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| Enjoying the Mexican art form of Son Jarocho at the Hive |
On Thursday, Spetember 8th, 2011, my mother's 70th birthday came with a BANG! At around 3:38pm, power went out all across San Diego County as well as north to Orange County and east into the state of Arizona. During the eleven-hour outage, some reports indicate that close to 5 million people spent an evening reveling in the dark together. The week had already been surreal - it began with unusual gray skies and drizzle on a Labor Day, during which I walked by a motionless body laying prostrate on a Golden Hill sidewalk and then police sirens blared late into the early morning hours of Tuesday. It then progressed into also including a rare heatwave that I was closing this 5th floor loft's blinds to in an attempt at keeping the Prosperity Hive cool. By Thursday afternoon, although I had noticed that the small fan I was using for a minor reprieve had cut out as I sat typing at my desk it wasn't until a dear friend had phoned from Carlsbad, inquiring as to if I had also lost power, that I took the time to really pay attention. BLACK OUT!
The day continued, somewhat according to plan. I met with a ShaktiRising apprentice, an ongoing occurrence that has been taking place since spring, in the goal of sharing the everyday of transformational growth through the language of the dance. On this afternoon, however, we were joined by two men who struggled to escape the monkey mind of their brains. Caught up within the rapid firings of analytical thinking, they could not present their selves to the here and now of this moment. Together, we discussed the potency of this time. Melanie was excited to greet the possibility of change that the power outage represented. "Remember," I shared, "the counterbalance of excitement is pain." "Hmmm...", both she and the men reflected. "What we strive towards is a neutrality of being in which we allow for life's experiences while not experiencing ourselves as being pulled off of our centers," I continued. "Neither up nor down, neither happy nor sad, we simply experience it all as par for course." Yes, indeed.
Later on that evening, as darkness had fallen and I found myself alone within the comforting, yellow walls of the Hive, I took my BodyMind on a walking meditation around my beloved city. Of course I was pleased to find what I endeavor to create - people gathering together, in community and communication. Homes, streets and neighborhoods had truly come alive. Voices could be heard, ringing together in a tinny din. The glow of candlelight and campfires burned. Shadows moved across the darkened pavement. Television - our one and only true competitor - had, finally, fallen silent. We were free - to enjoy each other, and these moments, now. Although oil was not flowing through SDG&E's main SoCal pipeline, the air was charged with electricity. The excitement was palpable. It was beautiful and true poetry in motion. Dear God - Let's turn if off more often.
And, yet, being the wizened, close-to-35-years-old that I am, I wondered, "If this blackout were to persist - indefinitely - how long will it take for the excitement to be transmuted into fear, the joy into pain?" "If we can no longer walk to the neighborhood store to purchase our food - our very livelihood - what then?" The answer is, I don't know. But what I do know is that we have to cultivate the discipline to pull ourselves away from the media and to spend time with each other again. Then, we have to relearn how to gather our own food - how to grow it locally and, if need be, how to hunt for it here in the coastal desert. This isn't about fear. It's about LOVE - for, in moving forward, we do not know what will come. All we can do is be prepared and respond. And, by preparing, we simply present ourselves to what is. Presence is our Collective Movement Forward - JOIN US!
