Random Page in a Book

I love to open a book to a random page and see what it has to offer. I received some books today that I had ordered on Amazon and decided to implement this practice. The book is called The World is a Waiting Lover by Trebbe Johnson. It was so interesting because the subject matter of the particular paragraph I read was very much like a conversation my roomie and I were having the other day about acknowledging each other, strangers and acquaintances alike by making eye contact or even physical contact. We have been talking a lot about presentation of Self as well. Of course I also have a special affinity for this excerpt because it discusses the gray area between hetero and homosexuality and confesses an attraction to the Other regardless of gender.

The author is speaking of a time when she lived in New York City. She had been admiring the way certain women would flirt with men on the subway.....

"I realized that I, too, could join this harmless mating ritual. So I started allowing myself to exchange probing glances with men, including strangers, friends and casual acquaintances. I realized that, in such moments, the erotic potential - which could mount so quickly that both of us had to look away - was often accompanied by, or even superseded, by something else, a kind of curiosity or fascination. So I began trying out the look on women, too, although that was harder for both of us and could never be sustained as long. When the look endured, however, it was an exquisite thing. The rawness of a soul, fully concentrated in the outward-turning gaze, and meeting, just for an instant, another raw soul, revealed something both exotic and very intimate. The connection between these two ensouled gazes penetrated veils, so each could see the Beloved in the other. Then, in a naked instant of acceptance and desiring curiosity that people usually do not allow into their life, I saw my Beloved in them and their own Beloved shining forth around them."