Gotta dance

Hungarian Klezmer musicians

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I spent several hours yesterday at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, worshipping ancestors of blood, spirit and karma. That is what the fest is all about, after all: ancestor worship. We don't call it that in my society, but it is - it really is.

What a blast. I heard a lot of live music, always a tonic for my soul, and I danced so much I can feel it in my legs this morning. That's a lot of dancing since I'm on my feet most of my waking hours and I walk every day.

It's coming to me that somehow I've not been dancing enough lately. Last summer was so hard, I kind of let my habit of dance slip away. How unfortunate!

I'm not talking about shamanic dance, the slow, T'ai Chi type of moving that helps me understand what's going on around me. My dance of shamanic alignment is something I do every day. If I stopped doing the shamanic dance I would probably shrivel up and die - or at best be totally confused. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about dancing to music, for fun.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the birthday party where everyone was dancing - me too of course. I was reminded then how blissful it is to dance, how much joy dancing brings into my body/mind. Yesterday, too, the dancing lifted my spirits a notch or two higher than they already were, which was pretty high since I love the Folklife Fest so much.

I danced to traditional Hungarian folk music - I even took a lesson. I danced to klezmer music. I danced most enthusiastically to the Garifuna band from Belize. They're descended from Caribbean Indians and Africans and the music is incredible. I can't believe anyone in that tent could hold still.

Traditional Hungarian folk dance.

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Here's a link to a playlist of songs sung in the languages honored at the Fest. Fabulous!

In addition to dancing, I took a lot of pictures, of course. I was blessed by a Koro holy man, too. He did something at the spirit house (behind him in the pic below), waved an elaborate feather at me, then smeared my cheeks with a cool rice pudding. No words were exchanged between us - words were not necessary. I walked away smiling.

Selfie.

I felt blessed by the whole experience. For all its faults and troubles, Washington DC is a wonderful place to live. The fest helped dissolve the weird energy of the last few days.

Life is good and I am grateful. Shalom.

Dancers and backup singers with the band from Belize.

An Adequate Veil

What is real? I ask that question all the time. I ask myself constantly, others, too. When people say something is unreal, I respond with my question. What is real?

A friend recently said that if you ask the wrong questions, you are likely to never get a good answer. So perhaps this question is faulty and that's why there's no satisfying answer when I ask it, from within or without. Was it really bizarre to see five VWs in a row on 8th Street yesterday just as I was thinking of my ancestors, asphyxiated in VWs during WWII? Or did it just seem bizarre?

Who cares? My experience of it heightened an already slightly altered consciousness from events earlier in the day. Was it a sign? Was some being, such as my aunt Edie, speaking to me from beyond the veil? In the case of the VWs, instead of wondering if it was real, I could have asked Is it a sign?

I asked the Sufi acupuncturist what is real yesterday. He says truth can never be expressed with ideas or words. Stories are veils that cover the pure truth. All that happens is a story we create about the world, including what we believe to be real and unreal. He says a better question would be Is it an adequate veil?

I'm really thinking about that. I like it. Is the veil adequate? Is its shape close to the inexpressible essence? When I experience something like I did yesterday with the parade of VWs, are my stories about that adequate veils for the underlying energy?

Being a mystic is complicated! Good lord. Happy Friday and Shalom.

Strange Days

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I've had a weird couple of days. Peaceful - because I made sure I had solitude and time - but quite odd.

For instance yesterday I told the Sufi acupuncturist that it was the first anniversary of receiving my tattoo and visiting the Holocaust Museum. He said - oh - did you know this is a Jewish fast day? Apparently it marks the destruction of the temple (first or second? I didn't ask). I had never heard of it. Funny, though, that the one year anniversary of my head-on collision with the Holocaust should just happen to be a fast day in the Jewish calendar. It wasn't last year, but this year, yes. My rhythms are inexplicably Jewish.

Right after that I ran into someone who is holding a grudge against me. I was open and pleasant, but she could not even bring herself to be civil. It's OK - I have no dog in the fight whatsoever, but that kind of encounter tends to leave a bad taste in the mouth. Ya know?

Today I was thinking about my ancestors in the Holocaust, how they were asphyxiated in Volkswagons that were sealed shut. The wagons filled with exhaust and the people died. Compared to dying in the camps this was kind of deluxe. Carbon monoxide is a blissful way to go. My ancestors were killed in this way on August 9, 1941 somewhere west of Lviv in modern Ukraine. I wondered if I'm a reincarnated Melikier. I thought about how much I detest being inside any car, also how most of the cars I've owned in my life (not many) have been Volkswagons. I felt a little chill. Just then five VWs in a row drove past, one after the other. There was even a Passat taxi.

Is that normal? Seemed bizarre to me.

Later on someone I've known since the early 1980s, the sweetest, most gentle person you've ever met, flamed my ass on FB because of a post I wrote on my other blog. I wrote about Lyme disease, how evil its soul is. I didn't say this in the post, but I believe there's a way in which Lyme zombifies its victims. They serve the disease, not themselves. I've seen it more than once - the change in personality and world view. It's chilling.

