NONDUALITY: WHITMAN, RUMI, AND THE TWO GIRLS DOING COKE IN THE WASHROOM

I was sitting in a nice enough place with the group of people. The main road was there and outside the window. How the lights reflect off other things and seem to live a life of their own. Life at night. Lights at night. There were plastic parts and metal parts, signs, bus shelters, headlights, long parapets with flowers sitting smartly and the hues seemed to vibrate somehow in and amidst the air. 

In front of it all, inside the window, was a large security person, a security guard. It’s obviously his afterhours job to stand there and show his presence, to deter trouble. I had forgotten that in that particular place, from 9:00 onwards, they hire one security guard. He used to stand at the back as I remember it, - where the eatery let out to a patio and the patio out to a series of parking lots and trees. I guess that is where trouble sometimes tried to erupt or ensue. But it was a coldish night, and nobody was out there, - so they stationed him or he stationed himself at the front.

The table was full of patrons talking, and two women walk in but don’t look around. They are furtive, and something about their body language and quick semi-secretive moments denotes they are up to something. The washroom is in front of our high table. They duck in. One of our women needs to go, so goes in also.

In the meantime I look out the window and the chatter becomes background noise. Whitman and Rumi, I think, are alike and not alike. If Whitman, as he says, wants to take you up to a hill and gently put his arm on your hip in brotherhood and point out to the area, to show you its beauty, its vastness, well then Rumi is not exactly like that. Whereas Whitman would be what regular people would think is beauty, is nature, is extolling God and Nature’s virtues as it were, Rumi is more like a living fire. He would be somehow the hill, the air, the water in the river. Where the bearded Gemini would announce and pronounce the miracle of the land and its people, the other would claim that he is all of it, that the viewer is all of it…

There are people down at the bus stop. It’s faraway but you can see the lights of their phones throwing themselves out to the air. We are far away from mountains, hillsides, poets and sages anyhow. There is a cable centre, a few industrial buildings behind. A guy in a plaid shirt and a woman pass out the door to smoke. His plaid shirt is not for show or comfort like most, - but he is wearing it because he is actually a blue collar person. At twenty five, he has a good edge that he would not identify as such, and it’s one that others don’t have. The woman faces the traffic. She is anonymous. 

The security man is bored. He has seen everything before. He tries to sneak looks of the football game on the big screen but does it so casually as to be seamless. I look at the candle in a small mason jar and fall out to the objects on the table. Stone cold sober, I am drinking coffee. There is a moment of pure being. Everything is everything, - one movement yet still, or erupting from stillness. No, - even the moving, against reason, is still. Our lady comes back and whispers to the other lady. It’s about the girls in the washroom. They were in a stall together and doing things like substances perhaps. They were in there a full fifteen minutes, maybe more. We forget about them, talk on something else, - then they burst out and head to the large bar, disappearing with other patrons.

What would Rumi do on Young Street?, I wonder then, …one of the longest streets in the world…full of things, but with nothing much underneath them…promissory notes unfulfilled. Well, as the light pollution blocks out the stars, we can stare at the other lights. We can laud the Laundromat. Why not? 

The door behind security opens once more. The wind comes in. It’s brisk, autumnal, and agile. Some napkins are thrown about and people scramble to grab them the way people do.

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