It is an expected form of greeting, a ritual pause when entering a temple, a shop, hotel reception desk, or place of business, such as a weaver’s cottage or a place where indigo dyes are made by hand. I enter your space, I say hello. We begin to consider each other.

But where I felt I the Namaste most was in the street, among passers by, touts, and people just hanging out in doorways, chai shops, among market stalls. Without fail, every time I namaste’d someone the response was instinctual, immediate. Their hands were moving, their heads bowing before their brains knew what they were doing. And always the smile, a gentle “ah, you know what this means” nod of appreciation. Something relaxes between us, even if we are shy with each other.

The god in me greets the god in you. Quite a statement.

In Varanasi, we met a young man who agreed to be our guide for a walk up the street, no easy task in narrow passageways thousands of years old, dark, grimy places without signs, filled with thousands of pilgrims who had come to bathe in the Ganges and honor Lord Shiva on the last day of a month-long festival, the Maha Shivarastri. Pandemonium with cows. And goats. The occasional monkey. We offered him payment and he demurred, putting his hands together and bowing low before us.

“What does that mean?” I asked him. He laughed up at me, his dark eyes bright, still bowing.

“I am asking for your blessing, Auntie.”

Auntie is a term of affectionate respect for an older woman. I placed my hands on his head and thanked him silently for being such a lovely young man. Kind of a Namaste squared. My heart felt warm. And lighter.

These encounters remain vivid. Namaste awakens a humility and gratitude, an acceptance of the human condition. We see each other and greet each other from our souls. Not a bad way to move through the world.

We’re not talking mass-produced items, rather pottery—bowls that were shaped by hands, baked, glazed, baked again. I fall in love with glazes, with bowls that are approximately the size of two cupped hands. These bowls are intimate, quirky. We have conversations over breakfast, for it is usually breakfast when I use them. This morning I looked in the cupboard and found no one I wanted to talk to, so I had toast instead of yogurt and/or cereal, with blueberries. Blueberries don’t stay on toast.

A museum in Portland, Oregon is hosting an exhibit: “Object Focus: The Bowl.” With objects ranging from Tibetan singing bowls to a chrome ice bucket. I read about it in the Styles section of the NYT. There’s a photo of a ceramic baking bowl that I find riveting. It’s plain, grayish white, with a blue strip just under the rim. A well-used domestic bowl. The article goes on about how bowls are “supporting players in the narrative of other objects.” What’s that supposed to mean? A bowl is NOT “something defined largely by the void at its center…” A bowl is NOT about “the poetry of banality.” Please. Don’t make me go to Portland and smack you.

A bowl contains. When it is empty, the bowl speaks to us of possibility, of nourishment and connection. When I eat from a hand-made bowl, I hold it in my hand; I regard the food and engage in what is for me an aesthetic experience. The bowl soothes and calms my mind. IT MAKES ME HAPPY.

Looks like I’m going on a search this weekend. A bowl in the hand being devoutly wished.

This feeling rises,
balloonlike, elephantine
intensity,
rockets taking off in my chest.

So I tamp it down,
convince it to be smaller,
a cat I can entertain
rather than a tiger that will eat me.

Excitement so large it could
break my legs
without meaning to, so happy
to be set free it would willingly
roll over.

When did I grow so fragile?
so afraid of unalloyed happiness?
My heart tells me this
is the season of trust.
Trust, my heart? When did you
start using such wild
language?

Come sit next to me, my heart says.
I have something for you, see?
It’s an elephant, just for you.