Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Read it and Weep

  As much as I can, I like to spotlight the amazing cool people I know. Because I know so many amazing people, this is a lifelong project, this spotlighting, and likely why I am so called to the writing life. (And by the way, knowing so many amazing people does not suggest I am using the term lightly, the way people in my Hollywood hailing/revering childhood family tend to overuse the term "genius") ....  

But before telling you about one of those amazing people, I have to first tell you about the group of amazing people writers (and friends who love them) who came over to the Beach Saturday night for a reading. It was the first time I organized a writers' mingle over here, though for years I'd been saying everyone had to meet each other and get to know the other coolest literary raw writing family in all of the Twin Cities.

There is no way I can begin to tell you about the magic that was Saturday night. Members from my current writing groups arrived, introducing themselves as "so-and-so: Fridays" or "so-and-so: Wednesdays." A few attendees even received their sacred Writing-with-Rox Writing Names, thanks to the spirit of the writing tribe. We played a few writing games, shared, and then moved on to the reading. Amidst the reading, there was spontaneous heartfelt expression of joy and unjoy and all in between, including a few rounds of song including everyone's childhood favorite, Fire and Rain by James Taylor. And yes, of course, we busted out the drums. I mean, come on. It's The Beach.

Some things are too soon to write about with any particular depth, Saturday night's reading among them; it's still happening in my body, in my mind, in this now empty after-Beach-party room, still sporting its aloha-lei party decor. I think the reason I fail to put the Beach back in order for days after events like this is because I just am not ready for it to end.  In the meantime, thank you to all my students. And all writers out there who write and share their stories.

Prompt #1: What was the most amazing night of your life? As always, you can write this in fiction as a character, or slice it out of your own life (or someone's you know if you want to play around with Voice). Write until you feel it is enough and then post it here or share with me via email for private.

Moving on...

Speaking of Stories being shared... this leads me to the Cool Amazing Person I was going to tell you about.


                             
Jaime Meyer is one of a kind. He is one of the urban Shamans I drum with, a man who is so very much in his truth that you cannot help be inspired to live, express, occupy your own evergiving beautious truth. He is a healer besides, versed in the Shamanic practice of Native American traditions (and much more than that, I am sure) who blends his unique quirk and gentle nurturing spirit into the drum jams and ceremonies. He loves his Mother Earth. He sings to us. He personifies the great spirit ancestors by bringing them among us in his down-to-earth easy to understand language so we all nod in agreement, embracing this as the everyday normal. "Well, yeah, that makes perfect sense," we say,  "Spirits like it when we bathe our stones of pain in Mississippi River water." He makes us laugh. He reminds us to look around the room and acknowledge the brother and sisterhood and to "talk to each other" because these are our people.

 Last week, before the healing drums, he sent out this story to prep us for the drumming. I read it and wept. Tears of happy and sad and truth. It moved me deeply (er... this is a "tell" by the way; I already "showed" you that it moved me. Jeez Louise, Rox...).

I asked him at once if I could publish it on my blog and elsewhere. He said, yes. Below is an excerpt from the email he sent out...Read it and weep. And afterwards, for Prompt #2, feel free to do a response write. You'll really want to.

Thanks for reading and hope to write with you soon! with love,  Olly Olly Ocean Free (my writing name) 

....

"To me, the difference between the Machine Mind and The Indigenous Soul can be seen most clearly when we ask, “How do I deal with this pain in my mind?” The machine mind answers, “Buy something to dull the pain.” So we buy a pill, a drink or some blinking or shiny thing. And before we know it we are wrapped in debt, stress, and “I have no time.” We teach our children that this is the “real world,” and they better get used to it. And we send them off to become part of the immense factory of the Western mind creating more gizmos to amuse us and then throw away.

To the question “How do I deal with this pain in my mind?’ the Indigenous Soul answers, “Lay on Mother Earth and weep.  Give her your tears, your moans, the sea water of your confused misery. She will take it and cleanse you, as she does everything else.”

Nothing to buy, nothing to believe, no skill, no dogma, no professional religious authority needed.

I want to tell you a sad story. I’m in a divorce. As they go, ours is not so ugly, but it’s full of pain and fear and that potential to be ugly at any moment. It’s heart-twisting, heart-wrenching, and I’m doing my best for my two shining boys to keep it from being heart-breaking.

