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Heading Home from El Rocio

2007-05-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

The trip home from Mission was as long and utterly exhausting as I imagined it would be. The morning of my departure was cool and rainy. The clouds teased at rain all week but waited until the mood at El Rocio matched up. It was somber there. All of the Creative Journal Intensive participants had been through a beautifully intense nine days and now we were all packing up our experiences and saying our goodbyes. I was preparing for my re-entry into the real world. El Rocio felt like a fantasy land and I felt magical within it. I wondered how much of that magic would come back with me. I soaked in every little detail that I could on my last walk through the grounds... I can still see it now when I close my eyes.

Dan drove me to the gas station at the end of Inspiration Road where the bus would be picking me up soon. The rain was really coming down now. He came inside to make certain that I was in the right place and gave me an encouraging hug before heading back to pick up the next load of travelers. I sat outside on my backpack and cried under the awning. I was REALLY leaving. While I waited, I watched grown-ups splash in the parking lot puddles like four-year-olds. I soaked in the palm trees and the tropical bird sounds and the smell of pasteurized grapefruit until the right bus finally came.

Soon I was at the main bus terminal. Spanish blared from the overhead speakers from time to time. I only understood the city names and departure times, which was enough. Migrant workers mixed in the lines with young, entitled spring break tourists. I appeared to fit into the tourist group, sitting on my backpack eating an energy bar... but I felt quiet and humble and out of place.

The bus ride to San Antonio was uneventful. I sat quietly. I slept a little. Then six hours later I got spit out in the heart of a strange city. The sun was setting and I did not want to be wandering around downtown San Antonio after dark. I removed the 'easy prey' bulls-eye off of my forehead and mustered my toughest looking street-walking gate that I learned from the years of walking the inner city of OKC... which felt like the suburbs compared to the rough downtown vibe that I currently found myself in. I made myself look like I knew where I was going as I searched for the right bus stop that would get me to the hostel I'd be staying at.

I finally found the right bus bench and was greeted by some character right out of a David Lynch movie... the kind of cat that would be sitting on a bar stool in some old blues dive that the main character would have an odd one-liner with. I could not understand a word he said. He eventually got hip to this fact and stopped talking. So we waited silently. The bus had not come.... after twenty five minutes the bus still had not come and it was getting dark, so I hailed a cab. I'd never hailed a cab before and it is as difficult as it is portrayed in the movies.

The cab dropped me off in front of the hostel. It was really an Inn in an old plantation style mansion flanked by an empty lot on one side and an abandoned house on the other. The door was locked. I knocked. I rang the door bell. I knocked louder. I was beginning to get worried... but a man finally answered. The inside was stunning and spacious. Wood everywhere. The floors creaked as I walked up to the counter. I signed in and made light talk with the man who opened the door. He seemed to not know how to respond. He handed me a pillow and a blanket and pointed to the door that said "BASEMENT". I asked how many other women would be staying in the room with me. "You're the only one." he said. 'G-R-E-A-T' I thought. The man was looking more and more like Norman Bate's younger brother with each passing moment.

The basement was NOTHING like the rest of the Inn. It was dank and dark with flickering fluorescent bulbs buzzing in scattered fixtures hanging from the low ceiling. Linoleum tiles peeled up in places. One of the doors in my room locked from the outside. As I went from mattress to mattress, looking for the one with the fewest springs jutting out, the man walked past the door with a spray bottle in one hand and a rag in the other, glancing sideways into the room. I was officially freaked out... and, of course, the main door did not have a lock on it. I pushed a chair in front of it and pulled a sheet off of another bunk bed and draped it over mine. It felt like a bedroom fort, but with little comfort. I left my shoes and the lights on and fell asleep with one eye open and a pointed metal nail file in my hand, but not before calling my mother to let her know EXACTLY where I was.

