I was in Rishikesh, India, when I twisted my ankle in a busy street. I was in a great deal of pain and sitting by the side walk alone. An old woman, a beggar who was crippled, whom I had seen a few days before and we had exchanged smiles, came forward from the crowd. She could hardly walk yet made her way to me with ease and sat down, her wrinkled weathered face looking at mine. Her smile was contagious. Pointing at my ankle, and nodding her head she questioned in a language I didn't understand but through her gestures made herself clear. I nodded back. and she took my ankle into her hands. I felt an instant calm and groundedness. She gently stroked and massaged my foot. After a short while, she pulled out her mobile phone and spoke hurriedly. Within about 10 minutes a man came running up and gave her some liniment oil which she proceeded to rub into my ankle. The strong 'tiger balm' smell cleared my head and within minutes that familiar cold heat soothed the pain. She continued to massage my ankle. She would not take payment for her 'treatment' nor for the oil which she gave to me to take home. I was very moved by her presence and care and generosity... and her skill of getting me out of pain and able to walk with ease. I can still see her face and feel her kindness. It brings me joy to share this story.
In 1957 I met Beethoven: more exactly I met his sonata 30 opus 109.
I was fifteen, and had fallen unrequitedly in love. She died twenty years ago, deserted by her husband, and suffering from multiple sclerosis.
Once, I pushed her wheelchair in a garden centre.
In 1957 I fell, and the sonata saved me. It, and the other thirty one, have inhabited me for the rest of my life. It was certainly love at first hearing.
Years later, you will want to know, I fell in love again. Requited.
Many years later a French woman fell unrequitedly in love with me. She was coming out of the baker’s shop as I went in. She heard me ask for a pain au chocolat. “You are English!” she declaimed. She was petite and very round. We talked in English for a few minutes. She loved English. I felt there was something strange about this dumpy little woman. Later I discovered that her mother had German measles while pregnant. She was highly intelligent, a gifted language speaker, and singer. She was middle aged but seemed to have a social age of five. She was uninhibited. She would leave me notes in the windscreen of my car in the university car park. I met her family and they expressed gratitude that I should be with her from time to time. She had a favourite word: “propeller” and later when she moved to be nearer to a brother, she would write and I would reply, careful to include the word propeller in my letters.
Later at her funeral I bought a large wooden propeller in a model shop. I shyly asked the bishop conducting the funeral if I could place it on her coffin. He agreed, and referred to it in his homily as being an aid in her ascent to heaven.
One of my most memorable encounters with a stranger was as a teenager in 1982. My family was in the Athens airport waiting for our delayed flight to Tel Aviv when we met a fellow traveler on her way to visit her son living on a kibbutz. Eighty-year-old Miss Helena graciously shared with us her story of having been a survivor (with other members of her family) of Auschwitz as a Greek Jew because of each of their knowledge of 4 to 5 languages and being put to work as translators by their Nazi jailers. As a novice French student at the time, I was struck by the idea that her multilingualism saved her life - a story I at times have shared with my reluctant language students over my three decades as a French and Spanish teacher. Miss Helena's story also opened me up to a history of which I had previously been ignorant - of the stories of the Nazi occupation of Greece; she also impressed me with her joy and resilience - a deep fire of life which still glowed despite attempts by evil forces to have snuffed it out. May I continue to grow into the wise woman of compassionate grace I encountered in that Athens Airport over four decades ago.
I was flying from Nairobi to Cape Town, via Livingstone in Zambia. The seat next to me was empty between Nairobi and Livingstone but on the stop, a lady ended up taking the seat. Not too long after we'd taken off, the attendants served us lunch and she turned to me and asked, "how's the meal?" Who'd have thought that that simple question would end up extending way into the baggage collection area at the airport in Cape Town.
She was an oncology (cancer) pharmacist, based in Canada and enjoyed travelling (she was on her way back to Canada from a trip in Namibia/Zambia/Zimbabwe). I asked her a lot of questions about her work; what she loved most, what it was like working with patients battling terminal illnesses, why she'd gone into that line of work...and then she said something that has stuck with me ever since when I asked her the hardest part of her work:
“Letting go. When you start treatment with a patient, you never know if you’ll ever see them again, or even on their next appointment. A patient could get better, then leave and you never see them again. And the same with those who don’t, they too, at some point leave. In a different sense, and you never see them again. Those ones are usually the harder ones. But it’s always hard to let go. Certainty is never guaranteed.”
