The Band's Visit

I got Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass from the library because I heard Robert Bly tell a story about going to Hafiz's grave in Iran. While he was there, he noticed a steady flow of school children arriving to sing songs to their beloved poet. Bly's comment: what would it be like if school children made pilgrimages to Walt Whitman's grave to sing songs? (It's at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, NJ - Andy checked.)

I was happy to re-discover in particular his Song of Myself where he sings the praises of the physical body and spirit because it gave me words to describe a movie I just saw. It is The Band's Visit. It is a 24 hour story of an Egyptian military band stranded in an Israeli settlement. They had been invited to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center, but had ended up in a town with "no, no Arab culture center here, no Israeli culture, no culture at all" as the Israeli cafe owner tells them. It is truly a Song of Humanity. I hope you get to see it.

It has been a couple of weeks of cultural expansion for me, I think. Last night Paul Farmer spoke in a crowded auditorium to 1500 mostly students at Duke University. He is an infectious disease doctor and anthropologist whose story is told in Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains. When I read the book several years ago, I was struck by his reference to the "long defeat" that privileged people need to get used to when they throw their energy into working for oppressed people; how we can't rely on "success" to keep us motivated. In his quirky, brilliant talk, Farmer gave the students (and us) food for the brain and for the heart.

Spending 5 days walking in the Appalaichan mountains, cooking on a fire and talking with dear friends, I kept thinking about how integral culture is to change . That we are in the midst of Earth-shaking change seems like a truth that will prove itself in hindsight. And perhaps it is the same with culture - will we look back and notice how/where the stuff of being human shifted and changed? Really, I wonder about the hows and whys of our own changes contribute to something that might keep us alive, might build cultures that bring us together... I know that there are myriad ways big and small that nourish and build the kind of strength that living alive and whole - respectfully - demands...

I would like to know what you are thinking.

and what are YOU doing?

Andy/Lev and I started writing this blog to chronicle our journey after driving away from our home. We’d sold the house we built and given away most of the stuff that had filled our lives for 16 years and embarked on a journey to find out what it means to be at home on this planet. Though we had hoped to be more “planfull” about what was next for us, specific plans springing from detailed goals eluded us – right up to and including the moment we drove away from our house. We tended to speak in vague phrases like being “available” and “holding open” our lives for what would come. And certainly the void left after abandoning a householding life has been filled, we have not wanted for… anything. Within 3 weeks of driving up our driveway for the last time we were standing on a makeshift stage in a field in Crawford, Texas singing We Shall Overcome with Joan Baez having driven 2500 miles to George Bush’s lair in a veggie oil powered school bus. The rest is history (or is it mystory?) and much about what powers our lives remains unplanned – a mystery. And I am, mostly content to be alive and available to the winds and rivers that move us from place to place. Looking back on the last 3 years, the events loom large on the horizon like mountains silhouetted by the setting sun. But the events, like mountains in the distance, are a singular perspective. You can’t see the trees, the birds, the mice let alone the scat, the trails and blossoms scattered along the ground.

We are daily engaged with, not events, but choices and innovations that are the by-product of a – perhaps not truly- nomadic life but certainly a wayfaring one characterized maybe more by freedom than movement. Yesterday a smart friend spoke about the “epic” and “mundane” stories that we are [all!] simultaneously living. I am drawn to the epic, to the edges, to possibility… the epic proportions of life lived on Planet Earth. Yet it is the mundane that engages and satisfies me today. Yesterday I wove a net of rope that can be hooked onto the bookshelf to keep the books in place when driving and – praisethelord! – I finally solved the problem of how to keep the drawers from opening. Washing dishes is a challenge to conserve water that we have to carry from somewhere and I love the elegance of efficiency. We are inventing some fine one-pot dishes – lentils and rice with carrots, beets and onions or any vegetables, pasta too lends itself to quick cooking and easy cleanup. We live, not self-sustaining since we rely on an infrastructure that is easy to take for granted, but in a vein that keeps our lives from gathering too much moss! Our bathroom is the woods and our sewer system is a compost pile that – finally – allows us live by the standard that most other animals adhere to - which is don’t shit in your drinking water – or in your nest for that matter.

Still the question “what are you doing?” can throw me into 24 hours of desperate re-evaluation. What ARE we doing? What are YOU doing?

So here’s to walking the mundane trails. The path we’re currently following will take us to Vermont for a 30+ year tradition of Seder with friends, then on to Cape Cod for another long tradition of early spring on the ocean. Andy will detour on a skytrail to manage a tour group to Ireland in May. Magnolia will be getting a rear-end replacement to improve her gas milage and ease on the road and (maybe!) a solar panel to recharge her batteries when we’re parked. Tomorrow is a hike in the mountains with the glorious redbuds and dogwoods.

Much love,
Ruby