I woke up alive at 5:30 am without an alarm. Within five minutes I was on the porch waiting for the cab that would take me to the train station. During the drive I told the cabbie about my creepy experience. I had stayed in a number of youth hostels during my trip to Amsterdam and met all sorts of interesting people from all over the world. I was so exited about finding out about the American hostel experience, wondering about the kinds of travelers I would meet and stories we would share. I didn't meet any travelers, but I definitely have a new story.

It was an hour and a half wait in the depot before we loaded the train. I found the quietest car and settled in, expecting to sleep for most of the trip. Once we started rolling, an attendant informed us that the snack car was open... coffee was sounding pretty good by now, and I decided that I did not want to sleep through my first train ride, so I gathered up my stuff and found a booth in the lounge car. I had my coffee, pencils, markers and a sketch book spread out on the table... just like I do when I feel like blowing off some time at a coffee house. The windows rose up, rounding into the ceiling. The view was beautiful. The coffee was kicking in and I was beginning to not feel so sleep deprived.

Come lunchtime, the car had begun to fill up. Every so often I would put aside my sketch book and observe the odd groupings of people that clustered together in random booths. Some of these people had been on the train for days and temporary friendships had formed that wouldn't typically work in the outside world. I was beginning to feel that we were existing in a little universe independent from the rest of the world... barreling through it, but not of it. I sensed that anything could happen here on this train. So, I sketched and waited for some more weirdness to unfold. I noticed a little paint left under my finger nails from El Rocio. It snapped me back to reality for a moment.

Sometime in the late afternoon, a group of Amish women filed into the lounge car and sat in the two booths in front of mine. They spoke softly and, from time to time, one would peer over their shoulder at what I was sketching. The oldest woman went from booth to booth, whispering something to each passenger. She eventually made it back to me. She asked if it would not offend me if they sang from their hymnal. "Please do," I said "I would be honored". They sang for hours. The mood shifted in the lounge car. No one left their seats. Although the words were Pennsylvania Dutch, I recognized the songs. They began singing "Amazing Grace". I looked out the window at the paradise we were passing through and it all seemed so... PERFECT. I could hear people singing softly. I could see people having their own private revelations. I felt certain that this would be one of the memories that flashes before my eyes as I am passing from this earth, hopefully a long time from now.

I can't really remember anything of any importance after that. Whatever followed failed to outshine this experience. Andy picked me up at the downtown station and literally had to carry me the rest of the way home. I was completely spent. I called my Dad a few days later to tell him about the train ride. He chuckled and said "That would only happen to you, Amanda." I guess when I expect amazing things to happen, they usually do. When I am in an adventure, I pretend that I'm in a movie... it never fails that adventure meets me when I am in this state of mind. Thank God for that.

First Sweat

2007-02-15T13:06:00.002-08:00

It was my first time down to Hank's lodge, guest of Robert Whiteagle, for an Hambleche which was to last the weekend. I'd never been on this sort of adventure before and, at the time, I had not known my host for all that long. The ride out was quiet. I didn't ask any questions, although a few dozen were fighting each other to the surface. I kept my mouth shut tight and watched the landscape shift and morph with long, late afternoon shadows. I could tell Robert was preparing himself in some way. Mt. Scott's flat top peaked vaguely off ahead to the right of the turnpike. "That's where we're headed" is the only thing I remember Robert saying. Turn off at the Medicine Park exit. Pass the LOVE'S station. Through the gate that says "DO NOT ENTER" and on to a pocked road scarred into the prairie. I imagined buffalo herds once blacking the land like a dancing swarm. We turned on a dirt road flanked with Cottonwoods that braided together at the crown and root. Passing through a porthole, I felt.

