To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
The restaurant smells like toasted sourdough, garlic oil, and espresso. Outside the windows, San Francisco bustles with activity while inside, forks click against plates, chairs scrape, and a server calls out an order for the lunch rush.
Julia Ravenwood sits with her back to the wall, lost in thought, watching reflections slide across the window glass. She’s a tall woman with cropped black hair and muscles toned from time in the gym. Her face has a strong jawline and cheekbones, but her eyes are soft and lustrous, giving her an androgynous look. Across the table sits her wife, Emily, a blonde whose lithe figure speaks of her devotion to yoga. Emily’s soft features are highlighted by tasteful makeup.
This restaurant is their favorite hole-in-the-wall eatery, conveniently close to the IT firm where they both work.
Emily leans forward. “So,” she says with a smile, circling back to the previous night’s discussion, a theme they’ve rehashed for years, “what did you think of the reading this week?”
Julia sips her coffee. “It was good. Pema Chödrön is a mental warrior, and like I’ve said, on one level I do get it. Mindfulness is attention training, a sort of cognitive hygiene. But the way our culture and your classmates talk about it, like it’s some gateway drug to enlightenment, drives me nuts.”
Emily chuckles. “You’ve always been allergic to overclaim.”
“I’m allergic to claims that can’t survive daylight,” Julia says. “Buddhism talks about impermanence, which I respect. Christianity talks about love, which I respect. Hinduism talks about the divine in everything, which I respect. Then each of them turns around and insists that their map gives the best directions for how to live our lives.”
Emily tilts her head. “Maps can still be useful.”
“Until people start idolizing the map,” Julia says. “Most world religions solve a problem they defined to begin with. The problem of sin, the problem of ignorance, the problem of suffering. But for me, the solutions don’t generalize to the billions of people on our planet. They don’t account for the diversity of human experience. They don’t account for me.”
Emily sips her water as the ice clinks. She has learned to slow play their discussions, never rushing to debate. “What about secular philosophies? We haven’t talked about that for a while. Do any of them still hold your attention?”
Julia smiles despite herself. She loves the repartee. She loves having a partner that will deep dive beyond chitchat. “Stoicism is good for getting through the day but not for explaining why the day matters. Existentialism is honest about the void, which I appreciate, but it treats meaning like a do-it-yourself kit with missing parts. Humanism is lovely, but it assumes our species will be more noble given enough time and good intentions. Really? Just read any fucking news stream and you can see that isn’t true.”
The server drops off their sandwiches. The smell of melted cheese and tomato arises, laced with oregano. Emily waits, letting them both begin eating before responding. That’s one of the things Julia loves most about her. The space she creates, the way she doesn’t try to win conversations.
“I know I’ve invited you to my classes too many times,” Emily finally says. “I get so much from them, and I think you could also. I just want to share the experience with you.”
“I hear you,” Julia says quickly with a hint of exasperation. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d stop asking. I don’t think you’re wrong. That’s your path. I just refuse to perform openness. I don’t want to fake wonder that I’m not feeling.”
Emily nods. “Fair enough. This will be the last time.” She says it in a neutral tone, devoid of disappointment. She’s never been one to gaslight her wife.
They continue eating while the restaurant’s piped-in music features a saxophone bending notes like light through water. Emily watches a couple at the next table lean toward each other, their heads almost touching, and she feels a familiar ache, her mind roaming over the travels she and Julia have shared. Many of those trips were an intentional survey of what others call “thin places.” Julia was searching, as always, and Emily was glad to accompany her.
“I was thinking about Iona yesterday,” Emily says.
Julia’s mouth tightens, then softens. “I remember the wind. The way it smelled of salt and wet stone. And the abbey ruins were beautiful, like the bones of belief. Someone else’s belief.”
Emily nods.
“And nothing happened,” Julia adds, playing her part in the script. “No voice. No burning bush. No sense of being seen by something other than ourselves.”
Emily continues the litany. “Machu Picchu?”
“Stunning,” Julia says. “Green like it had been invented that morning. Llamas chewing like mute philosophers. And those sacred mountains rising against that blue sky! Maravillosa! I kept waiting for my awe to turn into revelation.”
“Ghost Ranch?”
Julia laughs, syncing with the rhythm of their game. “Red earth and wide sky. Georgia O’Keeffe certainly knew how to capture and frame that landscape. I wanted…” She stops, surprised by the sudden nakedness of her emotion. “I hoped something would break through. That I’d feel… addressed.”
Emily reaches across the table and squeezes Julia’s hand. Her palm is warm, familiar, and grounding. “I’ve loved every mile of our travels. Even if they speak to us in different ways.”
Julia looks away. “I can’t help it if I want something more tangible, some kind of contact. Would you want me to change to meet your expectations? I guess I could join your classes if it really means that much to you.”
Emily’s smile is gentle and teasing. “Nope. I love you just as you are, my Iconoclast. And you keep me on my toes. That’s for sure.”
Julia snorts. The Iconoclast nickname has stuck. Even some of their coworkers have begun to use it to address Julia. “I don’t smash icons for fun,” she says. “I just don’t bow to them.”
Emily’s eyes are soft. “I know. It’s just that I see how you get a bit melancholy about all of it. The empath in me can’t help it, especially with those I love.”
Julia looks down at their joined hands. “I really don’t want to be closed. I just don’t want to lie to myself or anyone else.”
Emily squeezes once more, abruptly changing the subject. “We can be open tonight.”
“With a head count?”