We eventually said our goodbyes at the airport and I wished her the best.
But what she didn't know and what we never spoke about in our 3hr-long conversation was that I had lost my father years ago to cancer. And often visiting him at the hospital, with the chemo tubes and whatever other medicine running into his veins, I'd wonder of the people who worked with him. Not the doctors or the nurses, the others - those like her. Were they kind? Did they treat him well? Was he just another patient to work through in their list? To test whether medication was working or not? Was there "soul" in their work? I'm not sure how to describe it, but meeting the lady (whose name I also don't even know or remember) was like receiving a glimpse into the days he was at the hospital alone, with people like oncology pharmacists doing the best they can do to treat him. The conversation with her felt like a reassurance that in his last few months and in the preceding years of his cancer journey, he wasn't just a number. And that there were people out there (straight up from the doctors, all the way to the pharmacists) extending deep care and kindness to each and every terminally ill patient they worked with; no matter how many medications they were in charge of signing off or administering for the day/wk/month.
I still feel a sense of deep peace, for myself and for my father, everytime I think of that conversation and that lady.
I once flew back in luxury from the US in business class. I sat next to a man from somewhere in the UK, we spoke about lots of somethings, had dinner and wine together (unfortunately no candles), then got ready for bed and said goodnight. We lowered our seats, pulled up our duvets and were face to face. At dawn we shared our morning-selves over coffee. He was married, I was on the way to divorce. Was their attraction? Possibly. But mostly it felt like, up there in the atmosphere, he soothed my divorce-hurt with laughter and stories. It didn’t feel appropriate to share numbers but I do think about him from time to time. He was one of my life’s guardians.
And I came to Southwark the other night Padraig but was too shy to say hello. I enjoyed the talk very much and know a little of Mark Oakley from the R S Thomas Festival in Aberdaron. I also got a scary, dystopian photo of the Shard!
I’m smiling here as I read your post Pádraig, sitting in Dublin Airport waiting on my flight to Glasgow, on my way to join you and others on Iona. In the security lane I had a lovely conversation with a woman - she on her way to the Netherlands - and both of us aghast at the new rule that we must now take off jumpers and sweatshirts to get through security. We both thanked our gods that we had a t shirt on underneath. Then laughed together at our other security ‘complications’, her hip replacement, guaranteeing to set off the alarm, and my pacemaker which meant I can no longer go through the scan thing but must be manually frisked. These brief encounters are the joys of travelling.
This past week, to a show in my city. I knew a few folks performing, but I went alone, so it was a bit lonely. As the tiny crowd waited on the final performance, I made a comment to a stranger about a pretty color she was wearing. The conversation that followed surprised us both - we both used to play piano & would like to again, we're both writers/editors, & we both have written about our abusive religious experiences (poetry & memoir). It was a meaningful connection to make, especially at a low-attendance Thursday night show with a range of musical styles. The moment she shared a piece of her story, something inside went "click - ah *that's* what we were supposed to be here for tonight." 💙 We're getting coffee next week.
Years ago, I was on a packed public bus travelling from Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa. I was alone, and it was my first time in Ethiopia. I spoke no Amharic, and no one on the bus spoke English. When the bus broke down in what felt like the middle of nowhere, we had to find cheap lodgings for the night. I had no idea where I was, what had happened, or how long we’d need to wait for another bus. But I noticed a young woman on the bus was holding an Arabic Quran. I’m proficient in Arabic and gave it a try - curious whether she spoke the language or only read it. She could understand, we were both delighted and amazed, and she took me under her wing. We shared a small room together in a nearby hostel, and travelled back to Addis Ababa on a different bus the next morning. More than two decades later, I still remember Sophie’s smile and wonder how her life unfolded.
A few months ago, I lifted up my 18 month grandson so he could gaze out the window (we both enjoy looking for birds and get excited when one is spotted). There was then a precious moment when, fortuitously, we both turned to look at each other; our eyes met for a long few seconds. This silent interchange was both tender and intense. While difficult to explain, we connected in a deep way.
