Mondays with Margie

"Teach me to meditate," she proposed. And so I went up to her apartment and we meditated today, after studying and talking about her new photographs, which are powerful and very particular to her life, but which she still isn't ready to show anyone but me and her children. 

After about half an hour of instruction, I proposed we sit for five minutes, and then I asked her what she observed.

"I saw that I have a habit of being very judgmental about anything I do," she laughed. 

"And can you let that be OK?" I asked.

"No, I'm going to have judgments about having judgments!" Oh wise Margie. Others have meditated for years before seeing this. 

She concluded that she likes meditating. "I like to climb down out of my head into my body," she concluded, so she will continue. We'll have another session next week. I took her a book by Sylvia Boorstein, who grew up in Brooklyn and is ten years younger than Margie. She just texted me, "I am loving the book you left. Can't put it down." 

We went for our usual coffee after meditation, and after we parted, I came upon a remarkable violinist, out busking. He played quite superbly a piece by Bach (I could have named it ten years ago, but the title escapes me now). I was truly stunned by the beauty and skill of his work, left him a dollar and a bow of gratitude. What a gift he was offering freely to anyone who happened by! What a joy it is to live in a city with people as remarkable as Margie and this violinist whose name I don't even know. I am one of the luckiest people on earth.