Drumming

On Sunday, I attended a drumming meditation at The Source in Albuquerque.  I did not know what to expect.  The leader of the circle, Issa, was a man in his 20s or 30s, whom I met at S's house back in December.  We friended each other on Facebook, but all I knew was that he was a musician and did recording sessions.  And that he had a Swedish girlfriend named Isa, which made talking about them very confusing.

But, he invited me to come, and I was going to be in the area, and what the hey, I am still looking for that perfect way to meditate.  The labyrinth is good, because it involves walking and gives me a pattern to focus on, but I'm open to other suggestions.

The Source is less than a mile from my old home in the Parkland Hills area, but I just discovered it recently. M and I walked up one Tuesday morning and got coffee.  The coffee shop is on the north side of a quadrangle of buildings that are rented out for yoga, lectures, drumming, and other healing arts.  M is friends with the owner, and it is all very New Age.  It's placed in a stark section of Carlisle, just off busy Gibson, near Kirtland AirForce Base and the Sunport.  But if you could airlift it to Portland, it could be set down in the Hawthorne district without causing a blink.

I got there 10 minutes early and followed the sounds of drumming to a little one-room building with doors opening onto the deck and table area.  Issa was inside, seated facing the door.  He had set up a circle of floor chairs (the kind that are made of canvas, have a cushion on the floor and a long rectangular back set at an angle to the cushion.  We used to have them in the kids' area of the library, and they could stack, one within another.) He was beating out smooth practised rhythms on a wide circular hand drum, strong stubby fingers fluttering along the rim, seeming barely to touch but producing a resonant pattering boom.  He was dressed in black, with the sweater hanging over his paunch and giving him a cuddly teddy bear feel. His shoulder length dark brown hair curled around his face, his dark brown eyes looked slantingly down towards the drum, his profile showed clean and Semitic. Then he looked up and saw me and beamed, bouncing to his feet.

He had promised some extra drums, and I wound up with a beautifully inlaid doumbek, which he said he'd taken around the world.  Bits of the mosaic were missing, given credence to a life of adventure, and the drum-head was made of a tough sort of plastic, not leather.  I learned to make the resonant sound in the center of the drum-head, and the lighter "tek" sound along the rim.  And, while I couldn't do it consistently, I  was now ready to participate.

More people arrived, and we formed our circle.  Ages ranged from mid-twenties to mid-sixties.  People were dressed casually, in jeans and t-shirts mainly. There was long grey hair tied in a straight pony tail, long red curly hair hanging loose, short curly hair, buzz cut bald, short with a cap.  And my short rakish salt and pepper hair fit right in.

We started with the singing bowl, passed around the circle.  Each person said his/her name, and the rest of us chanted it three times.  (It reminded me of the Unitarian Sunday School getting-to-know-you routine.)  Then we spoke our intentions, and blew into the bowl before passing it along.  Some spoke at length about spiritual connections with the earth, about losing patterns that no longer served.   I was succinct:  I want to let go of grief and loss and I want to embrace serenity and focus.

Then the bowl was set in the center, where it could collect the resonance from the drums.  Issa asked the participant to my left to start us out with a basic rhythm.  When it was settled, the next person took it up, then the next, then the next, all around the circle.  When it reached me, I found it surprisingly easy to join in.  I had the rhythm in my ears and I could feel it in the air.  My doum-tek was tinny and soft, not like the deep sounds the others were producing, but it slid into the sound without stress, giving its own color to the rhythm.
I closed my eyes and gave myself to the drumming.  Then I opened my eyes and looked around the circle.  Some were grave, focused.  Some were dancing with their hands, tossing their heads.  Some had beatific smiles, some were expressionless. Issa looked up at me and smiled, and I shut my eyes again.  The rhythm continued for 20 minutes or so, and then I became conscious of a deep insistent 'doum-doum-doum'....the rhythm had changed, we were all changing with it, and after several minutes we settled into a new rhythm.  It was organic, there was no leader, it just happened.  We played the new rhythm for another 20 minutes and then the sound got softer and softer until it just stopped.

Issa leaned forward into the center and struck the singing bowl so it rang, and our intentions and our drumming went out into the universe.

The whole time, I had been thinking, I've done this before.  And then it came to me.  In the summer of 1995, when T and my cousin were living with me, my friend Tim came by on a visit,  He had driven from Oneonta, NY, staying with friends all across the US.  I was his next to the last stop:  after visiting his cousin in Seattle, he was going to Hawaii.  From that trip, he never returned.  Every once in awhile, I look up his name, hoping against hope that he turned up again. Instead, I find other people's blogs about that time, and what it meant to the people whose lives he touched.  I dream about him.  I blogged about him a few months back.

And I remembered him last Sunday.  Here is the story I shared with the drumming circle, a version of which went into his memory book and into that other blog entry:

One day, he was doing dishes in my kitchen, when he began tapping on the metal sides of the sink.  The taps became hand slaps, satisfying reverberate booms. My cousin picked up chopsticks and began playing the bottles and jars of kitchen utensils on the counter.  I drummed on the counter, and T started dancing.  We must have jammed those rhythms without tunes for half an hour.  I never forgot that feeling, and I felt it again last Sunday.

I don't know if it was a meditation, but it definitely helped me touch something deep. I think I'll go again.

Dream interpretation

In my memory he is walking, Astaire-like, up and down my dorm's stairwell, singing, "I'll build a stairway to paradise."  It echoes strongly, and I am entranced.   I love singing in stairwells. 