Just yesterday, while walking with my companion and our four-legged friend, Bowdie, in a wooded area surrounding a pond, we encountered a man with his own four-legged friend. During our brief conversation with the man, we learned that he plunges into the ocean once a week, even through the winter season. "It's refreshing", he said. Then he justified the act by saying that he used to be a deep-sea diver in the Navy. I asked, "What were you looking for in the deep sea?" He replied, "We were salvaging materials and helicopters during Vietnam." It was said with such ease and humility. And all I could think was this man is so brave. This man has seen the abyss.
When I was in my early 20s, I think, my "spiritual" thinking was at a point where I thought that a repressive regime could control someone's coming and going but not their minds, so everyone was free to think anything and could be enlightened if they really wanted to be. (I shudder now at my ignorance half a century ago.) I was on a plane and my seatmate was an army officer. It was during the height of the Vietnam war, not a time when anyone in uniform was generally well-regarded. But we got to talking, and somehow that belief of mine came out. I have never forgotten his clear, strong command. Travel, he said, just travel. I have been ever since, and have thanked him a million times over for that directive. Much of my work is cross-cultural, and oh, I have learned so much.
When I was about 4, riding a train from Milwaukee to Minneapolis with my family, I was carrying the stuffed toy lamb my grandmother had given me at birth. Until then, I had called her Doggy. Strangers on the train asked me her name and I said, “Doggy.” They said, “Why don’t you call her Tilly?” I said, “OK,” and announced to my parents that Doggy was now Tilly. Tilly has comforted me my whole life; though I no longer sleep with her, I still have her. I will always wonder who Tilly was to those strangers on the train and how it comforted them to give me her name.
We had gathered in the basement of the century old church to participate in the Maundy Thursday meal. Just as we began the service, a stranger walked in carrying a young child. He informed us there were four more children and his wife in the van outside. Since all the shelters were filled, he wondered if his family could spend the night in the church. We immediately suspended the service so some could take the family to an upper room where they could bed down for the evening. Others gathered cereal and milk and more blankets. When the family was settled we invited them downstairs to eat. With the children eating bowls of Cherrios, Mom nursing the youngest, and both parents eating day old donuts, it became the most authentic Holy Communion service we ever experienced.
Here in New York City where I’m from, for many years I set up a two chairs and a table in Union Square with a sign that read “creative approaches to what you’ve been thinking about” and then a little sign and a jar that read “pay what you’d like or take what you need.” People paid in money of toothpicks or art. And money left the jar as well. Spoke with thousands of strangers.
This was one of the finest surprises.
In the late afternoon a tall blonde woman came up to the table. She was perhaps in her early 60’s. Quite striking looking and, if I had to guess, had Parkinson’s Disease. Perhaps it was something else but she tremored and had that somewhat palsied face. If you could see her you’d know that she was very, very beautiful when she was younger and not burdened with Parkinson’s or whatever she had.
But I didn’t ask. How can you really?
She came up with a friend who just stood and watched our interaction the whole time.
She introduced her name as R and asked
“How do I keep my brain sharp?”
I asked her if she was worried about her brain function – I wasn’t trying to be ignorant of her likely condition – I was just asking, you never know what an intention might be.
She replied that it was simply something she was concerned about. And that was fair enough. Prying isn’t required.
Starting off we chatted about how we are literate, pattern seeking creatures here in the west. We tend to find ways of doing things well and repeat those sequences. That approach essentially creates grooves in the brain – or neural pathways if you want to be fancy about it.
The brain is quite plastic and so to keep the brain supple and in top shape it is important to break patterns and recruit other parts of the brain to do the jobs at hand.
Here is a laundry list of what came out with her as she sat there – interested and engaged:
Do the things normally done with her right hand with her left.
When walking to common locations to take alternate routes.
Find the key to the front door of your home by touch and then open the door with closed eyes.
See things you don’t normally see – museums, locations, people etc
Get all multiple senses stimulated at the same time.
Smell things and try to guess what they are.
Write the alphabet on your hand with your tongue.
Basically radically break up the schedules and patterns of your life and do fun things that challenge you in lots of ways. She appreciated all this and smiled at the funness and silliness of some of the suggestions.
