We walk into the business expo just as things are getting into full swing.

“Don’t worry, it will be a small, laid-back affair”, he had said to reassure me that I didn’t need to change out of the jeans and cardigan I was wearing.

Sigh.

The place is filled to the brim with bug-eyed, inhumanly cheery business types; tan, blazing white smiles, and pinstriped. No, my jeans aren’t at all out of place. I take a deep breath, slap on my name tag, and dive in.

“I’m kind of glad I didn’t wear a suit”, he says, “I won’t get hit on as much”.

Internally I groan at his “ever-awareness” of the mating game. Oh, I see it too, in their eyes, contacting mine, smiling, inviting, selling. But I don’t want what’s for sale here in this bannered and boarded mosh pit of networking. I don’t want to be seduced by the mundane and predictable. I don’t want to be bought or sold, or talked at and looked through. I don’t want their wares.

I want something raw and wholly human. It is a craving familiar and haunting, and I feel the heat begin to build starting at my feet. I want to be gifted a window into their souls. To see their bones and the secrets etched upon them. To taste them…the salt of their tears, the tang of their sweat, the elements in their blood. I want to strip them of their pinstripes and million dollar smiles. What will they be then?

I move past and through them, feeling the clamboring, the need for success, the want of happiness, to fit, belong, make it, “arrive”. This man, with his white clicking teeth and gold bands curling around his earlobe…this man feels powerful. He is winning a game. Yet he wins nothing but illusions.

This boy, round-faced and shining like a polished stone. I could dare him with my eyes to become what he longs to be. Challenge him to burn bright and hot, to smolder and churn and heave, to flex and break. I could stand near enough to let a spark from the fire in my bones ignite him. I could flare and stomp through them, reduce the whole affair to ashes.

But I don’t. I move gently, giving and receiving grace.

(Note on the painting: Found at http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/ and seems to be the father of the blogger. No information on painting titles or where to buy was found.)

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