I Need To Feel The Drums

October 19, 2023

He was sitting in the corner booth when I walked into the café.

I’ve been gone for a while and the girls at the café miss me when I go off on my rambles. So, I let them know when I’m leaving and come walking in the door soon after getting back. I love seeing their smiles and the twinkle in their eyes when my boot heels come clonking through the door.

He was an ex-con and hadn’t been out long. Late forties or early fifties. He still had his dang near “skint” prison hair-cut. That skint head helps control head lice in the pen. They find other hairy places though. Tats? None on his face but plenty enough on his arms. There was a darkness in his eyes. He was constantly scanning the room like a scared rabbit. I sat a few tables away and facing him. Not out of any fearfulness of the character. It was simply that he was the only “non-passive” in the room. It’s just something engrained in me from my way back. He’s got a hard row to hoe ahead of him. God bless him. Maybe he can beat the recidivism rate. Thirty-nine percent go back within three years.

I was thinking about Paul on the first leg of my drive back first of the week. Everything that he held dear changed in an instant when he got blinded by the Light. Then he went into the seclusion found in solitude for three years. Imagine that. Three years alone in the desert being taught by the Holy Spirit.

This life-unfolding transition thing is really hard for me. I have no personal frame of reference in my repertoire of personal life-experiences to draw upon. It’s not like that initial “seeing the Light” conversion experience that we have. But it is definitely a deeper conversion of sorts thing that’s going on in me. In all the craziness of this surreal experience, I have to stay mindful of the spiritual significances as I’m guided toward such an uncertain future that, in my vision, is completely socked in with fog right now. Life, for me, has become a very "in the moment" daily affair.

It's a quiet and shady spot to sit. I drive by it several times every week. I pulled in and parked there today in that cemetery and simply sat and prayed the Rosary. Awesome. Purely awesome. It took an hour to pray the Rosary. There were a lot of long prayerful pauses. Meditating. Contemplating. Worshiping. I think it is a Baptist church cemetery. I hope they’re not offended.

I need to feel the drums. It’s been a long time.

They are really coming on with the new pow wow arena at the Creek rez. It became our tradition to go to the pow wow Thanksgiving Day after we moved to Alabama from New Jersey. Shirli and I rarely ever missed going and only stopped when her knees started going bad and walking became such a painful chore for her. 

I’m thinking about going to feel the drums and watch some of the dancing. Yeah. I know in advance that it will be emotionally challenging. Significant “firsts” are what they are. And to sit there at the pow wow without Shirli physically sitting beside me will be a majorly significant first for me. 

Maybe I need to borrow somebody's emotional support dog for the day or take along a lady day-companion that pleases my senses. Nah. This first, like so many of the others, is, as Whitley sang, just between an old memory and me.