The Poo Lady

Once upon a time, there was a very big city where millions of very busy people spent their entire lives running around in it. This very big city had lots of very tall buildings of glistening glass and bright flourescent lights which twinkled in the night sky making this city quite beautiful and exciting - from far away.

Upon taking a closer look, the city streets are lined with garbage and filled with thousands of cars inching their way along the hot pavement pumping so much black smoke into the sky that the city birds are greasy with dirt and grime. The people are so busy that they charge past one another on the street without a smile or a friendly word to one another. Some are much much much too busy so they charge down the sidewalks talking to their pinhead-sized phones; others are too distracted by their John Grisham novels and their iPods to notice any one of the millions of people in the city.

Amidst the engine roar of the cars, the people yelling into their mobile phones, and the greasey pigeons and seagulls that screech at little children with ice cream cones like vultures waiting for their prey to die in the desert, there lives a little old woman too small to be noticed who goes about a very strange business indeed.

She wears droopy dresses made of old curtains and little old shoes that shuffle slowly as she makes her way from garbage can to garbage can. In those garbage cans she pulls out little plastic bags filled with little clumps of poo, which she extricates and scatters on the ground.

The Poo Lady does this at many garbage cans in the city, scattering dog poo in a seemingly random design. Her hands are permanently stained brown and crusty when she goes home to her rundown old victorian house where she lives with Crazy Screaming Guy, Quiet Humming Guy and The Pirate. She often sits by her window and feeds crumbs to the neighbourhood raccoon who enjoys tanning on the roof.

Some people think that Poo Lady is crazy. They speculate on why she scatters poo and argues over whether or not she is after the tiny plastic bags that people buy specifically to hold tiny pieces of poo. They watch her every day and tell their friends about her. She is as amusing to them as a FOX reality show; she is someone they can talk about during their cigarette breaks.

But Poo Lady doesn't need a reason or an audience. In this very big city where very busy people run around all day chasing impossible dreams, Poo Lady scatters poo without expectation for reward or praise with only a mysterious faith to drive her forward. For someone who probably can't spell the word "enlightenment", Poo Lady is pretty damn close.