At camp, Robert quickly scouted out a spot to settle our things before heading down to the group. As soon as the formality of introductions was out of the way, instructions were dispensed. I was told to change my clothes, long skirt and sleeved shirt, and join the group for last minute preparations. I felt like an outsider listening to all their inside conversations as we tied little tobacco filled colored cloth packets to a long piece of string. Robert tended the fire. I watched everything, trying to soak in some sense of the rituals, the chants. I couldn't figure out why I was let in to glimpse such an intimate event. A boy was going up on the mountain to become a man. Surrounded by a chosen family…... and me. A throaty "HO" broke my quandary. It seemed the rocks were ready. It was time. The seven of us lined up, first shuffling around to fill an order and flow that was beyond my grasp. A Black Foot's chants wafted out of the lodge… solemn sound until I made sense of the song. "EM…..EIY….SEE….pause…KAY….EEE…WHY….." A chuckle slipped out and the Black Foot looked at me as I stooped into the lodge and I felt a little bit lighter now. A slight twinkling wink, he gave. I wondered if he was singing it for me…so I wouldn't feel quite so nervous. I imagine everyone could see it on my face.

After the first sweat, I had a bout of panic and I dreaded the idea of getting back in that hot little canvas covered dug-out. It was time to take this fellow I didn't know up on the mountain. One dread at a time, I thought. We wound our way through the forest in the dark and finally stopped at some incongruous spot. I hoped that someone was dropping bread crumbs along the way. My heart was pounding. The fellow sat down in a circle that Hank had drawn in the dirt. A string of ceremonial gestures. Some chanting. The fellow looked a little nervous. No water for 60 hours. No getting out of that circle. I would be nervous too. Ammunition tests shot off at odd intervals nearby. Out of everything, this is what I set my focus on. This was familiar... it was strange that I thought so. Snaking our way back through the dark, 'BOOM.........BOOM, BOOM' broke the lull of crunching leaves and breathing.

Back at camp I broke away and found a clearing. Who were these people that I found myself with in the woods on the edge of a freaking large weapon ammunitions range. I was certain that something sinister was going on and I was the unknowing sacrifice. Standing twenty feet away from Robert's car, I was praying for God to imbue me with the sudden knowledge on how to hot-wire. I DID NOT WANT TO BE THERE. "Seven minutes" Robert said, suddenly behind me, and broke the spell just enough to move again and think that I was, perhaps, overreacting. I felt like Marie Antoinette being carted to the guillotine. But I did it. I walked back to the lodge, although I felt like I was about to die. I stooped in again, prepared to meet my Maker.

I did die in there. Then the canvas flap opened at the close of the sweat and the cold rush grabbed my body like this was the first time I ever had the sense of feeling… like a baby's first slap, then gasp. People piled out in front of me. They looked like steaming ghosts silhouetted by the fire. I wanted to stay in there just a moment longer before being born back into world of Sense. Outside, I sat quietly by the fire. The steam had sweated away EVERYTHING. I felt….nothing. Nothing. I was conflicted between soaking in this pure, clean emptiness and scrambling for a familiar feeling. I settled on emptiness for as long as it would last. Nobody talked to me. This, too, they could see on my face. And they honored it.

Some Thoughts on the "F" Word

2007-02-15T13:06:00.001-08:00

The day I really began to ponder God was the day that I was told what God is not. As a young child I spent every Sunday morning in bible class at my Granny's Baptist church. On one particular Sunday, a substitute bible school teacher told me that God is in the trees and in the grass and in the flowers. I asked if God is in the chair that I was sitting in. She supposed that God was there as well. Nothing else, up to that point, had captured my imagination as completely as this idea that God is everywhere. After church, Granny asked me what I learned in bible school that day. I told her that God was in the front yard and in my Sunday dress. Granny informed me with her firm and loving conviction "NO, God is not! He is way up in the sky... so far away that you cannot see him. But he can see you." I must have sounded like a Heathen to her.

I was losing my faith at a very young age. When it came out all at once that Santa, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny weren't real, I lost a little bit more. I was secretly sure that God was in this group as well. But I held on as long as I could, even though I could see great conflicts in what I was being taught: God is loving until he burns your city down and turns you into salt. God is patient until he castes famine and plague on your land. I was eventually asked to leave the church youth program because I asked too many questions.

