conjectures of a guilty bystander

   

.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. 

It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… 

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

—Thomas Merton
excerpts 

.

I am not to speak to you, 

I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone, 

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, 

I am to see that I do not lose you.

—Walt Whitman

To A Stranger

.