I sense that my new “purpose” has already been invoked, and involves extraordinary encounters with, usually, old friends, but not always. Each encounter blows my mind and heart wide open, our brief, stunning communion a resonating creative act that radiates when one singularly conscious being enters into a sudden, unexpected frisson with another being, who, perhaps opened by the occasion, is equally singular, equally conscious.

It’s not as if each of us goes around the world looking for these stunning, brief, magical openings. Though I do, apparently. In fact, these encounters do seem to point to the “purpose” have been seeking as December 2025 shades into January 2026.

I offer three examples here, with each person under a pseudonym.

 

DENNIS

Dennis and I have known each other since we were five years old, in first grade. Grew up in the same small town. Now 83 years old, the two of us have kept in somewhat remote touch ever since.

Always extremely creative, I’ve also assumed that Dennis has been, all his life, a closeted gay man. As an adult, he lived mostly in New York City, where he was sought after as a set designer for off-Broadway plays. Now retired, he’s out on Long Island. His brother (whom I have not spoken to ever as an adult!) called me out of the blue two months ago, to say that I need to get in touch with Dennis NOW, and stay in touch with him. That it’s very important.

So I did (Dennis has been the one to call me, every few months, until now). I discovered that he now resides in some kind of a fancy care home (the family is wealthy), and cannot leave. In other words, he’s basically a prisoner. This final? saga in his long life began nine months ago, when he was taken in a police car to a hospital, due to, I sense, his failing ability to negotiate 3D reality. (Long story; makes sense, unfortunately.)

Now that he has his own, really nice, big room, furnished by his nephew, I recently urged him to get a journal and start writing down his thoughts as they come to him. He didn’t really seem to jive with this idea; and yet, the next time I called, he had gotten a notebook and written a song! “What’s it called?” I ask.

“Love Is Hard.”

With my encouragement, he then read me the syncopated lyrics, apologizing that he could no longer use his voice to actually sing. The song included the phrase, “I wish to share the same towel with you.”

I told him I loved that phrase. He said he did too, that it just pulsed out of him.

Out of the closet. Suddenly, and subtly,  the pulsing presence within his being rearranging his psyche, his soul, his world.

 

SHARON

Sharon is a neighbor (on another block) with whom I have been acquainted for many years; have not seen her at all lately. Ran into her yesterday in the parking lot at Aldi. It turned out that our cars were parked right next to each other. Hers is brand new, blood red.

Somehow, we were instantly galvanized into talking. I asked her how old she is; “85, going on 86!”

Me: “Damn. You’re older than I am!”

That got her going. Just that. The damned up river within her cascaded into full expression.

“I live alone, for the first time in my life,” she says, excitedly. Three months ago, my husband of 60 years was moved into an old folks’ home.” At this I expressed sympathy, thinking she had been taking care of him since he began to lose his memory. But no!

This man had abused her physically/emotionally/mentally for their entire marriage. He would jump on her, push her backwards over a table, trip her, pin her down, pummel her, on and on. Continuous, inexplicable abuse. She of course, was terrified of him, while trying to keep up the pretense of normalcy. (I for one, had absolutely no idea this had been her situation.)

She tells me, smiling wryly, that he had “pinned her down” to conceive their six children as well, all now in their 60s.

So, she told me, excitedly, and I paraphrase: “I’m alone now, for the first time; feeling freedom. But I can’t take care of this house anymore. My two daughters up north [in a town near Indy] have invited me to come there, and live with one of them. So as soon as the divorce is finalized (which won’t be long now), we’re selling this house and I’m moving.”

Sharon is extraordinarily excited, and says she has not felt so good physically in many many years. Plus, “I’ve lost 50 pounds!” (Aha! I wondered why I was having trouble placing her . . .)

We spoke, basically with me listening, entranced, drawing her newly ignited love of life out of her, for probably 20 minutes, right there in the Aldi parking lot.

Finally, after I said I really had to go now, she laughed goodbye, climbed into her gleaming new car, and drove off.

Whew. That encounter left me dizzy with joy.

 

RANDALL

Sharon was yesterday. The Randall encounter occurred only a few hours later.

Also a classmate of mine (from 9th grade through high school), and a former husband (briefly married in our early 30s, loved each other even in our parting), Randall and his wife had sent me a Christmas card with two photos in it: one of the two of them looking very much like an elder couple where the husband treasures the wife, and another one, very sweet,  from the deep past, when the two of us were married and our kids very young. My two kids are about 8 and 10, his son is about 6.

I had been meaning to call him for weeks, ever since I received the surprising photos in the mail.

Apparently last night was the night I was meant to call. Because we spoke for probably 90 minutes, going back and forth, each of us divulging to another (rare, on each of our parts) the abstract, etheric, energetic, philosophical musings that we find ourselves engaging in at the advanced age of 83! He spoke in a halting manner, searching, searching, for the right words to convey his sense of what I would call the mysterious invisible energy that surrounds and interpenetrates 3D reality.  It’s easier for me to talk; I haven’t been silent, like he’s been, basically. It was as if he was learning to speak all over again, searching, searching, for the appropriate language to convey the inexpressible, the inexplicable, yet nevertheless there, here, everywhere . . .

I’ve been writing. He hasn’t been. That’s likely the biggest difference.

I urged him to get a journal, and start to write down his thoughts, no matter how seemingly crazy or scattered. Because he knows they aren’t really crazy, they’re just beyond and above, and within, and underneath the frame that constricts us into 3D.

As we wound down, I mentioned my own work with paradox, the space between any two poles, for example, individual and community. I told him about the talk I gave about the pulsing presence that instantly ignited the room so that everyone there was pulsed into full individual expression with all the others intently listening, as we passed the microphone from one to another.

Well, the very mention of the phrase “pulsing presence” threw him into ecstatic joy. I was experimenting, on a psychological, sociological level, with the very same, extremely creative energy, that he was sensing, and attempting to articulate, by trying to use the language of quantum physics (which he says he doesn’t understand at all).