I have mentioned before that there are women working the streets of our neighborhood 24 hours a day, which is true, but sometimes hard to believe, even living here.  Late-stage pregnancy has brought roving insomnia on me, nothing serious but enough to find me laying in bed at 4:30 am this morning, wondering why in the world my body decided to be awake SO MUCH EARLIER than normal. So, a little before 6 I got up, put on clothes and went for a walk.  The sun wasn’t up yet but the urban-dwelling birds were aware that morning was coming, and chirping their little hearts out.  Walking the one block north, past the largest local “short time motel” there were about a half dozen young women sitting out on plastic chairs, ostensibly hoping to pick up a taxi-driver finishing a shift or someone on their way to start their work day.  The pain and hard things of our neighborhood somehow seem so much heavier at six in the morning, when the sun hasn’t even come out yet – it seems like “sex for money” just shouldn’t happen in the stillness of early morning time.  The women look tired and so sad.

A few mornings ago Iven and I were up just after the sun rose, on Sunday morning.  That is the time of day when the saffron-robed Buddhist monks are just leaving the temples to make their rounds giving blessings and receiving donations for the first hour or so of daylight.  A grown woman in a short skirt got off of her plastic chair and kneeled down to pay homage and ask a blessing from a pair of passing monks, who responded to her the same as they would for any other resident or worker in the neighborhood.  It was such a striking image.  Our life is filled with striking images – most of which we don’t feel comfortable trying to capture on film.