Apparently I had more to say than I thought.

On Wednesday I bought a drum. It is a beautiful Djembe from Ghana with a dancing elephant on its base. I selected that particular drum after having a long conversation with the drum maker about the particular sounds of drums. I wanted a drum that sounded like who I am. I wanted something that would blend well with the steady rhythm, was not too piercing and not too deep. I didn't think I had a lot to say yet, being new to drumming and drum jams, and I wanted a drum that wasn't so powerful that it demanded to be heard. The elephant spirit seemed to be a good fit.

On Thursday I played that drum at a drum jam. Let me clarify, I played that drum, out loud, in front of people, with other drummers,one day after buying it. After practically no practice at all. I realized that this was the first time I have ever done something so "spontaneous". I realized that I usually participate like an only child (the justification I've given the learning differences I'm about to describe.) You see, I usually see something I like, something I'd like to do or know more about, and I go home and privately practice, research, and learn. When I'm comfortable with my skill level, I introduce my new interest to the public, always performing at a level below where I am comfortably. That way I know I won't mess up or fail in front of people. But I also don't grow any quicker than I can teach myself, and frankly it is kind of boring. But it was safe.

With this drum, I took it and started hitting it. I started hitting just the base note, one hit each measure. Practicing getting the nice dong sound to come from the drum. Then I added other beats as I felt able to do. Sometimes I messed up, and sometimes I lost the beat, and I'd go back to just keeping time for the other drummers. But I could hear my drum mixing in with all those others. And then, later, after I'd warmed up or gotten comfortable or what have you, I started hearing my drum on top of the others instead of below them (rhythmically). Were They following Me? Was my beat steady enough for the other drummers to build off of its base and settle into my rhythm? Could I actually be good at this drumming thing? This is amazing! This is great! This is so much fun! I didn't want to stop and I couldn't wait for the next time.

I like this concept of learning in the presence of others. In a community of people who have been there, and can remember what it was like to start.

So here's to doing more than dancing to the beat of your own drum, here's to sharing that beat with others.

Clink!

Part Gym, Part Church, All Community

I love Climbing Gyms. They are full of fun things and fun people. There is a unique culture in climbing gyms. When you need them to be, they can be a private space. Just you and the wall, left alone to work out your problems mentally and physically. It is a space where you can challenge yourself to improve without needing to compete with anyone else.

But, when you need them to be, they can be very social spaces also. Sitting back from the wall, resting your muscles, or studying a problem, it is easy to chat with other climbers. There is something simple to talk about, an easy space to give advice or vent frustration about particular routes or maneuvers. A quick conversation before focusing your attention back to the work at hand. It is an easy community. A nod of the head or a casual wave when you see people you recognize is all that is necessary. Or, strangers can team up to offer life saving belay assistance so that they can take turns climbing the higher routes.

Arriving in Arizona, knowing no one, I signed up for the local climbing gym here. It was an activity off site, that allowed me to get a change of scenery. I met the staff who quickly came to know me. I met climbers, and quickly found a climbing buddy. I even met other rennies that I wouldn't have crossed paths with otherwise because we all love to climb.

And I can watch myself improve! I have begun climbing 5.9s now, a feat I have never before accomplished. Even in years past, after months at the gym, I had only climbed 5.8s. The gym proved to me that my wrist, once broken, is truly fully healed and is stronger than ever.

So concludes my ode to the climbing gym.

So Here's to Rocks, again, only slightly bigger this time!

Cheers!

The Boy and the White Elephant

This is a story I wrote tonight, when I couldn't seem to sleep. I hope you enjoy it.

Come here children I want to tell you a story.

“Grandma! What is the story about?”

It is a story about our family, a story from when I was a little girl. I think it is very important for you to hear.

A long time ago, over fifty years now, long before our family ran this large hotel, there was a smaller hotel on the banks of a river. The hotel was called Calm Rising and on the sign was a rising sun. A yellow circle with nine orange lines radiating out from it. This hotel was very small. There were four guest rooms, and a small kitchen where my mother cooked meals for our family and our guests. My father worked at the front desk, welcoming visitors. My sister and I helped run the hotel too, doing the odd jobs and errands our parents asked of us.

It was a simple and happy life. But when I was fifteen, my father began to worry. Where were the guests? Often there were many days without even one guest to attend to. Because my father worried, I too worried. For him. For our hotel.

One morning, I was sitting on the bench out front of the hotel drawing designs with a stick in the sand. My father called to me from inside. He handed me some money. This was my favorite errand. Often he sent me or my sister to the market for fresh groceries if my mother was busy cleaning or preparing rooms. This week we had three guests and we had been very busy.

