Thank you to my loyal fans who have stopped in and visited during this time of transition. I love my new place! Possibilities stretch out before me. I think they are always there, it’s just that we need to let go sometimes and embrace the unknown to find them.

I have three or four brand new Imagine Weblog posts I am tweaking for release, along with a huge amount of music and video for my website, but let me start with the following. I want to relate to you an experience I just had, in the past 48 hours.

Two days ago, a woman approached me on a city sidewalk and asked me for spare change. Then she pointed down the street, apparently to her favorite restaurant, “Can you take me in there and buy me some chicken?” she asked. She was old, and very skinny. I took the money from my pocket. I had a one and a five. I gave her the one. “Can I have a little more to buy some food?” she asked. “I’m hungry.”

“It’s Christmas,” she added.

I smiled as if I knew about such things. I stated that if I gave her the five I wouldn’t eat that night myself. That wasn’t really true, although it was all the cash I had. I gave her the dollar. She thanked me and we parted ways.

Somehow the experience settled in, and in thinking about it that night I began to suffer. I’ve been approached by street people many times before: drunks, homeless people, and though I’ve been affected by some of them, most I don’t even remember. This woman was different for some reason, maybe because she really was hungry. I kept thinking about her. I hated that I hadn’t given her the rest of my money. I hated that she was hungry, and that life had been difficult for her. It caused me pain. I suffered.

Wednesday came and went. A lot happened, and then it was over.

This morning I went to my music academy where i teach gifted special needs students how to play music (actually, I don’t really teach them that, they understand it intrinsically; we work on original compositions and play music together), and although I needed to go back later, I came home, got directions to that street again, and drove to the same place hoping to find her. The short drive was tinged with a kind of aching sadness- a sense that I might never see her again, and that my failure would be something I would have to live with.

I found the street and parked. Two minutes later, before I could get out of my car, she walked by. Or was it her? I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like her. She had passed me, so I got out of my car quickly and walked up to her. Once I saw her face and heard her voice, I felt myself relax.

It was her.

I asked her, what was her real name?, how was she?, had she been eating?, did she have a place to sleep?, an apartment even? Her name was Myrna, and all that stuff seemed okay. She has a place, but they use her check to pay the rent. I took Myrna to her favorite place (they recognized her right away), and bought her a meal.

She wouldn’t sit down to eat it, just took her chicken and her soda bottle and walked with me back towards my car. “Thank you,” she said. “I love you.” She didn’t have to say those things. I was happy just to see her enjoy her food.

Afterwards, I gave thanks for the opportunity. I don’t really know why this happened, or why it affected me so much. I have given people money before, or passed them without giving them a thing, and never had an experience like this. I wasn’t lying that first day when I told Myrna that I didn’t have much money at all, and I don’t think not giving her my last five dollars made me a bad person. At the same time, despite my current bank statement, I am well fed and warm in my new apartment as I write this. I could have given it up. Maybe I couldn’t have known on my first meeting with this lady how much her sincerity would affect me. Maybe I was meant to walk away, feel the pain and then come back and resolve it. Maybe that made the experience more potent and long lasting. I’m grateful I got a second chance.

Tristan L. Sullivan