“I first found Juaréz the Statue while conducting research for my senior thesis. I was surprised to find him there, in part because I hadn’t been looking for him. Genuinely interested in an answer, I asked him, What are you doing here? And with both seriousness and a sense of play, he shot back, What are you doing here?”
                -Monica Huerta, Magical Habits

                A few days ago my partner and I went for a very cold walk through the trees and the snow, and we watched for tracks. Squirrels. So many of them. Humans, of course, and dogs, and a cat on the edge of the park near some houses. And then a little creature stuck its head up from a little hole in the snow. 
                What are you doing here? 
                What are you doing here?
                I think it was a deer mouse, though I’m not sure. It ducked back down quickly, and I only caught one more small glimpse as it slipped along a snow tunnel that emerged here and there on its way through the tall dead grass. Huerta lays out some of the rules for this wonderful game: it’s serious, and it has a sense of play. There’s a genuine interest in the answers. Remembering Magical Habits, I had the same moment with a sculpture our walk took us by, and again with a neighbor I’ve never met a few nights later as we both walked down the snowy street. The seriousnesses and the senses of play are how we meet. And they’re how our meetings invite us to reimagine and reconnect with how and who we are, here, in the meeting.