But I offered one other exercise that we could try in person together.
And she said she was game to try.
We have tremendous processing power in our brains but we often focus it through our language processing parts. But we can actually process quite a lot conversationally through other means. Gibberish conversations can be quite fun but we are going to have a conversation with numbers.
This is an improv game where the two players (though it could be more) have a conversation using sequential numbers instead of words until an agreed upon end number 7, 17, 48, 103 or whatever. So the first person says “1” and the second says “2” and next line from the first person is “3”.
Then the conversation goes on. But the trick is to imbue your number with emotional context, with gesture, with meaning. If done correctly everyone knows exactly what is happening despite the lack of words that convey any meaning. For a brain trying to keep sharp it could be a dream – processing numerous things at the same time, disassociating words from meaning and reapplying them elsewhere, working outside the lingual network.
After describing the game and saying that we were going to have a conversation to 20 she planted into her seat.
I stood up from my chair and took a good look at her.
She had suddenly gone from relaxed to a little demure. Her legs tightened together and she looked over her left shoulder with the faintest hint of coyness. From that I took my cue.
I reached out my right hand onto her thin black shearling coat and leaned into her with a Lotharic, slightly pleading…
One.
She adjusted herself and looked right at me with a playfully prudish…
Two
Slightly rebuffed, I backed off but upped the desiring intensity trying a new tact, a new rationale…
Three
She quickly retorted, cutting me off but still leaving the door open by smiling and showing how she liked the pursuit…
Four
That open door was all I needed and I softened, sweetened and moved my arm around her and spoke a gentle
Five
While pianoing her arm down to the inside of her wrist.
R got bashful but turned the corner and started to be convinced by my longing feeling into our moment.
Six
My pleading was now teasing and promising all sorts of things as I hushed.
Seven
R smiled and said
I don’t think that we need to go all the way to 20.
Hot!
We both laughed and R’s companion smiled broadly.
It was brilliant and fun. We both knew who we were, what was happening and we were shockingly in the present with each other. There we were – young lovers on a porch late at night trying to come up with reasons to stay up and fool around and the girl happy to be convinced and not trying very hard to ignore the affections of her young lover.
R thanked me for every thing and R’s companion said “Very good Matthew. Very good indeed.”
She put money into my jar and took a card as did her companion.
But there was one more thing.
As R stood up she looked at me with the beginnings of tears in her eyes. Moved, she spoke,
“I have not been looked at like you just looked at me for years. To be wanted like that and hungered for. Pursued! Suddenly I feel really so very beautiful. I didn’t even know how much I missed it or wanted it. But now that I have it it’s even more than beautiful, I feel light and tingly and very much myself!”
And she placed both her hands on my cheeks and slowly kissed me. It was lip to lip, mouth to mouth. There was no danger of turning into a full makeout session but our lips touched fully enough so that that beautiful slight spread happens so that you sense the space and wetness behind.
I have been lucky to have had many kisses in my life but this one ranks way up there for authenticity and suprise. I was touched by it and by R very very much.
R’s companion was walking by the opposite direction perhaps an hour later or so and we chatted more. He stayed and watched another interaction I had and we have been chatting since. Ends up that he is a psychotherapist and he appreciated my method.
Often at the table we can find things we didn’t even know we were looking for that might even be more important than the thing that brought you to the table in the first place.
Freud said that it is the repressed erotic spirit in humankind that allows us to create civilization…but there is a price to pay for that.
Hopefully R became a bit uncivilized.
Maybe we all need just that.
Blessings to the strange and the strangers from me, Matthew Stillman
I sat next to this old man in a public bus in the city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. While we didn't speak to each other, I kept listening to what he said to himself and how he sang along with the music that played. And he inspired me to write a poem about him!
