Around her an exuberant gathering quickens. People are tossing balloons, hugging each other and modeling festive headgear.  Screams of excited women echo through the building. The band plays Afro-Cuban, muscular loud music in which percussion and horns dominate. On the platform a dance troop performs in a frenzy, spinning and twisting among the wild rhythms. A golden light illuminates Our Lady of Enigmas in a conical hat. She seems in a world apart, not conscious of her raucous surroundings, fondling one earring; that gesture seems an outward sign of her complete abstraction from the scene, though she remains its subject.

We are barred from direct access to the consciousness of fellow humans — a providential shortcoming. Yet in this case I am intensely curious. I would love to know what she is feeling and thinking — and not at second hand — but from right inside her Being.