What this friend objected to was my emphatic plea to be careful when out and about, to avoid catching Lyme. What I said in the post is don't catch Lyme. He insisted that advice sucks, his exact word. This does not sound anything like his normal self.

He demanded that I remove the sentence from the blog post. It was as if the spirochete was speaking directly to me. How dare I tell people to take this seriously? How dare I tell people to do everything they can not to be bitten?

That was NOT my friend talking. It took a long time to straighten out the misunderstanding. When I told him to unfriend me, but to please not tell me what to write in my blog, he kind of came back to himself. Even that was bizarre.

This man contracted Lyme many years ago, was given the antibiotics and believes he was cured. But he developed something like rheumatoid arthritis a few years ago and suffers greatly from it. These symptoms are associated with Chronic Lyme. In the weird interaction, my friend behaved like a spirochete, not like the man I've known for thirty years. WWZ is going to come through tick borne diseases.

Mama said there'd be days like this. I guess!

I'm ready for a few days of boring and normal. OK? Please?

Peace and love, y'all. Shalom.

Don't come shattered to this peace*

A wing above Eye Street between 18th and 19th Sts. NW

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It was a wonderful day in Washington DC today - for those who believe in marriage equality, that is. It was historic, a turning point. In ten years people will look back and wonder what the fuss was about, but right now, this is big.

I remember that, during the early 1960s, seeing a black/white couple was shocking. Now no one would blink an eye, at least not in the places I've lived for the last thirty years. And so it will be for couples of all types, no matter their gender or sexual preferences. God bless America. Jacob Needleman is correct about the nature of our experiment with democracy, that it requires inner work for us to evolve towards the ideals of the founding fathers. It is a work in progress. It was designed to be this way. Hell yeah.

Last year when the Nats were doing so well, the mood in usually dour DC was buoyant. Election night in 2008 was definitely joyful, as was the first inauguration. Some of the finest energy I've experienced in this crazy, powerful, beautiful, wounded city was the day of the Rally to Restore Sanity. That was a great day, too.

The energy here today went beyond buoyant, beyond festive. It was a circus, a par-tay atmosphere on the streets of Capitol Hill. There were rainbow teeshirts and flags and pink triangles and interesting clothing choices. I saw lots of crazy hair cuts and colors today. You hardly ever see that in DC. Sweet!

I got out and about, though I skirted the edge of the party energy down at the Court. It was too much for me today. I recognized that and steered a wide arc around the energy. A few years ago that would never have happened, but I'm mellowing out in early old age.

You didn't have to be in the center of the crowd in front of the Court to feel the energy. It was palpable. A wonderful day, a fleeting moment of perfection. Life is good and I am grateful.

Shalom.



*The title of the post is a mantra I woke up repeating this morning, over and over. It was woven into seemingly unrelated dreams. I kept repeating it over and over all night. It seemed important. Though poetic, I'm not clear it's as significant as I thought this morning. 

Ink

A year ago today, my friend and I went to a studio on H Street where we each received a tattoo. I had been thinking about it for years. I could "see" the word Shalom on my arm, a healing opposite, a mirror of the numbers that were tattooed on the arms of the people in the concentration camps. I "saw" it in modern Hebrew, clean and bold. A few months before I actually got it, I began writing the word with a sharpie on my arm every morning. That was not attractive. Finally I went ahead and actually got the ink.

My expectation was that it would be painful and I would be a wimp, but once it had healed I would be happy with it. What actually came to pass was the opposite. It hardly hurt at all. There was sensation but Fernando, the artist, has a very light touch.

Almost immediately afterwards I began to struggle with my decision to do it. Oh the regret! You would not believe how sorry I was that I had made the commitment. I researched having it removed, I went to Nordstrom and got a tube of thick makeup meant to hide dark circles under the eyes and such. The saleslady knew exactly what I needed - apparently many people need to occasionally hide their tattoos, from family members sometimes, or to interview for a job, she said.

After my attempts to pretend I hadn't done it failed - I'm not going to wear makeup on my arm every day, for heaven's sake! - I began to imagine how I should have designed it. It should have been smaller, it should have been plain black, in script, decorative rather than so in-your-face. What looks good on paper is a completely different thing on skin. I still harbor these regrets by the way.

As I got used to it, my thinking turned 180 degrees. I decided I should add to it, try to make it more decorative. As it is, it looks like someone stamped my arm. It shouts S H A L O M!!! I can be so emphatic, which is I guess why it turned out like it did.

I imagined the word nestled into cherry blossoms, or roses. Both of those ideas still appeal. I also periodically imagine having a white skeleton key placed behind the word. That would be cool. Sometime I might follow through.

A friend who knows me well advises me to just leave it as it is. I've made my statement, according to her. She makes a good point.

Most of the time in the last few months, I haven't worried, fussed or focused on it. It is a part of me now. Big, emphatic, not decorative enough, incomplete ... my, my. Sounds like I'm talking about my whole self, not just the tattoo. That is kind of hilarious.

Happy tattoo anniversary to me. Onwards & upwards. Shalom.

That's the inside of my right arm, elbow at the top of the pic.