I was in Rishikesh, India, when I twisted my ankle in a busy street. I was in a great deal of pain and sitting by the side walk alone. An old woman, a beggar who was crippled, whom I had seen a few days before and we had exchanged smiles, came forward from the crowd. She could hardly walk yet made her way to me with ease and sat down, her wrinkled weathered face looking at mine. Her smile was contagious. Pointing at my ankle, and nodding her head she questioned in a language I didn't understand but through her gestures made herself clear. I nodded back. and she took my ankle into her hands. I felt an instant calm and groundedness. She gently stroked and massaged my foot. After a short while, she pulled out her mobile phone and spoke hurriedly. Within about 10 minutes a man came running up and gave her some liniment oil which she proceeded to rub into my ankle. The strong 'tiger balm' smell cleared my head and within minutes that familiar cold heat soothed the pain. She continued to massage my ankle. She would not take payment for her 'treatment' nor for the oil which she gave to me to take home. I was very moved by her presence and care and generosity... and her skill of getting me out of pain and able to walk with ease. I can still see her face and feel her kindness. It brings me joy to share this story.
I wrote this after one of my volunteer visits...
I fall in love with strangers.
I’ve never met these people before.
The only thing I know is that they are dying.
I am a Hospice volunteer.
I sit with people who are “transitioning”,
so that they do not have to die alone.
To sit with someone at this threshold
is sacred ground.
I am honored and humbled,
every time.
I sit.
I pray.
I chant softly.
I empty myself.
I see that in the end,
we all really are the same.
All that really matters,
all that has ever mattered,
is Love.
I know nothing about this person in life,
but I say, “I love you.”
when I say my final “Good-by.”
I can’t help it,
it just comes out.
The threshold of death
offers wisdom beyond words.
It is in the silence of souls transitioning
that I have learned more than I can express.
I thought I was serving them, but
these souls have taught me more.
Sometimes when I get home,
I weep,
not necessarily from sadness,
but from gratitude
for life and wonder and grace.
A meeting
In 1957 I met Beethoven: more exactly I met his sonata 30 opus 109.
I was fifteen, and had fallen unrequitedly in love. She died twenty years ago, deserted by her husband, and suffering from multiple sclerosis.
Once, I pushed her wheelchair in a garden centre.
In 1957 I fell, and the sonata saved me. It, and the other thirty one, have inhabited me for the rest of my life. It was certainly love at first hearing.
Years later, you will want to know, I fell in love again. Requited.
Many years later a French woman fell unrequitedly in love with me. She was coming out of the baker’s shop as I went in. She heard me ask for a pain au chocolat. “You are English!” she declaimed. She was petite and very round. We talked in English for a few minutes. She loved English. I felt there was something strange about this dumpy little woman. Later I discovered that her mother had German measles while pregnant. She was highly intelligent, a gifted language speaker, and singer. She was middle aged but seemed to have a social age of five. She was uninhibited. She would leave me notes in the windscreen of my car in the university car park. I met her family and they expressed gratitude that I should be with her from time to time. She had a favourite word: “propeller” and later when she moved to be nearer to a brother, she would write and I would reply, careful to include the word propeller in my letters.
Later at her funeral I bought a large wooden propeller in a model shop. I shyly asked the bishop conducting the funeral if I could place it on her coffin. He agreed, and referred to it in his homily as being an aid in her ascent to heaven.
One of my most memorable encounters with a stranger was as a teenager in 1982. My family was in the Athens airport waiting for our delayed flight to Tel Aviv when we met a fellow traveler on her way to visit her son living on a kibbutz. Eighty-year-old Miss Helena graciously shared with us her story of having been a survivor (with other members of her family) of Auschwitz as a Greek Jew because of each of their knowledge of 4 to 5 languages and being put to work as translators by their Nazi jailers. As a novice French student at the time, I was struck by the idea that her multilingualism saved her life - a story I at times have shared with my reluctant language students over my three decades as a French and Spanish teacher. Miss Helena's story also opened me up to a history of which I had previously been ignorant - of the stories of the Nazi occupation of Greece; she also impressed me with her joy and resilience - a deep fire of life which still glowed despite attempts by evil forces to have snuffed it out. May I continue to grow into the wise woman of compassionate grace I encountered in that Athens Airport over four decades ago.
I was flying from Nairobi to Cape Town, via Livingstone in Zambia. The seat next to me was empty between Nairobi and Livingstone but on the stop, a lady ended up taking the seat. Not too long after we'd taken off, the attendants served us lunch and she turned to me and asked, "how's the meal?" Who'd have thought that that simple question would end up extending way into the baggage collection area at the airport in Cape Town.