I remember the moment my faith completely dissolved. I was in my Catholic school science class during my freshman year. Something snapped. I don't recall what the teacher said, but one moment I was content in the belief that, even from far away, God was looking in on me... and the next moment I was completely abandoned. I felt like an orphan. As hard as I tried to think God back, he would not come. I felt that a bi-polar Father was better than none at all. I think it was Sartre that said something to the effect of 'If God does not exist, yet we still believe, we lose nothing. But if God does exist and we do not believe, we lose everything' My Catholic education helped me to believe in God enough to know I was going to hell for not believing.

My first serious boyfriend in college was a poet and a poorly aspiring Buddhist. Although our relationship was brief and doomed for failure, it changed my life. I don't know exactly what it was that he said during one of our sophomoric philosophical discussions, but as quickly as my faith left four years prior, it returned just as elusively. One moment I didn't believe in God and the next moment I believed... something. I felt, for the first time in years, that I was not going to Hell.

The next few months were spent trying to put that "something" into words. Winter was dragging on and I was desperate over not being able to make God tangible. One Sunday in late January, I was wandering through my empty college campus. It was cloudy and unbelievably cold. It was all I could do to look up from watching my feet make one un-plotted step in front of the other, but when I did look up, I saw God... in a tree. It seemed too early for the buds to start blooming, but I saw one tiny blossom trying to bust out of it's casing. I identified with its struggle. I knew that it would be greeted with the last dim remains of winter, but spring was coming soon. I felt like that bud was blooming just for me... that God walked me to that spot just so I could see the sign that I had been praying for. After that, I could see hints and signs everywhere, but I was afraid to share it.

Once I moved back to Oklahoma City a year later, I connected with people who were openly discussing all of the ideas and beliefs that I felt privately. I was introduced to spiritually slanted scientific and philosophical books like "As a Man Thinketh", "Stalking the Wild Pendulum" and "The Holographic Universe". I lost God in science and philosophy, but I found 'him' again in the same way. I saw something Divine in the art I was creating, in colors and shapes and sounds. I could hear the Sermon spilling out everywhere.

In 1998, some friends dragged me to a church that they had begun attending. The minister never spoke of guilt or hell or Jesus dying for my sins, but rather shared the idea that we are not separated from God. I came to believe that if God is infinite, then each of us can have our own unique belief and perspective. I came to understand that praying is simply focused imagination.

I can't say that I know God any better than when I was four... but, looking back, all the pitfalls, setbacks and bad judgment calls have helped enrich my faith and reveal hints of what my purpose is. With much stumbling, guidance and grace I now, most of the time, have the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the creativity to be able to express this Wisdom as I understand it.

Trading Songs for Stones

2007-02-15T13:05:00.001-08:00

I love hauling my guitar around on strolls through strange cities...I always end up with a tale or two. In Amsterdam I jammed with a sax player in the pass-through of the Reijk's Museum. Come to find out his mother once lived five miles from where I am now. I played on a boat ride through the canals with a guy named Roul who invited me to lay down a few tracks in his studio...I sang way too fast due to my excitement. I can't use the cd, but it was great having that moment captured. Every year that I'm able, I busk in front of the Crystal Theater in Okemah during the Woody Guthrie Festival...I wrote a song about that...which was one of the way-too-fast recordings. I've got too many great memories to recall, but they're all written out in journals hidden in nooks through out my house. Now I have a new memory, and for the moment it's my favorite.

I recently went to visit my mom and sister who live in a spectacular neighborhood in Portland. Just down the steps from their apartment is a beautiful park that I'd been looking forward to playing guitar in. At my first chance, I walked around the park until I found the perfect bench. It had sun speckles on it. A very old couple cuddled on a bench nearby, yet far enough away that I wouldn't invade their moment. I sat still and soaked the city in for a spell before singing to it. I played for the rush hour pedestrian traffic and students strolling to and from class. Occasionally someone would sit at the bench across from me and listen casually for a few minutes before continuing on to wherever they were headed. I would glance up from time to time and catch the eye of a person passing by.