Mooooooon

What do I have against the moon? Why don't I like it? I mean - what has the moon ever done to me?

I was asking myself last night, walking home from a birthday/dance barbecue. I love to dance so much. I dance around the chateau all the time but I had forgotten how much more fun it is to be on a dance floor with other people who are just as unselfconscious as I am in interpreting the music. Wow. And the music was great. DJ Adrian Loving is an artist! It was so much fun. After my wonderful day yesterday, I was feeling generous enough to question my dislike of the moon.

Why don't I like it? I'll tell you. My relationship with it is awkward. Dark moons are depressing and full moons jam my circuits. In between the extremes, there can be nice lunar moments, but those moments do not linger. The moon is moody. It's not reliable. The moon makes me crazy!

Once upon a time, when I was staying in a little house on the Mendocino coast, I sat for too long out on the deck gazing at the full moon through binoculars. After that I was unable to sleep for the remainder of the night, in spite of the magical, relaxing Mendocino air and the sound of the sea crashing into the cliff below the house. I had to keep watching, checking on the moon as if it might get lost on its way to the western horizon. At dawn I was still on the deck, watching the moon set into the Pacific.

For days after that I was out of sorts, not myself. I didn't exactly become a werewolf, but I felt the lunacy. I felt raw and emotional. The moon was in my dreams for weeks afterwards. It was way out of proportion.

Another time, at witch camp, I drew down the full moon. This is something witches do all the time but I had never tried. Apparently I did a great job. From my point of view, after I began to call her down, the moon became much larger than normal. It seemed to fill the sky. I could see every ridge and crater.

For awhile, I kind of lost track of the campers and other teachers around me. When it was over, two of my fellow teachers were on the ground, holding my feet as if they thought I might leave the planet. They looked worried. A few campers came up to me after the ritual to ask if I was OK. It must have been powerful. To this day I don't know what happened.

So you see when it comes to the moon, I have to be cautious. However there are some moons I enjoy. This supermoon, just past full as of last night, was a joyous moon reflecting a super bright Brother Sun at his apex, hanging out with his buddy Jupiter.

The light was abundant, day and night, over the weekend.

Now, Brother Sun begins his slow descent. The moon will wane much faster of course. Onwards & upwards. Shalom.

A baby picture of the super moon.

Go with the flow, but choose the flow, ok?

The usual disclaimers apply today: This is a weird one. Also I'm not intent on anyone agreeing with me. There are many truths.

One way I like to describe the reality I inhabit is as a river with many different currents or flows. Some are fast moving, some sluggish. Some will suck you underwater in a heartbeat, others are buoyant. There are dark flows and light flows and flows of every color. It's up to us to float, swim or row, row, row our boats as we navigate the river of reality.

The Holocaust is a dark flow, a deep inky black storm that is still unwinding. It is still very much a part of the river of shared reality, faded, but still powerful. At its height, that darkness entranced people, turned their minds to mush. All the arguments about how the German people willingly ignored what was going on are unfair. They were in an altered state, most of them. There were rumors, there was propaganda. Very few really knew what was going on. I seriously wonder if Hitler himself understood, inside his mind, what was going down. All of Germany swirled in the darkest flow imaginable. Very few were able to keep their heads above water.

I can remember times in my life when I became entranced by the dark flows. I remember the very few times I went with a group of colleagues to study with the grandmaster of a very dark art. That man was so disturbed! He spoke to us about putting death curses on people, he even joked about Satan. We sat on the floor at his feet, taking it all in - and please understand that every member of my group was smart and interested in social justice. But we didn't challenge him, we surely did not. He was very good at his dark art, he really was. We were stupefied.

At the conclusion of these "teachings" we inevitably and always went straight to one of our favorite bars and proceeded to get stinking drunk. It was our tradition. None of us wondered about this behavior. Maybe we said "Oh he's a character," or something, but none of us ever put it together - that he was no spiritual teacher for any decent person, and that getting drunk right after an alleged spiritual learning points to something very wrong with the process.

I'm happy to say I woke up and got the hell out of that tradition. While I was involved, I never put a death curse on anyone nor did I ever worship Satan. Other than being a bitch and an asshole in relationships, and power struggling within the alleged non-hierarchy of my tradition, I did no wrong. That was a long time ago, thank god!

But I'm still drawn in by the dance of the Holocaust, and may I say I'm not the only one. Hitler is invoked all the time, still - probably more often now than right after the war. There is a pure darkness about the Holocaust that's hard to let go of. There's something irresistible there. It's creepy super dark S&M fascinating. We aren't supposed to admit that of course.

How can we remember the Holocaust without getting pulled into darkness? It's tricky. I think the first step would be to understand that there is an allure about pure darkness, pure evil. People get pulled into darkness all the time, even those with the best of intentions.

I'm going to think about it through tomorrow's super moon, then put the topic away for awhile. When I get too wrapped up in the Holocaust I suffer. Finding my way back to the bright flows has sometimes been a real struggle. I am no longer interested in that struggle.

I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies
within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.

--Denise Levertov

He was looking right at me. They're so smart!