equinox

We passed the day of equinox and somehow I missed marking it. Now the night is longer than the day, and our mornings hold a warm, quiet, late sunrise. Evenings, though I try to hold them, slip quickly away. We walk around the fountains in early dusk, we ready to hibernate.

I remember what I can and cannot keep.

***

I was talking to a friend about longing and hunger and grace. That something in us that attempts to take what we think we need, arrange our lives to dull the quiet ache of a heaviness that it was proved we could not carry, could never carry or fix.

Try to hold life and life. Try to make sense, and grieve what ends and give thanks always. Learn to receive what is new.

***

Even now, I think of the place far away, the place that I could not hold. The smell of incense as I walked home through the alleys in Tollygunge. Home from buying a coke at the corner store.

I walked by and saw the semi-circle of women sitting in the warm night air in their beautiful saris, singing. In the temple there, they sat most nights singing bhaktis with the accompaniment of a drum and the small finger cymbals. I looked in briefly and nodded to them, my neighbors. I watched a cat steal away into the maidan. I heard the running water of pans being washed in the narrow space outside Maya’s house, the single lightbulb shining, the voice of Momta talking to her little brother. The television flashed a bright Bollywood movie and mingled its songs with the singing of the women.

A Thursday night, community worship night. These times were some of my favorite. The singing together, sharing the word, a meal for hearts heavy and hungry. Bread of life. Dusk fell early there too, but the cold did not come. We sat on the rooftop smoking and talking. Memory and longing and hunger, joy and sorrow. A different equinox, a long time ago in another life.

I remember what I can and cannot keep.