“Bearing witness,” Emily says. “Point-in-time counts of those experiencing homelessness really does matter. It can turn their invisibility into the funding that St. Vincent de Paul needs to continue their work.”
Julia nods and shakes off her cynicism. She also believes this, deeply, and has enjoyed volunteering with Emily at the shelter. Outside, a siren rises and falls. “So, the Tenderloin?”
Emily’s mouth curves into a determined line. “The Tenderloin.”
They pay their bill and step back into the city, where the afternoon light of a summer day seems brittle. A bus passes in a whoosh of turbulent air as they begin their two-block return to work. Striding next to Emily, Julia feels a familiar mix of affection and ache for her partner, the longing that comes from loving someone who has a quality you desire for yourself. Her mind roams over the supposed thin places they discussed at lunch. As often happens, she feels a quiet, stubborn hope that she pretends not to have.
___
The sun sets behind the buildings like a coin slipping into a pocket. The Tenderloin smells of asphalt and old beer, of urine and frying onions from a corner food cart, of damp cardboard and sweat. Julia walks with Emily and a small group of volunteers. They are holding clipboards and wearing reflective vests that catch the day’s last light.
The streets are busy, voices drifting from doors and alleys. Julia hears laughter, sudden and bright, then an argument that burns out in mid-sentence. Another person’s cough goes on for too long. From the open window of a building, the thumping bass of a rap song echoes over the street.
The group turns into an alley. It’s narrower than Julia expects, the walls close enough to touch with one’s hands and feet if you were to stretch out on the pavement. There’s cardboard flattened in various places along with dirty blankets. A shopping cart stands sentinel, filled with plastic bags that rustle in the breeze, as if they’re whispering to themselves. About a dozen people are there, some loitering, some already bedding down.
A young Black woman sits on a tarp, her back against the building. She wears a knit cap pulled low, her jacket too thin for a San Francisco summer night, when the legendary fog will likely creep into the city. Her eyes are bright and alert, not guarded like many of the others the volunteers have encountered. She looks at Julia as if she’s been waiting.
“Join me, sister,” she says, patting the tarp beside her.
Emily’s hand tightens on Julia’s arm. “We shouldn’t—”
“It’s okay,” Julia says, surprised by her certainty. She hands her clipboard to Emily, then settles next to the woman. She can feel the cold pavement seeping through the tarp into her pants. The woman smiles at her, and up close, Julia can see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. Her gaze is steady, one of those people who seems to occupy her body fully.
“My name’s Mariah,” she says.
“Good to meet you. I’m Julia.”
“Look up,” Mariah says, nodding toward the slice of sky above them.
Julia turns her gaze skyward. Stars have begun to prick through the twilight, resisting the city’s glare. A plane passes, its lights blinking, a mechanical constellation cutting across the dark.
“Do you see it?” Mariah asks softly.
Julia’s chest suddenly tightens. Something speaks to her. It’s not a voice, nor a vision, nor an answer to a question, but a simple and powerful widening. The sounds of the city fall back, as do the smells of the alleyway. Time seems to loosen its grip as the present thickens into a presence both luminous and intimate.
Julia feels it like a warmth spreading through her ribs, like a recognition without an object. She knows intuitively that this is not about proof, but simply the fact of being here, with this woman, under these stars, in this narrow place that opens unexpectedly into a depth she has always longed for.
Tears come, uninvited. Then Julia laughs, breathless, the sound startling in the quiet.
“Yes,” says Mariah. “I see it also.”
Emily crouches nearby, her worry easing into wonder. The other volunteers instinctively give them space. Mariah begins to hum a low tune without words.
They sit for moments that Julia can’t measure because time has lost its edges. Then she becomes aware again, gradually, of smaller things: the chill creeping up from the concrete, the faint ache in her knees, the smell of old rain trapped in the brick behind her. A breeze moves through the alley, lifting a scrap of paper that skitters and settles. None of it breaks the spell. It just folds into it.
She thinks, fleetingly, of all the arguments she has honed over the years. How she has dismantled certainties piece by piece, proud of the clarity she felt she possessed. But in this instant, she realizes that her clarity was never the same as fullness.
Later, Emily will say nothing profound about Julia’s experience. She will not try to name it or wrap it in language that shrinks it. Instead, she will say, “I could see it on your face,” and that will be enough. For now, she waits, honoring the stillness the way she has learned to do, by not interrupting.
Mariah stops humming. The silence that follows isn’t empty. It hums of its own, a low resonance that seems to come from the walls, the sky, even Julia’s own chest. Julia thinks of the word communion and, for once, she doesn’t feel the need to bracket it with disclaimers.
“You never know when it will happen,” Mariah whispers, as if she’s talking about the weather.
Julia nods, unable to speak. When she finally stands, it’s as if her axis has shifted. The grimy, cramped alleyway looks the same, but it no longer feels accidental. It feels chosen, as if this place, of all places, has been quietly waiting to be seen without judgment.
“Thank you, Mariah,” she says.
Mariah smiles. “Come sit with me again, sister.”
Julia and Emily join the other volunteers and they walk on. The count continues with quiet questions and small kindnesses. The city exhales into night, its neon and shadow interweaving. Julia listens to footsteps, to distant traffic, to her own breath, and realizes her search has shifted. The thin place was never somewhere she needed to arrive. It was something that happened when she stopped standing apart.
And now she carries that alleyway with her, as well as the soulful eyes of Mariah. Not as some kind of proof, but as an ongoing invitation.
Krin Van Tatenhove - Words & Images 