie had avoided one more opportunity to own something or have something valuable. The beach ball could have been a nice cover for his mat that would shed water so that during and after a rain the mat would not be wet too and cold to lie on for days. Everyone wished they had the wisdom to do the wrong thing like he had and lay around in their meager belongings envious of Ollie who now only had his skin and his bones. His teeth he said had been blessed to flee his mouth and even his hair was better off for having disowned him and the doctrine of less misery through extreme poverty spread.

They had thought him crazy when he first came but they had all been rich and knew how boring and depressing it was to have wealth. Ollie had been the richest of them all to just say to riches, “That's enough. You are not what I need. I will walk in a poor man's attire the rest of my days. Damn riches but do not damn the pitiful rich,” and in this way had compassion on all those evil people who let riches rule them and make them heartless and mean and evil even here in the fiction he had built for himself so that he did not own even what little practical thing he might have had for it was buried by fiction.

A man, a normal man without all he wanted but enough to get by on except the niceties of life lay down on his bed in the afternoon with no job and no family to worry about and said, “God, I am poor but I have enough. Who is the poorest of all to have a consciousness?”

Then he saw a man in fiction who had thought he was in the practical part of God's reality. It was Ollie. He was miserable but had just eaten a venison steak one of the wealthier ones who owned a rifle had shot with his last bullet and having compassion on Ollie gave him a steak. But Ollie left it lay until it stunk and was covered with flies and maggots which he ate hating himself for falling the temptation to eating fresh food no matter how disgusting only to find it was full of worms which he couldn't refuse either and only then devoured the rotting meat.

“This man is a fool!” the normal man exclaimed now asleep and deep within the dream. “He could have had fresh venison steak and maybe fatten his skeleton like body! Why would he do such a thing?”

Then he dreamed of the same man more wealthy than any man he had ever seen. But he was mean to his servants and even had them beaten when he found a neighbor had something nicer than his servant had chosen for him. He hated his wife and would not say a decent word to his children buried in documents that ate away at his fortune looking for a way to swindle some rival of all he had to have even more. Everybody including himself hated Ollie then and it was all due to his riches so he thought. At first he ignored the fact he had become evil but the thing weighed itself on his brain and drove him mad.

At that point the normal man awakened and said, “The poor man, when he was wealthy he was horrible and now that he is the poorest of the poor he is miserable too but he seems to be nicer to his neighbors and receives the praise of his rivals and all the poor gathered around him who look up to him for being the poorest of the poor.”

Then he had the thought, 'Yes, he is a fool. When he was rich he was the poorest of the poor but now he has nothing not even his health he seems happy in a miserable sort of way. He was insane to have all that and be that way and he is insane even yet to have nothing but the worst and that which is nothing all that fiction in his consciousness,' and he marveled and shook his head.

“You are the fool,” an angel that stood before him said. He has the greatest thing a man can have in the love of God. He has piece of mind with God and with himself and all he knows. You have enough. You have a false idea about God. You don't know him but you think you do. You are the poorest of the poor but there are so many of you that you never noticed.”

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don't know why I question the God. I never understand anything he says,” like Ollie waiting for the maggots of life and the worms to grow inside him, knowing nothing, poor and unwilling to be rich fed on God's finest but refusing to eat it because he only saw what he wanted and not what was there to see.

Insane Ollie finally died physically but ate nothing, never showered or shaved or talked to anyone and turned down every part of God's blessing when told that he could have anything he wanted with these words, “I already have it. I have been in heaven for a very long time.”

The normal man died, saw God's face and was given all he wanted and enjoys it all very very much but he almost immediately forgot God. He never speaks to him, never said thank you and takes all God gives him for granted, even yet the poorest of the poor of which there are so many.

You know if you have died. Never forget who makes it all possible, even you or you might be fiction or nearly that and never realize it as we take you along though insane. You are not a threat. You are not, not even harmless for you infect so many others. In the end they all forget us and are fiction but we love you too much to throw your bottle of consciousness away though it wasted our time, everyone else' and yours.

Ask God for what you need. He already knows before you ask. Don't and never know what it might have been.