She was an oncology (cancer) pharmacist, based in Canada and enjoyed travelling (she was on her way back to Canada from a trip in Namibia/Zambia/Zimbabwe). I asked her a lot of questions about her work; what she loved most, what it was like working with patients battling terminal illnesses, why she'd gone into that line of work...and then she said something that has stuck with me ever since when I asked her the hardest part of her work:
“Letting go. When you start treatment with a patient, you never know if you’ll ever see them again, or even on their next appointment. A patient could get better, then leave and you never see them again. And the same with those who don’t, they too, at some point leave. In a different sense, and you never see them again. Those ones are usually the harder ones. But it’s always hard to let go. Certainty is never guaranteed.”
We eventually said our goodbyes at the airport and I wished her the best.
But what she didn't know and what we never spoke about in our 3hr-long conversation was that I had lost my father years ago to cancer. And often visiting him at the hospital, with the chemo tubes and whatever other medicine running into his veins, I'd wonder of the people who worked with him. Not the doctors or the nurses, the others - those like her. Were they kind? Did they treat him well? Was he just another patient to work through in their list? To test whether medication was working or not? Was there "soul" in their work? I'm not sure how to describe it, but meeting the lady (whose name I also don't even know or remember) was like receiving a glimpse into the days he was at the hospital alone, with people like oncology pharmacists doing the best they can do to treat him. The conversation with her felt like a reassurance that in his last few months and in the preceding years of his cancer journey, he wasn't just a number. And that there were people out there (straight up from the doctors, all the way to the pharmacists) extending deep care and kindness to each and every terminally ill patient they worked with; no matter how many medications they were in charge of signing off or administering for the day/wk/month.
I still feel a sense of deep peace, for myself and for my father, everytime I think of that conversation and that lady.
I once flew back in luxury from the US in business class. I sat next to a man from somewhere in the UK, we spoke about lots of somethings, had dinner and wine together (unfortunately no candles), then got ready for bed and said goodnight. We lowered our seats, pulled up our duvets and were face to face. At dawn we shared our morning-selves over coffee. He was married, I was on the way to divorce. Was their attraction? Possibly. But mostly it felt like, up there in the atmosphere, he soothed my divorce-hurt with laughter and stories. It didn’t feel appropriate to share numbers but I do think about him from time to time. He was one of my life’s guardians.
And I came to Southwark the other night Padraig but was too shy to say hello. I enjoyed the talk very much and know a little of Mark Oakley from the R S Thomas Festival in Aberdaron. I also got a scary, dystopian photo of the Shard!
I’m smiling here as I read your post Pádraig, sitting in Dublin Airport waiting on my flight to Glasgow, on my way to join you and others on Iona. In the security lane I had a lovely conversation with a woman - she on her way to the Netherlands - and both of us aghast at the new rule that we must now take off jumpers and sweatshirts to get through security. We both thanked our gods that we had a t shirt on underneath. Then laughed together at our other security ‘complications’, her hip replacement, guaranteeing to set off the alarm, and my pacemaker which meant I can no longer go through the scan thing but must be manually frisked. These brief encounters are the joys of travelling.
This past week, to a show in my city. I knew a few folks performing, but I went alone, so it was a bit lonely. As the tiny crowd waited on the final performance, I made a comment to a stranger about a pretty color she was wearing. The conversation that followed surprised us both - we both used to play piano & would like to again, we're both writers/editors, & we both have written about our abusive religious experiences (poetry & memoir). It was a meaningful connection to make, especially at a low-attendance Thursday night show with a range of musical styles. The moment she shared a piece of her story, something inside went "click - ah *that's* what we were supposed to be here for tonight." 💙 We're getting coffee next week.
Years ago, I was on a packed public bus travelling from Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa. I was alone, and it was my first time in Ethiopia. I spoke no Amharic, and no one on the bus spoke English. When the bus broke down in what felt like the middle of nowhere, we had to find cheap lodgings for the night. I had no idea where I was, what had happened, or how long we’d need to wait for another bus. But I noticed a young woman on the bus was holding an Arabic Quran. I’m proficient in Arabic and gave it a try - curious whether she spoke the language or only read it. She could understand, we were both delighted and amazed, and she took me under her wing. We shared a small room together in a nearby hostel, and travelled back to Addis Ababa on a different bus the next morning. More than two decades later, I still remember Sophie’s smile and wonder how her life unfolded.