He was a student in a required freshman class, and I was the TA.  He left after that semester, but it was long enough to create a friendship that lasted for close to 15 years.  Through those years, we corresponded, I visited him in Oneonta, NY, once, and he visited me in Portland, Oregon, twice.  He disappeared on Oahu shortly after that second visit, and has never been found.  I corresponded with his family, contributed to the memory book, and disposed of the car he had left in Seattle.

And I've never forgotten him.

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He was always prickly, always challenging, always creating.  I remember I was always asking to see his work, and he would send it to me at intervals.  Sometimes it was writing, sometimes other things:  like the meringue from his kitchen and the squash from his garden.  He was supremely fit, very comfortable with using his body the way he wanted to, regardless of time and place.  Once, he told me, he was stretching out on the dance floor of a bar and was informed, "We don't do that here."  He laughed, but I could tell he really didn't get what the problem was.  It was a resignation to the incomprehensible foibles of the masses, not humor.  While he could be light-hearted, it always came as a surprise.  It was as though he could only access that part of himself under extreme circumstances.  The rest of the time he was acting from memory:  ah, yes, this is what it's like to laugh.  And this is clearly a situation where laughter is called for, so, I'll laugh.

But he wasn't feeling it.

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We were driving to the family home on the Neversink, where his sister would later drown while rafting.  He taught me a canon he had "written," with words from Song of Solomon.  It was a droning atonal sort of song.  "Until the day break, and the shadows flee, I will get me to the mount of myrrh and hill of frankinsense.  Until the day break, and the shadows flee, Turn, love, young hart, on the mount of spices."  I learned it quickly, and we sang it together.  I don't think I'll ever sing it with anyone else.

Music and rhythm were part of his soul, but he never learned to read or write it.  Once, on that last visit, he was washing dishes, and he began tapping the sides of the metal sink.  It was sufficiently percussive for him to continue and expand into resonant hand-slapping drum beats.  My cousin picked up some chopsticks and created a snare drum set on the tall wooden salt and pepper shakers and the metal stove top.  I drummed on the counter with my fingertips.  T provided foot percussion as she began dancing, and we all followed suit, twirling and drumming.

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The demands he put on himself and others created beauty, but also hurt.  He had a hot intense gaze and an intense conversational style.  He didn't suffer fools gladly, but he was well versed in polite behavior, like bringing hostess gifts and sending thank you notes.  He had no patience for feelings or for sugar coating his thoughts, especially with those he loved.  Example:   We had visited a friend of his and were figuring out sleeping arrangements, and he had said, "I want to sleep with you."  The next morning, they were swinging in the hammock together.  She was clearly enamored, he was laughing joyously.  Later I commented on their relationship and he said, "She's just a friend.  I'm not interested in her otherwise, she's repulsive!" 

I began crying.  I didn't know how to process a friendship that could be so hot and so cold.  Maybe I wondered what mean things he was saying about me.  He was confused:  what had he said to make me cry?  I couldn't explain.

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A few mornings ago, I woke up from an extremely vivid dream.  In that dream, he had turned up here in Albuquerque.  I was excited and happy, but confused.  "Have you told your family?"  no.  "Can I tell A in Portland?"  no.  "Where have you been?"  no answer.

 

He wanted to show me a house he'd found, and we silently walked 4 blocks to it.  There were trees and Portland-style landscaping.  It was huge and old, with hard wood floors.  It had a formal dining room,  kitchen with marble counters and gas stove, a living area with fireplace, and several bedrooms or office/den rooms.  It was all on one level, filled with antiques, books, and art.  It was a craftsmen style home, not an adobe. We had a moment cuddling on one of the beds, and I agreed that it would be a great place to rent.  Then a whole crew of 20-somethings appeared.  One of them was the owner, and we had tea and talked about my love of dishes.  She wanted to rent to me, for sure, but apparently she also wanted to rent to the others.  There were 23 people, and the house had become larger.  But the monthly rent was $50K.  Even divided by 23, it was unaffordable.

 

He had disappeared, while I was talking with the owner.  I was confused and overwhelmed.  Spotting a skinny door in the corner, I slunk over and discovered a steep narrow stair, going up.  I shut the door behind me and climbed, emerging from the dark stairwell into two large open rooms, with skylights and walls of windows.  There was no furniture, other than a reading nook with a comfy chair, but paintings filled the limited wall-space. It was a Portland house for sure, but the view through the glass was Albuquerque, with the wide ever-changing skies and adobe architecture.  I felt open and free and at home.  I spread out my arms and twirled. 

 

And woke up.

 

What did it mean?  I'd spent the day before researching an elusive article about teaching in Hawaii, which he did when he was going to grad school.  And it's where he disappeared.  Is that what brought him into my dream?   Surely not:  the real Hawaii connection is my friend L's family.

 

I am looking at the possibility of finding a new home and a new job and a housemate, and I'm not sure if I want to be in Portland or Albuquerque or Hawaii.  So, perhaps the dream reflects that.  After all, the process of selling the Portland house is almost complete, so that particular house is not in my future, nor was it in my dream. 

 

Yet, house dreams are more about the personal interior, not the actual house, right?  So...I'm seeking. Seeking home, seeking community.  And lord knows, seeking was what he did best.   Maybe he's there to guide me.  Or does he represent the authentic me, who will never settle for mediocrity, who wants to do it all?

 

Or, do I just miss him?

 

A long vivid dream:
Tim reappeared and we found
A great house to rent.