Someone finally stopped...a raggedy, rugged man walking with a dog and his bike and everything he owned, I imagined, in a toddler carrier latched to the back of it. "That's the first red Takamine I've seen." he said. I couldn't tell if he was telling the truth, but decided it was a good conversation starter all the same. "Would you like to hear a song?" I asked. He didn't say anything, instead he rolled his bike off the sidewalk and leaned it on a tree beside my bench. I thought about what to play for a moment, deciding on "Old Man". I usually close my eyes when I play...or stare at the ground. I don't know why. I looked up to notice that elderly couple enjoying the song, but I didn't look at the rugged man until I finished. He was rolling a cigarette. A pre Fourth of July fire cracker exploded a little ways off which made his dog start shaking before going into a stupor. "He does this every time. I can't get very far when he's like this...he just shakes and goes in circles." I found it sad and slightly comical.

After a strange silence I introduced myself and reached out to shake his hand. It felt like stiff, weathered raw-hide. It was a good handshake...more like a hand hug. I liked this guy. "My name's Robert. I just got back from the coast. I used to ride all over, but I don't get very far since I found Bozz... you know, like Skaggs. I can't seem to get rid of him." I don't think he wanted to. He walked over to his bike, giving a quick check of the dog - who was still shuddering - then proceed to rifle through the random contents of his carrier. I noticed a cooking pot and a bowl, some clothes and a sack of food. He pulled out a thick plastic bag full of little stones. "I don't usually collect things, but this beach I was camping on was packed with agates." He sat down on the bench next to me and opened the bag, setting it between us. "Pick one out if you like." he said. "A stone for a song...great trade. I'll put it on my shrine." I remarked.

I LOVE rocks. I pick one up from every journey. Each one has a story. Where did it come from? How did it get there? What happened to make it look the way it does? These are some of the things I pondered when I peered into the bag. Where to begin? There were thousands, it seemed. I wanted to pour them out onto the sidewalk and spend an hour with each one, but decided against it. A odd shaped deep green one caught my eye more than any other, so I set it aside and kept looking. I found a rusty red one with a translucent streak running through it and an amber one. I couldn't decide. He said to keep all three. Then standing up, he pulled a stone from his pocket and handed it to me. "This is the coolest stone I've found" he said. I'll say...it was a grey river rock that had been worn into the shape of a skull. Tiny circular currents hollowed out eyes and a nose and a pin hole of a mouth. It was burnished shiny and smooth from all the time rolling around in his pocket. I marveled at it for a while, eventually saying "Who can look at this and not believe in God?". He didn't say anything.

I handed the stone back and said "I owe you two more songs." So I made good on the trade. When I finished he stood up and stated "I've got to get out of town before the fireworks start, or Bozz'll lead me in circles for days." before they headed off, Robert stretched out his hand, gifting me that marvelous stone. "For your shrine...good trade." Good trade indeed.

Stranger in a Strange Land

2007-02-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

I went to Amsterdam a few summers back...it was my first time going ANYWHERE alone. Before that I had not even crossed State lines in six years. I woke up one morning (after passing out on the couch the night before with the television on) to some travel show that was in Amsterdam. "I want to go there." I said. I say alot of things, but every so often I say something with an underlying force...a proclamation. I can't even control it, it just happens. So that morning I guess what I was saying underneath those words was "I AM GOING TO AMSTERDAM"...and so I did. I didn't have to worry about the "how" part. It seemed that God really wanted me to go...everything I needed to get there just fell in my lap.

I went because I needed to be stirred up. I needed to test my faith. I needed to know that no matter where I was on this earth that I would somehow be taken care of. I needed to find out that I did not need a plan to be okay, so I only booked lodging for the first five days of a three week trip...which was VERY uncomfortable for me to do. The "what if's" started swirling, but I stuck with my sixteen days of uncertainty. The first three days was spent on a little house boat. This is where I met my local guide for the rest of the trip...Thomas.

