Knowing the Inscrutable

I’ve been married to a vegetarian for one year now. This year (the very one we are living in) has been pock-marked with changes in rhythm and mood; growth in awareness of truth and love which we can pull out of the magical ether of life. I have found that it is essential to experience all the times and moods of this place (a place is a community, carved out of the continuum of time-space by language). I can not say how essential this awareness, this fullness of being, is, but it seems to be one of the most important elements of a truly spiritual life. Consciousness I guess. We must not become lost in what appears to be formally constant under the fluorescent lights and blaring sirens of our constructed world – our hyper-reality.

Over the past year I have learned to enjoy the rat that runs startled at the bottom of the stairs leading into the Dyckman Street subway station at 11:18 pm five nights a week as I spill coffee on my sleeve. The way my whistle is repeated by the vaulted ceiling of the Medieval Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at around 3:00 am. Jennifer, my bleary-eyed friend with a big smile, a tangled mass of hair drooling onto the pillow, at 9:02 (the Japanese woman with poorly fitted stilettos clomping down the steps at 9:01). The birds sing as I stretch my legs out under the blankets; my spot as warm as clothes the instant they are retrieved from the dryer. The smell of curry, footsteps creaking the floor, at 5:00 pm.

I sleep, eat, work, yes. But I do much more. I act in the world and am acted upon. I change the world. It changes me. My relationships shape who I am and who I will be. This makes me relieved to have married that vegetarian who lives in the city. As I explore the moods and rhythms of this place which we are constructing, I am learning to love. Learning to know the inscrutability of who in the world she is.

Standing in the first car of the J train, looking out, watching the track snake away every Sunday morning.