We take our seats at a white-clothed table in an empty Chinese restaurant. It’s Christmas Eve. Sunny, mid-seventies, and here we are reading down the menu – indecipherable characters in an empty restaurant. Not the Christmas spirit of imagination. But, not that many places were open, and it was ok. The quiet. A simple cup of tea I could take refuge in. And refuge was really what I wanted.

“I want.”

The beginning of a petition. People ask things of water. A penny for luck. Good fortune, blessing. That’s not what I wanted, though.

A dialogue had started.

I come here for another time, another place. What draws me here pushed me forward. My presence was the question, in a way.

Great changes sometimes happen – a death, a broken relationship, any sudden loss – that shock us, create an opening into profounder perspective than we can access in ordinary life. That’s what I felt on November 9, 2016, the day after the general election two cycles back: total betrayal.

I was up early, had to be in the car by 7:15 to head out for an appointment. Not anticipating how profoundly reality could change in 24 hours, I had scheduled a doctor’s exam first thing the day after the 2024 General Election. Exams always engender a feeling of vulnerability, and I was already half out of my senses from the fatigue of the day before – 16 hours pollworking – one of thousands needed in my city alone to carry out this democratic rite.

Full moon tonight. 8:02PM moonrise. We can be that specific. 65 degrees, clear with 3% skycover.

Drawn as I am to these spectacles, I imagine completed daily obligations, taking my station out front to watch the crowning over rooflines, waiting to get a full glimpse as she imperceptibly, nonetheless steadily moves above tree branches.

On my porch, St. Arnold and I toast each other in a fall ceremonial.

I’m not the only one. He’s clinking steins with all the others who plunked him into their shopping baskets this week. But we share a moment so I’m not really here drinking alone. Although I might prefer it, these weekend evenings on the stoop, light growing soft, and I could sit here till moonlight, the palette-shift from warm to cools.