He gave me a list, and also some new special instructions. I was to look in the market for a small but nice gift to give our guests. To thank them for staying with us.

With the money and grocery list in my pouch, and the instructions in my mind, I took off for the market. It was a pleasant walk, only fifteen minutes along the river side. I could watch the women wash clothes on the banks, and the young boys try to fish with some wire. The groceries were simple enough to get, but I spent some time browsing the vendor's stalls looking for the perfect gift for our guests. Jewelery? No. bells? no. But then I saw it.

A young boy, not much older than I, was selling small figurines. I had never seen him before at our market. When I got closer I saw that all the figurines were the same. They were of a delicate white elephant. As smooth as blown glass but as strong as stone. I told the boy what I needed the gifts for and he agreed with me that they would be perfect for our guests. I bought five. Three for our guests, and one for my mother and my sister since I thought they were so lovely.

The boy asked me what I was doing that night to celebrate the full moon. I told him my family and I typically went to the full moon festival on the beach with the other villagers. He asked me if I would like to see something special instead. Though I had never met this boy, I felt safe around him and said yes I would. He asked me to meet him back at the market when it closed, in one hour. That was just enough time for me to get home with my purchases and return.

When I returned he had packed up his table and had a small pouch on his back. He told me he was happy I came back. He led me into the jungle on the edge of town where the river turns, along a small path I had never seen before. We walked in silence for some time. I wondered where he was leading me. My sandals, adequate for our clean dirt roads,were catching in the underbrush and thorns and rocks were getting in my toes. The boy had no shoes at all on and seemed not to mind the brush.
Just when my curiosity was getting the better of me and I was preparing to ask where we were going, we came to a clearing. The brilliance of the sun was a shock to my eyes after the emerald world of the jungle we had just left. Were there two suns in this clearing? No, only the sun in the sky and the sun's reflection in a still pool. He had taken me to a beach!

I did not know about this pool in the jungle. Only then did I notice what was in the pool. An Elephant! It was so large and still and serene I hadn't noticed it before. He had long ivory tusks around his mouth. I was in awe. Did this boy's family own the elephant? My rapture was broken by a splash. Quite against his majestic first impression, the elephant had playfully taken up water in his trunk and let it spray all over himself and the shore line, including his two audience members.

The boy took me to meet the elephant. It was not his, he said, it was wild. But he spent much time in this pool and so did the elephant and so they became friends. Do not be afraid, he said. The elephant does not want to harm you. If you do not want to harm him, tell him so, with your mind and deep in your heart. What is truly in your heart, the elephant will understand.

With those massive brown eyes, so full of sympathy, turned on me, I believed the boy when he said the elephant could understand.

Would you like to ride him? The boy asked. Will he let me? I said.

The boy laughed and led me to a tree with a long branch that overhung the pool. We climbed out onto the branch, and then the elephant came over. I guess that meant he would let me ride. The boy jumped delicately onto the elephant's back. Clearly comfortable with the massive animal. I clambered on behind him, much less gracefully. Was I hurting the elephant? Were we heavy? Could he even tell we were there?

Then the elephant went for a walk. All evening we rode the elephant along the river, in some clearings and through canopied jungle rooms. And we talked, the boy and I, about many things. I told him about my family, and our hotel. He told me stories of his travels, strange wonders he had seen. We talked about the moon, and the village, and the heart. Then the boy told me something important. Often, by the time it gets to our minds, we confuse what is in our hearts. If we can focus on what we need, what we know in our hearts, the confusion of our mind will clear. I thought about what he said, and then I thought about my father and his worry. Were his mind and heart confused? He worried about the guests because he worried that we would not have money. Was that in his mind or his heart? He needed money because he needed to support us, his family. Wanting to support his family was what his heart wanted. But wanting to run the hotel was in his heart too. He wanted the hotel because he loves our village. He wanted to share the wonderful things of our village with travelers from around the world. That is why he made his wife cook for them, and wanted to give them gifts of thanks for coming to stay with us.

I did not realize the passage of time or where we wandered. Coming into my surroundings again I saw familiar landmarks. We had returned to the still pool. On our journey the sun had set and the full moon had risen. The smell of jasmine and orchids filled the warm night air. The elephant washed himself and us in the pool. Squirting large trunkfulls of water over us all. We helped scrub his back. I was amazed at the toughness of his skin. In the moonlight, wet with water from the pool, the elephant seemed to glow, so white and brilliant, like the figurines the boy sold in the market.

Eventually, I knew, with a sad heart, that I must return home. The elephant brought us back to the tree with the overhanging branch so that we could climb back to the ground. With my heart I thanked the elephant for the day and wished him the full moon's blessing.