I could have stayed there for a few days and move on across Europe like everyone else does. I had considered that, but I fell in love with that city. This alone gave me an access not available to most. I did not want to see Amsterdam like an American tourist...and the locals obliged. I was invited to dinner in peoples homes and was a house guest in a flat that overlooked the Amstel River where the famous "Skinny Bridge" was viewable from the window. I even got to stay in a squat and record a few songs in a recording studio and take rides in little boats through the canals.

Thomas filled me in on dutch social customs. It's quite different to interpersonal dynamics in Oklahoma. It is considered rude to strike up a conversation with someone you haven't been introduced to. I tried to tell him about what it's like where I come from. Strangers say hi to each other and chat in the grocery store line and in the coffee shops it's pretty much public domain. Anyone can strike up a conversation with anyone and if someone says something interesting in a closed conversation, a person at another table throws in a comment if they feel like it. He did not understand this AT ALL. People in Amsterdam (and in many other places, I imagine) must be formally introduced by another, but once that happens they are quite friendly. People took a liking to my attempts at learning some dutch phrases, and anytime I was in a group English would be spoken so I would feel included...even if I was not involved in the conversation.

Another interesting difference was the sense of personal space people have over there. One night while Thomas and I were having dinner at a tiny Thai restaurant, a man came and sat at our table. I looked at my date as if to say "what the hell?". "This is usual." he said "We don't talk to him though." I mentioned how much I liked my meal to Thomas and the stranger at our table said that his was good as well. This is enough for me to strike up a conversation with him...Spiridon from Greece. He told me about his employment in a medicinal marijuana laboratory and his emphatic belief in the New World Order and within minutes all ten people in the restaurant were engaged in this strange conversation. I looked over at Thomas, who was completely dumbfounded. "This is what it is like where I come from." He got it...and he liked it.

Even though I had a guide, I was terrified for most of my trip. The "what if's" would not leave me alone. There was nothing familiar. My lame attempt at finding features of my friends in foreign faces did not work. I realized how much I missed hearing my name. I also realized how desperately I searched for a routine to give me some sense of security...like having coffee at the same cafe every morning or walking the same route to get somewhere instead of exploring that amazing city. I cried alot. I felt very hollow. I NEEDED something familiar. The solid week of rain did not help my mood either...nor anyone elses. A strange shift happened when the clouds finally broke. An old man who was walking in front of Thomas and me suddenly broke out into song. A few minutes later so did Thomas, and a few minutes after that I saw someone else singing...not quietly to themselves. It was like I was in a freakin' musical. I couldn't help but laugh...and laugh. I laughed so hard I started crying. It was probably that wacky stuff I'd just smoked, but everything became surreal. It WAS surreal. At that moment I knew that I was right where I needed to be on this earth...and I had to leave the next day. For most of the trip I wished an airplane would fall out of the sky and pick me up and take me home, but on my last day I decided to be as absolutely present I could and soak it all in...so I could remember.

I was so happy to be returning to my comfort zone again, but once I got back to Newark and the American vibe, I wanted to hitch the first flight back to Amsterdam. It was more of an assault on me than walking out of the Centraal Station alone in a foreign country with its strange sights and sounds and smells. I cried for most of the flight to Wichita...not because I was sad at returning home. It was more like the reality of what I had done was finally settling in. I, at last, had a chance to sit and think about this journey that I'd embarked on. It's the biggest thing I'd ever done...the biggest leap of faith I'd ever taken. I learned more about myself in that three weeks than I had in whole year prior. I discovered strengths and shortcomings I never knew I had and I realized that I can do anything I have the courage to imagine. I still draw upon those great lessons as I live my little life and I realize now that it can be as big as I let it be...Amen for that.