Spring Wedding Moon
One of the curious facts of traveling. We see thousands of people on the street, in subways, buses, on bikes, shopping, eating. On our most recent trip almost all of these people live in Asia. They are human lives, stories of a journey from birth to death, yet they are being lived very far away from our home and invisible to those of us who live on Shadow Mountain. Of course, the same thing, the invisibility of most of the lives we see, is true of a visit to Denver, but all those folks are within a short driving distance.
My point is that these lives, especially in the Asian instance, are going on right now. Eddie, the site duty agent at Nirvana. Ms. Jang, a desk clerk at the Grand Hyatt in Incheon. The proprietor of the Indian restaurant in Songtan who spoke Korean. The friendly hostess at the Miyabi restaurant in the Raffles Town Club. Kumar, the affable Punjabi who served us at breakfast in the same place. Kiri in the Dining Room. Hameed, the cab driver. These folks were visible to us for a bit longer than a casual sighting on the subway, yet their lives too go on, as real and tangible to them as ours is to ourselves and yet we will never encounter each other again.
And then, of course, there are all those people whom we did not see, whose lives also move through weddings and funerals, sickness and health, wealth and poverty. So many lives. And all concurrent. Somehow this strikes me as odd. Or, at least, amazing.
This is a brief wave, an invisible wave, to each of those lives. Hey, we saw you or could have. We, too, live. Just like you. On this planet. Now.