A few months ago, I lifted up my 18 month grandson so he could gaze out the window (we both enjoy looking for birds and get excited when one is spotted). There was then a precious moment when, fortuitously, we both turned to look at each other; our eyes met for a long few seconds. This silent interchange was both tender and intense. While difficult to explain, we connected in a deep way.
Just yesterday, while walking with my companion and our four-legged friend, Bowdie, in a wooded area surrounding a pond, we encountered a man with his own four-legged friend. During our brief conversation with the man, we learned that he plunges into the ocean once a week, even through the winter season. "It's refreshing", he said. Then he justified the act by saying that he used to be a deep-sea diver in the Navy. I asked, "What were you looking for in the deep sea?" He replied, "We were salvaging materials and helicopters during Vietnam." It was said with such ease and humility. And all I could think was this man is so brave. This man has seen the abyss.
When I was in my early 20s, I think, my "spiritual" thinking was at a point where I thought that a repressive regime could control someone's coming and going but not their minds, so everyone was free to think anything and could be enlightened if they really wanted to be. (I shudder now at my ignorance half a century ago.) I was on a plane and my seatmate was an army officer. It was during the height of the Vietnam war, not a time when anyone in uniform was generally well-regarded. But we got to talking, and somehow that belief of mine came out. I have never forgotten his clear, strong command. Travel, he said, just travel. I have been ever since, and have thanked him a million times over for that directive. Much of my work is cross-cultural, and oh, I have learned so much.
When I was about 4, riding a train from Milwaukee to Minneapolis with my family, I was carrying the stuffed toy lamb my grandmother had given me at birth. Until then, I had called her Doggy. Strangers on the train asked me her name and I said, “Doggy.” They said, “Why don’t you call her Tilly?” I said, “OK,” and announced to my parents that Doggy was now Tilly. Tilly has comforted me my whole life; though I no longer sleep with her, I still have her. I will always wonder who Tilly was to those strangers on the train and how it comforted them to give me her name.
We had gathered in the basement of the century old church to participate in the Maundy Thursday meal. Just as we began the service, a stranger walked in carrying a young child. He informed us there were four more children and his wife in the van outside. Since all the shelters were filled, he wondered if his family could spend the night in the church. We immediately suspended the service so some could take the family to an upper room where they could bed down for the evening. Others gathered cereal and milk and more blankets. When the family was settled we invited them downstairs to eat. With the children eating bowls of Cherrios, Mom nursing the youngest, and both parents eating day old donuts, it became the most authentic Holy Communion service we ever experienced.
Here in New York City where I’m from, for many years I set up a two chairs and a table in Union Square with a sign that read “creative approaches to what you’ve been thinking about” and then a little sign and a jar that read “pay what you’d like or take what you need.” People paid in money of toothpicks or art. And money left the jar as well. Spoke with thousands of strangers.
This was one of the finest surprises.
In the late afternoon a tall blonde woman came up to the table. She was perhaps in her early 60’s. Quite striking looking and, if I had to guess, had Parkinson’s Disease. Perhaps it was something else but she tremored and had that somewhat palsied face. If you could see her you’d know that she was very, very beautiful when she was younger and not burdened with Parkinson’s or whatever she had.
But I didn’t ask. How can you really?
She came up with a friend who just stood and watched our interaction the whole time.
She introduced her name as R and asked
“How do I keep my brain sharp?”
I asked her if she was worried about her brain function – I wasn’t trying to be ignorant of her likely condition – I was just asking, you never know what an intention might be.
She replied that it was simply something she was concerned about. And that was fair enough. Prying isn’t required.
Starting off we chatted about how we are literate, pattern seeking creatures here in the west. We tend to find ways of doing things well and repeat those sequences. That approach essentially creates grooves in the brain – or neural pathways if you want to be fancy about it.
The brain is quite plastic and so to keep the brain supple and in top shape it is important to break patterns and recruit other parts of the brain to do the jobs at hand.
Here is a laundry list of what came out with her as she sat there – interested and engaged:
Do the things normally done with her right hand with her left.
When walking to common locations to take alternate routes.