Then the boy walked me home. At my door I turned to say good bye. He had gotten a large and perfect lotus bloom from somewhere, which he now presented to me. Thank you, he said, and with a bow, he turned and was gone.

Still thinking about the things the boy had said, I suddenly had an Idea. An idea of how we could share our village with the travelers, and encourage them to stay with us at our hotel. We would give them tours of our village, have special dinners during the full moon festivals, and invite story tellers to come spin tales by our fire. We would share our favorite things about our home with the travelers, and this would make more travelers want to come stay with us.

The next morning I told father about what I had seen, and the elephant and the boy, and my idea. The five elephants still sat on the front desk. My father picked one up and weighed it in his hands. He felt its smoothness, he thought. Then he said Yes, it was a fine idea. It would be my new job to manage these things. Father was trusting all this responsibility to me, a fifteen year old girl! I did not know what to say or how to thank him. But the thanks and happiness was there in my heart, and I think he knew. I threw my arms around him in a hug. Then I realized I should tell the boy my idea too, and thank him for his wisdom. I rushed out of the hotel and ran all the way to the morning market. But the boy was no where to be seen. Not yet disheartened, I ran to the still pool. The boy was not there either, nor was the elephant.

I walked home much more slowly, thinking. Had my adventure last night been real? Was the boy real? Or was he actually the spirit of the elephant. The white elephant, I thought to myself, not just wet and shining in the moonlight but truly white and glowing. Perhaps both the the boy and the elephant had been spirits of the moon, sent to deliver this lesson to my family in a time of worry.

So I phrased in mind what I knew in my heart. A thanks to the boy for the lessons he taught. And a promise to try to keep the needs of my heart clear in my vision and not to let them get confused before they reach my mind.

And that Children, was the day the moon spirits and the white elephant blessed our family. We have them to thank for our fine new hotel, because without their lessons I would not have had the idea that worked so well, and we would not have grown out of the small hotel by the river bend. And that is why we still welcome our guests and thank them for staying with us at the White Elephant. Now how does that sound?

Tonight I banged rocks together.

Tonight I banged rocks together and I loved it. It was one of the most exhilarating, community centric, animalistic things I have ever done. I'm being serious.

Why?

Because I banged those rocks, three to be precise, in a drum jam around a fire in the middle of the desert at midnight. Look at that, originally I wrote "...at a drum jam", and realized that I wasn't just AT the drum jam, I was not just watching. I was participating. I was IN the drum jam, part of the activities. I hiked through cactus, pulled flying balls of thorns out of my shoes, and then I let myself be consumed by the experience all those people were sharing. I hit my rocks, carried my rhythm, blended in with all those other rhythms. I didn't have to play my own melody, carry all the weight. I messed up, I heard it, even if no one else could hear my rocks clack, I heard my rhythm in the stream of those other drums and I heard its mistakes and I was fine with them.

I even joked about hitting my rocks together with some of the drummers. I hit my rocks rather than take the spare drum offered. I did something, and I was so proud and content with what I was doing that I could talk about it and keep doing it even though someone wanted me to do something else.

I will forever remember my rocks. The first instrument I ever mastered. When I started my musical theory training with the very basics. Clack clackity clack clack.

So tonight, lift up your tankards to the stone. Where it all began.

Uggg!

Yes, I know I was wrong.

Oh come on now! Just when I was thinking how wonderful people really are when you stop thinking of them as a whole society and start interacting with individuals. I was so convinced that people were inherently good that I wanted to go and write a book with illustrative examples to prove my point. Kind of a rebuttal to modern authors like George Saunders (ex: In Persuasion Nation) who subtly illustrate the flaws with present society through sardonic and dark short stories. Great book, don't get me wrong, just kind of depressing.

I wanted to talk about asking directions from strangers, striking up conversations in public places, the rennies, the couchsurfers, really everybody nice I've encountered over the last two years. It'd be a pretty big book.

And then tonight I had an engagement with that guy everybody loves to hate. The gelded, balding, forty-something man wearing a striped polo shirt and driving a minivan. I had just left Wal-Mart with some groceries (maybe going to Wal-Mart was my first mistake) and was preparing to exit my parking space. It was in one of those wonky parking lots with the angled spots to encourage direction specific lanes. However, when I parked, the spot in front of me was open too, and so I did the same thing any reasonably lazy person will do: I pulled forward so that when I left I could pull out instead of going through all that extra effort of backing out. But in this wonky parking lot to pull forward would set me driving the "wrong way" down the parking isle. Which really wasn't much of an issue seeing as in the Land of Plenty the isle was still wide enough for two cars.

