A Zipped–up Grace in Transit

I was on the Orange Line, riding into town from Malden Center, trying to straighten out my thoughts. I had a speaking engagement that I was going to and was trying to turn the meandering, convoluted mess my head was in into some sort of structure to speak, hoping to deliver a message that was coherent, if not extemporaneous.

My afternoon had not gone well. It was the Sunday of the Columbus Day weekend, where, as I had written in a poem years before, there was a "rich October burn: When the sun plays across the face like a lover's smile upon parting." It was that rare last weekend of flush.

Despite such sentiment, I was dealing with a different parting, and focused as such, was overlooking a fortuitous joining. Per usual. I had just shown the apartment I was to take over to a future roommate. I was moving back to it in East Watertown, but my wife was moving out to leave the state.

"So, do you think she's really going to move out?" he asked.

I looked around. Half the apartment was boxed up. The rest was staged for packing. "Looks like it."

He thought the room was small, and I knocked twenty bucks off the rent. He didn't have a job. I was desperate to get out of Malden. No way I could afford the place, even at half the rent. I wanted my books. I wanted my technology stuff, my zines, my comic books. I wanted Missy Loo to sleep on my chest, snoring and purring. Anything to get me out of Malden.

He took the room. I rode the bus back to Harvard Square. I was speaking later that night, just around the corner from the apartment. I had a couple of hours to kill. I was going to hang-out, learn some HTML, write or something. I didn't even have money for one cup of coffee, but was hoping I could jump on someplace's signal. At Harvard I discovered everyone had similar ideas; it was packed, and after my experience at the apartment I felt vulnerable. I went back to Malden.

It took quite awhile to get there, and once in my room, I dropped my bag on the floor with hesitation, latently worried about bed bugs. But relieved that the bug that was my current roommate was gone, I stretched out on the only piece of furniture I could trust, because I had been dutifully spraying the mattress down with 91% alcohol to kill the bugs and eggs, and liberally applying talcum powder to it afterwards— cuts the bastards that survive to ribbons.

I don't know where I drifted to; I didn't doze or really dream. I guess I went back to SF, down in the Christmas Tree Warehouse; laying alone in bed, shivering, drunk, visions of Yankee Pot Roast, and Oven Broiled Chicken, Suckling Pig (with the apple in its mouth) drifting by overhead like in an old Merrie Melodies cartoon. The room came into focus again, I was surprised how much time had past, but it still wasn't enough. I got ready to go back to Watertown.

So, back on the T, rolling out of Wellington Square, I noticed this young woman in a hijab sitting three seats to my right. She had a small leather-bound Koran in here lap that could be zipped shut. But it was open in her lap, and her lips were moving, forming the words, but making no sound. I watched her mouth, curious. She was very attractive, and I had been in a phase of admiring how a well-chosen stylish hijab could frame a lovely, exotic face in a way that the hooded sweatshirts of her New England peers couldn't.

Somewhere around Sully Square, her head raises to look out the window across the car from us, and her lips are still moving. She's praying, I thought, not that unusual as I had been making my petitions on the train lately too, except it was my little "screw you" to everyone else who had their noses in their phones. I had begun to worry if that diminished the intent of my humble requests for an intersession.

But when the Orange Line travels between Sully and Bunker Hill Community College, there is this long stretch where passengers seated as the woman and I were, can see out across East Cambridge and the Boston side of the Charles River. In the evening hours the sun, as it sets, takes up a good portion of this space, and this balmy October evening it was taking a long rest like it was trying to catch its breath. It hung there in some fiery hue between crimson and a harvest orange.

I snuck a quick look at the girl, she was growing on me. She was still praying as the light filled the car. I was shocked to find that a corona the same color as the sun had encircled her face. Little tongues of flame licked about her cheekbones and jawline. It seemed she was transformed into a beautiful saint with all the ecstasy of the longing of Rumi.

Now I am sure there was a practical reason for this "illusion", based on the angles of refraction between the observer, subject, and light-source. I'm sure the glass had something to do with it. I thought about rainbows; sure you needed to be in the right spot, the antisolar point, and the bow appears at an angle of  ≈ 41° off the line that connects the head of the observer to their head's shadow...and so on. But the reality is that that rainbow that you see, is yours and yours only; it only exists because you are there to observe it. Even the guy standing next to you, he may see a rainbow, but it's not yours. Rainbows only exist if there is an observer, or its surrogate like a camera, to witness them.

And so it was here, I had come a long way already. The Presence of the Mystery. This was affirmed to me by this beautiful woman, who for a few brief moments on a October weekend was in grace— the belief that despite all worldly appearances, the universe makes sense, and reality is on your side. And if reality isn't on your side, you have made this choice. Reality does not choose sides, people do. Get yourself on reality's side, and be in its perfect alignment. I was present to recognize it, to bear witness to it, and to partake in her state of grace. This was evidenced by the fact the kid sitting next to me on my left had gone on the nod, in the middle of a text message.