A couple of weeks ago, my 8-year old, who cries over having to close down the computer game, but has not cried much over the divorce yet – this is a pain too real and deep, so he’s holding it deep down in his muscles – went into deep weeping. It spilled out all night long with moans and gasps and shattered phrases like “But why did she have to leave us? It can’t be forever, it just can’t be. I don’t want ot live in a boy’s house. We need a girl in this house.” On and on.

I held him, and cooed and stroked and whispered “It’s going to be all right” for two hours, and it just would not stop. I became afraid he was going to need to be hospitalized and sedated. That’s the Machine Mind.

I asked him, “Do you want to go outside and lay on the earth with me?” He suddenly stopped crying and said simply, “Okay.”

He wrapped himself in his bedspread. I got a candle and, on the way out the door, I remembered this rattle I had made to sell at my Winter Solstice event. It’s made of fragile reindeer hide, and was the last one of about a dozen and the only one that didn’t sell. Someone had dropped it into a box of stuff as we loaded out of the theatre, and when I found it later, one side was crushed in. It was now useless for making money. I grabbed it and my boy and I trudged out in the dark back yard. It was about 11:30, later than he had ever been up.

We sat in the quiet, cool night. A tiny candle burning, wrapped in his fluffy comforter. I said, ”You know whenever you are upset, you can go to Mother Earth and put your hand on it, or lay down on it, and you can give all those tears and all the sadness to her. She will take them and help you feel better.”

He put his hand on the grass. I asked him to close is eyes and breathe, and as he breathed out, let the sadness and confusion run out like trickling water, down into the earth to feed the grass and the plants. His face became calm and radiant as he breathed his pain out into our now sacred ground of the back yard. I asked him if it helped and he whispered so serenely, “Yes.”

I asked him to look around at the enormous elm tree embracing our yard, and the canopy of Elms and Maples all around us. I said he can also take his tears to these mothers. He is surrounded by mothers. I told him he has a human mother who loves him, and also many other mothers who love him and who will help him and all of us through this. We all hurt, and She can help us all if we ask. I rattled over him and sang a quiet healing song for few moments. His energy had completely transformed.

I gave him the rattle. I told him that now I realized maybe that rattle didn’t sell because it wanted to come to him. It, too, is smashed and wrecked on one side. But it has a soft, beautiful calming sound. I told him that I made it with love, with prayers that whoever owned it would be healed and calmed and strengthen. I told him it had the power of the reindeer in it. I told him how I had found the handle – the leg bone of a deer – in the woods when I was helping someone do a ceremony. I wasn’t looking for bones to make rattle handles, but as our prayers for her moved forward, suddenly I noticed that a few inches from me, these four bones were sticking up from the autumn leaves. At first I didn’t want to take them, but it seemed like they were shouting to me that they wanted to go with me. On the way home I realized they wanted to be rattle handles. I said the power of the Minnesota wild deer is in that rattle – and the power to come back from dying and become something else, something beautiful and useful.

He turned the rattle over and over in his hands. He drew his finger slowly around inside the smashed-in side. “Did you ever notice how the wrecked side is in the shape of a star?” He said. “When I draw a star, I draw it just like this.” He drew his finger in a star shape, over and over in that wound. “The power of the stars is in this rattle too.” He said.

I told him that someday when he is ready we will take that rattle apart and fix that smashed side and put it back together so it’s whole again. I told him I don’t think that will be very long from now, but we will do it when he says it’s time.

He looked up me. “Will you teach me that song someday?”

“Here is a secret between you and me,” I said. “That song was taught to me by a little river in New Mexico, 20 years ago. I was learning from a teacher, and during the work I fell into a great grief. She said to go lay in the little river for as long as it took until the grief had been washed away. I laid in that river for 30 minutes and it was freezing – it was snow melted from the mountains, running down, over me. I nearly turned blue laying there, weeping from regret, sadness, and shame. That river took it away and taught me that song, and it’s the song I’ve used a thousand times to sing over people to help them.

His eyes were as wide as moons. In an astonished voice, he whispered, “You’ve been to New Mexico?”

We went back inside and I think we both slept for 11 hours. I guess that story is about many things, but for right now, it’s about how to move into the Indigenous Mind to help us wrecked beings living in the Machine, how we mend the holes we create in the net of life, or that are created for us.  

May you lay gorgeously on the Mothering Earth.

May your tears shine.

May the holes in your net be mended by Her.

May you be sweetened by Spirit

May you be sweetened by Spirit. 

from Jaime Meyer at drummingthesoulawake.com