Here’s what happened to me one day last June. I’ve told this story a lot. It’s time to write it down.
The setting is a Pagan festival. Some of you will know some or all of the people and places, but names have been changed. Suffice it to say there’s a lot of history, a lot of people who’ve known each other for a lot of years, and it’s a very special and magical place to be.
It begins with a full body massage around 11 a.m. This is a very powerful way to start the day. After that I taught two classes back-to-back. So I’m in this very shifting state; the deep relaxation and healing of massage, followed by a whoosh into teaching focusing reciting engaging being in the right place on time. Plus, teaching’s always a little dehydrating, all that talk talk talk. Never ideal after a massage. But anyway.
Now comes my friend “Alice.” (Don’t those quotes make me look like Ann Landers?) Alice is dying. This festival is where I met her, some fourteen years before. She used to come every year. Now she has cancer and wants to come to Festival one last time. I haven’t seen her in two years. Her sister is picking her up at the hospice and is bringing her to the festival. She is expected to arrive around 5 p.m. Alice’s ex-husband is also at the festival, and she doesn’t want to see him, or indeed for him to know she’s there. So there’s a certain amount of sneaking around involved in seeing her. So my inner energy flow now looks like: Healing-rushing-focusing-grieving-sneaking. Which is a little unmanageable.
So I find Alice and we hang out and we talk and hug and she wants my shirt. Demands my shirt. And I think I can give it to her, and then I think “Her sister will give it back to me soon, anyway.” That’s a hateful thought. I can’t bear that I thought it. To avoid acknowledging the thought, I refuse to give her the shirt.
I go back to camp for dinner, but no one is there, because everyone is at the tattoo ritual. One of our clan is getting a big piece on his chest, a beautiful Ganesha. I walk to the tattoo booth, and from a distance I can hear the chanting. There are a dozen or more people gathered around, giving energy to the tattooing, chanting
Jai Ganesha, Jai Ganesha, Jai Ganesha, Pahiman
Sri Ganesha, Sri Ganesha, Sri Ganesha, Rakshaman
As I arrive, the wife of the guy getting tattooed has just gotten up from her seat next to her husband, in the center of this wall of sound (she later told me it was becoming overwhelming for her). So the seat is empty, I walk up, and Being Tattooed Guy beckons me right into the center. Another whoosh, from Alice to this deep, vibrant, sacred space. I am there, chanting, in the center of it all, for maybe forty-five minutes. The artist finishes by coloring the Om in the center of Ganesha’s forehead, and we change the chant to Om.
The artist begins to clean up. People get up to leave. All at once, I just burst into tears, and sob and sob with big heaving gulping deep-belly sobs. Then it passes. (The people who held me while I sobbed had no idea what my day had been. They were just there for me. I explained much later.)
I walk back to camp. Now I’m really DAMN hungry. The path from tattoo place to camp place has merchants. I see Alice and her sisters at the bookseller’s. They’re buying The Way of Four. I go in to talk with them. Alice demands an autograph. Then she demands my shirt. Now she’s actually tugging at it, which would be weird from some people, but is not unlike Alice. So I take it off and give it to her, and walk back to camp topless.
Coda: Alice died in October, and her ashes were scattered at the festival site, at the big tree where she always camped. Her sister says she wore my shirt constantly for all her remaining days. I’m getting the shirt back in June.