So, having pulled out I proceeded up the isle, the wrong way remember, intent on the stop sign at the end of the row so that I could bid this fine shopping center a fond farewell. However, my exit plans were temporarily thwarted by said Man-in-a-Minivan coming the proper direction down the isle. He had been proceeding at a reasonable speed until I pulled out, at which time he sped up, angled towards me and almost rammed the corner of my Jeep before slamming on his brakes, turning away and giving me the evil eye as he passed. Now, I am sure this was his response to my audacity, my brash and callous disregard for parking lot etiquette.

One could flip him the bird, and continue on one's way home without giving the event a second thought. I, however, did not. Why? I asked myself, did this man find my actions so offensive that he had to let me know how he felt. Was he secretly hoping we Would have gotten into an "accident", though one could hardly call it that given his behavior, so that he could pin the blame on me- the one breaking the parking lot laws?

If so, this illustrates a much larger problem. We as people (here I go talking about the whole instead of its parts again) believe laws are set in place to protect us. But like any coupon-clipper we want to make sure we get our money's worth out of those laws. Often to extremes, like this Minivan Man, who took offense to my violation of one petty law which he could manipulate- though really had no effect on him or his wellbeing; and completely disregarding the higher law of lets say physics which says one should not ram one's vehicle into another if unnecessary. The laws put in place to protect us so that we can go on with our lives doing more important things are really just keeping us stuck as if on on Maslow's second rung, bickering over perceived infractions rather than striving to better our own selves and proceed (as a whole this time) to higher rungs.

So here's to raising the bar. This one's for you Mr. Minivan, may we meet again when we're higher.

Salute`!

No, Go grab a blanket!

I LOVE my space here in Arizona! Its like I'm living in a fairy fort. I am staying is a small apartment above a costume shop in a festival. It has a balcony on which I can watch the sunsets behind the red craggy desert mountains. It has a bed, with curtains, and windows all around, and a desk and coffee table. My wings hang on the wall in decoration when not in use.

I love that I have wings that see routine usage.

At the store today I bought healthy simple foods. I am blessed with a refrigerator, though no heating capabilities. This evening, I sat on my yoga mat, cross legged in front of my coffee table with my computer on the left (streaming a popular TV show from Netflix... proof that technology has moved beyond any conventional boundaries and the concept of "home office" was just blown wide open) and my dinner at my right.

As per desert standards as soon as the sun went down (a stunning spectacle I watched from my balcony)the air lost all its warmth and it was quickly very chilly both outside and within my fort. It was at this moment that I realized the problem with western society.

Yup, didn't see that coming did you.

This is the thing I hate most about modern societies, its thick in American culture. Ready?

In my beautiful fairy fort- which I am very blessed to have, because otherwise I would be sleeping amid the scruffy bushes in the desert behind the festival- I got cold. And then I reached for the small electric space heater.

Now class, what is the problem?

There was a bed full of blankets behind me, any one of which would have been enough to keep me warm. But instead I reached for the solution that involved the most consumption. The solution which would have cost me money, and the planet resources. This is the major problem as I see it. We are constantly faced with choices and because of our inability to think before we act we constantly pick the choice which allows us to consume most. No one is standing there with us forcing us to make that choice, and yet we still do so.

We need to stop doing this! This is exactly the blind reactions I want to get out from under. One of the biggest lessons I can learn from this rennie experience is how to exist with balance.


Tonight, lets cheers to blankets.

Cheers!

Remember this Feeling

You are a free woman! The first day on the road, you drove all day long. Your stuff was packed in all around you, you had a loaf of homemade bread to snack on, you had an ipod full of your favorite music, and you had hundreds of miles of highway ahead of you. That night you stopped when you chose to, and pulled into a small campground in Tennessee.

Because you are a kind person, and a female who travels alone, the kind people you encounter just want to help you. At the campsite, the woman checking you in put you in a site between two RV's with "older people who will keep an eye on you". And because you are a kind person, you gratefully accept their help.

Later, tucked in between the two RV's you create a nest for yourself in the car, it is too cold and late to bother digging out the tent just for the night. It is too large and anyway its hidden underneath too much stuff. So covered in blankets, with the driver's seat reclined, the steering wheel up and out of the way, and your legs thrown over the passenger side dash, you nestle in for the night. You read a bit of "War and Peace" by the light of the car dome, and turn the car on to blast the heat and fill the car with warmth one last time. Before falling asleep, you think about the way this night must sound "I drove until it was dark and I was exhausted, then I pulled into a campground, and slept in my car for a few hours before continuing valiantly on in the morning." The way it sounds and the way it feels are very different things however. To you this night feels like a victory. You are traveling, making your own choices, and at the mercy of your fellows. You feel great. You are so happy.

Congratulations You!