Find the key to the front door of your home by touch and then open the door with closed eyes.
See things you don’t normally see – museums, locations, people etc
Get all multiple senses stimulated at the same time.
Smell things and try to guess what they are.
Write the alphabet on your hand with your tongue.
Basically radically break up the schedules and patterns of your life and do fun things that challenge you in lots of ways. She appreciated all this and smiled at the funness and silliness of some of the suggestions.
But I offered one other exercise that we could try in person together.
And she said she was game to try.
We have tremendous processing power in our brains but we often focus it through our language processing parts. But we can actually process quite a lot conversationally through other means. Gibberish conversations can be quite fun but we are going to have a conversation with numbers.
This is an improv game where the two players (though it could be more) have a conversation using sequential numbers instead of words until an agreed upon end number 7, 17, 48, 103 or whatever. So the first person says “1” and the second says “2” and next line from the first person is “3”.
Then the conversation goes on. But the trick is to imbue your number with emotional context, with gesture, with meaning. If done correctly everyone knows exactly what is happening despite the lack of words that convey any meaning. For a brain trying to keep sharp it could be a dream – processing numerous things at the same time, disassociating words from meaning and reapplying them elsewhere, working outside the lingual network.
After describing the game and saying that we were going to have a conversation to 20 she planted into her seat.
I stood up from my chair and took a good look at her.
She had suddenly gone from relaxed to a little demure. Her legs tightened together and she looked over her left shoulder with the faintest hint of coyness. From that I took my cue.
I reached out my right hand onto her thin black shearling coat and leaned into her with a Lotharic, slightly pleading…
One.
She adjusted herself and looked right at me with a playfully prudish…
Two
Slightly rebuffed, I backed off but upped the desiring intensity trying a new tact, a new rationale…
Three
She quickly retorted, cutting me off but still leaving the door open by smiling and showing how she liked the pursuit…
Four
That open door was all I needed and I softened, sweetened and moved my arm around her and spoke a gentle
Five
While pianoing her arm down to the inside of her wrist.
R got bashful but turned the corner and started to be convinced by my longing feeling into our moment.
Six
My pleading was now teasing and promising all sorts of things as I hushed.
Seven
R smiled and said
I don’t think that we need to go all the way to 20.
Hot!
We both laughed and R’s companion smiled broadly.
It was brilliant and fun. We both knew who we were, what was happening and we were shockingly in the present with each other. There we were – young lovers on a porch late at night trying to come up with reasons to stay up and fool around and the girl happy to be convinced and not trying very hard to ignore the affections of her young lover.
R thanked me for every thing and R’s companion said “Very good Matthew. Very good indeed.”
She put money into my jar and took a card as did her companion.
But there was one more thing.
As R stood up she looked at me with the beginnings of tears in her eyes. Moved, she spoke,
“I have not been looked at like you just looked at me for years. To be wanted like that and hungered for. Pursued! Suddenly I feel really so very beautiful. I didn’t even know how much I missed it or wanted it. But now that I have it it’s even more than beautiful, I feel light and tingly and very much myself!”
And she placed both her hands on my cheeks and slowly kissed me. It was lip to lip, mouth to mouth. There was no danger of turning into a full makeout session but our lips touched fully enough so that that beautiful slight spread happens so that you sense the space and wetness behind.
I have been lucky to have had many kisses in my life but this one ranks way up there for authenticity and suprise. I was touched by it and by R very very much.
R’s companion was walking by the opposite direction perhaps an hour later or so and we chatted more. He stayed and watched another interaction I had and we have been chatting since. Ends up that he is a psychotherapist and he appreciated my method.
Often at the table we can find things we didn’t even know we were looking for that might even be more important than the thing that brought you to the table in the first place.
Freud said that it is the repressed erotic spirit in humankind that allows us to create civilization…but there is a price to pay for that.
Hopefully R became a bit uncivilized.
Maybe we all need just that.
Blessings to the strange and the strangers from me, Matthew Stillman
I sat next to this old man in a public bus in the city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. While we didn't speak to each other, I kept listening to what he said to himself and how he sang along with the music that played. And he inspired me to write a poem about him!
https://open.substack.com/pub/elfiecreative12/p/a-dance?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2qe6qv