11 May 2020. Substation Encounter.
Right there, in front of Kim's Cafe, on the most nondescript block in the whole run, I heard my name being called. Well, a touch farther up, actually--in front of the gate of the PG&E substation--pale green wood, with those unusual metal embellishments along the top, I've walked by hundreds of times, often wondering what went on inside...
The perfect setting, of course--and yes, it had to be Noor--we were fated to re-meet this way, after almost two months of lock-down--hidden away in our respective lairs (I'm trying to picture her's from the one time we talked on FaceTime and she walked me up the back stairs, past the inventions and the plants...
She's waving, animated, and I head across the street, brought up as if by a magic wand at that 6-foot limit--like some kind of naval patrol at the outer edge of the established coastal waters--or otherwise we'd have given each other a giant hug.
This seclusion thing pulls you in--at least for me--not just the physical distancing, but everything else put on a kind of hold--waiting to see what will emerge. I'd like to say what kind of clarity, but you become less and less sure--the original extension was until May 15 (C's birthday, of course!) but it's become quite apparent that there will be fits and starts, recurrences, ongoing unknowns--without the most basic guidance, other than open up, which reads as code for boost my numbers. You inevitably imagine how someone else might speak to this--the compassion and dignity required--a demonstration of caring, that is--caring about the entire fabric of what it means to live together.
Easy to turn to cynicism--the failures of capitalism and a market economy (e.g., where are the masks on Amazon?) but it's not really about that so much as a vision of who we are. The same question Alicia posed when we were sitting together in the kitchen here at the very end of February. What did people feel in the 1930's that brought them together...?
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However, there are moments... Re-meeting a friend is a very good thing--a delight, those first few words, like water in a dry canyon, after the first rains. And today we do have some rain--here in May, even--as if the wadi were flowering...
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Note: Image of Noor in Sarajevo--that was my start, but her gaze there contained a question, where yesterday's was all open-hearted. So, many erasures and restarts--it's problematic to draw a 26-year old! Maybe we ended up with a smallish Samarian goddess...?
