Before and After Monday

You haven't replied to my thank-you text. I think I should be comfortable with silence by now, but silence from beloveds is still an emotional obstacle course for me. My therapist says this is old trauma. Like my Daddy used to say, "Save your war stories. Everybody's got 'em."

It's difficult at best and impossible at worst, to recapture or relive the enjoyment I had at our coffee date on Monday. But it seems to me lately, usually at about 3:30 in the quiet morning hours, and particularly in winter when the old house never seems to overcome its chill no matter what the thermostat says, that all the experiences I have, whether by daylight or moonlight are nothing but fleeting lights experienced before sinking back into the Great Silence/Dark that is the Womb of All-Being. We call it Death sometimes, but it could go by any other name as well.

"Do we have a connection?" I want to ask.

"Yes."

Is it strong, deep and true?"

"Yes."

The Great Dark Silence hovers in all things perceived as living, and spreading its dark, awesome wings, flutters no-thing-ness.

Whispering...

Love.

I never-before-Monday experienced what I experienced there with you, call it what you will. Call it what I may, it's illusion all the way, and I know this. It's part illusion, perhaps part delusion, and still I know it's true and real and maybe more so than anything I've ever known before Monday.

And I know it's about me, my perception. It's me that's gone the distance, taken the journey and come this far since the afternoon in that cafe over Thai noodles when you asked, "What brings you to yoga?" and I said "You." You coughed, your blue eyes widened in surprise and your eyebrows nearly met your hairline. The noodles had a hard time getting down. I laughed.

That was 17 years ago. A teenage lifetime. Back then, I was a teenager at heart, though in my 50's judging by my certificate of birth and the Gregorian calendar.

On Monday, I was so free, so completely me, with you. And I have never been So, like that, with anyone before Monday. For one hour or thereabouts, there was no worry, not a twitch of egoic anxiety, not one slinking wisp of loathsome fear. There was only pure enjoyment in the lines of your face, the shape of your hands and fingers, with jail-cell-style tattoos reading "SLOW DOWN" across the knuckles of each hand, an unruly cowlick of grey hair standing on end like some Buddha-type halo of enlightened understanding and your scruffy, silver, half-grown beard. It was pure in-joy-ment- of-us-side-by-side in a darkened coffee shop. No more. Other people in the room were holding conversation at other tables, on old leather couches in the corners, but I didn't hear their words and my eyes left your face only twice as I listened and replied, thinking to myself, "There's too much glare to see him clearly"...

Yes, my dear old teacher, there's usually too much glare when I'm with you and a cup of hot Joe Americana. I don't have a theory on the glare, though I suspect it to be illusion, a fine mixture of all the myths and fables of my childhood, my awkward/lonely teenage years, my pilot father's absence, my mother's Zen-impenetrable spirit; all equaling an unsatiated need for recognition and acceptance. The glare might also be the kind, generous, intelligent, strong, wise Being that I find in you.

How-in-the-World and in the Name of the Great Silence and the Dark-that-Manifests-Light... could I not love you?

I was there on Monday in a way I was never anywhere before.

In the corridors of my mind, my eyes enfolded your familiar face, every line and justified wrinkle, eyes in a blue twinkle, your strong-built body of bones and muscle, your quick broad smile. My ears soaked themselves in your voice, telling stories in low tenor and high baritone. When you spoke of her, your lover, for me there was no pain, no rush of fire-burning-in-hell-jealousy and I said, "I'm so glad you have a family you love."

And what I knew...what I took away from that hour's meeting was this: We were a We, a One-ness happening at the big table in that dark coffee-house. And the 2-of-Us, the 2-of-Us were equally pleased. And shining.

Oh!

How We Shined.

...I have a new friend, older than me by Gregory's Calendar, which says something in my opinion. She's one of a few people, including yourself, I've had an immediate curiosity about, followed later (after we became walking buddies), by an ever-deepening fondness. She lives alone and has no pets, but has friends of all different ages, ranging from pre-teen through 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's. I tell her my thoughts without censorship or fear of betrayal. Of course I ask her questions, she's older than I am! One day as we circled a pond while green and purple mallards paddled its blue depths, I was most likely asking questions, and she said to me: "There is only one question." She paused and then continued..."And only one answer."

I was intrigued.

"What is the question?" I asked.

"Do you love me?", she answered.

"And what is the answer? I asked.

"YES", she said.

That made me pause and I've thought about that ever since.

And like an old yogi told me years ago as I stood before him, saying "I love you"... "There are many kinds of love." That old yogi was you.

The room we practiced in had large windows at one end and the big wooden floor, smooth and light colored. That fall, you opened the windows because the weather was sometimes hot that September and class work could get pretty hot as well. I can remember that the windows were open because I strongly recall the scent of garlic and onions wafting up through the alley and into the studio on the late-summer air. With open windows, one heard the summertime street noise of passersby foot traffic, and the sudden, occasional bark and growl of a motorcycle being kick-started into life.

And once upon a time in class, (it may have been the day you wore a Tree of Life T-shirt) you asked us all, as we lay on our mats in shavasana..."Will you say Yes to Life?"

That was then, and this is Now.

Yes.

(You had me with Hello.)