Moods

I was in a rush today and made spaghetti for dinner. The spaghetti was almost cooked when I tried to open the jar of marinara sauce. I could not open it. Nor could I open the two other jars in the cabinet. I ran them under water, I used a cloth between my hand and the lid, I pressed down. I almost cried. I tried so hard that I hurt my wrists.

My mother told me to turn a jar upside down and hit it a few times in order to loosen the pressure on the seal. Presto. My mood lifted. Thank you, Mom.

Last night I took pictures of a group of Portuguese-speaking folk who were traveling on the subway, at their request. This was happy.

I took the elevator down from the tenth floor of an apartment building. The man riding down with me told me that I had a beautiful smile. He seems to think smiles are few between people in New York. We understood each other - it turns out he is from Virginia, and I am Baltimorean. I told him I would do my best to keep smiling.

Silence is such a wonderful thing. To walk into a room, and have silence. A particular kind of silence, not apartment silence, but prayer space silence, God space silence, silence aided by the barely perceptible whoosh of an air conditioner, or a waterfall. Silence that remains and answers when you sing. Silence that embraces. Silence that you do not want to leave.

I recognized the man on the S shuttle who sings about Jesus. I told him I wasn't going to give him money today, and he respected that.

My doorman told me we could marry in five years, he's studying to be a priest, but the type of priest that can get married.

The next time I was in the lobby, he picked a flower out of my hair. It was only there because he saw it. Or maybe it had been there for a long while, waiting to be noticed.