Birthday Gift

One beautiful spring day this year, Sylvain and I spent the day at Point Pelee National Park. Around noon we took a break to eat lunch and wander through the gift shop.

I was looking through all the field guides and nature books when I noticed two people leafing through a tome. As they returned it to the top shelf face out, I saw the title: Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario: 2001-2005.

“Holy!” I thought, “That’s my book!”

Ok, not MYYYY book. But it is the monumental scientific achievement into which I poured my heart and soul and sweat and many, many, many hours in the field for five years of my life after having been asked to volunteer to captain a team and take responsibility for one of the 10 x 10 km squares of Ontario for this project.

“Hey! I contributed to that!” I squeaked to no one in particular as the couple walked away. Slowly I pulled it down from the shelf and turned to the contributors page. It took a while to find my name in the alphabetized sea of names. It takes one heck of a volunteer turn-out to cover a province this size.

From the website: “Without doubt, the second Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas ranks among the most successful, important, and exciting bird research and conservation projects ever undertaken in the Western Hemisphere.”

Sylvain found me there pouring over the glossy maps. “See that little square that is darker orange than the square next to it? That’s my red-bellied woodpecker,” I said, trying not to sound too proud.

“Really?” Sylvain was genuinely interested.  I told him about degrees of evidence we used to document breeding species, such as if you see a bird carrying a fecal sac away from a nest, that means there are babies in the nest.

“It’s like taking out the dirty diapers,” I explained.

“We should get this,” Sylvain proposed.

“No, no. We don’t need it. It costs about a hundred dollars. I’ll only look at it once or twice. I don’t need to own it,” I said.

On Tuesday night when I got in from my movie with R (she had no idea it was my birthday and Sylvain was okay with my going out with someone else on that night), there was a birthday card lying on top of my robe on the bed.  I read it. It was very sweet.

I went about my ablutions and only right before bed did I pick up my robe to find hidden underneath: the tome.

I’d say there are two kinds of partners in the world: those who do something for your birthday just so they can tick it off the to do list and know they did something, and those who figure out what it would take to touch your heart.

Coming Up for Air

Whew! This week has been too hectic. I still haven’t been around to read blogs; I’ve carved out this 30 minutes to post.

Monday I was well enough to go back to work and well enough to get out and support the first annual Windsor International Fringe Festival.  Those who moan about the need to develop Windsor’s cultural side MUST come out and support such events, show our appreciation to the organizers and performers and encourage MORE things like it. We saw The Girl in the Picture Tries to Hang Up the Phone, which I do not recommend you see without a box of tissues if you were raised by an alcoholic. Heavy stuff.

Tuesday’s movie date with my new friend from work is the result of my Be Brave item from the week before. Not only did she say yes, she’d love to get together socially, but she seems really keen.  She is a lovely young woman from Taiwan who has been in this city two years. She suggested we go to a movie on the night when a cinema on the south side has half-price night.  We had a really nice supper at Red Sail.

Mind you, for $4.20, you don’t get to choose from a marquis of top-notch films. These are the summer kid pleasers, actions films and sci-fi. R wants to see them all before the summer is over. We managed to agree on Wall-e. I knew it was Pixar and I trust Pixar to deliver ingenious nimation and a good story.

Boy, did we pick right. I rarely find a film I’d sit through twice, but this film might be Pixar’s best yet. Before it started, the kiddies were squirming and babies were crying. Two minutes into it, every child was quiet as a mouse and there wasn’t another peep for an hour and 37 minutes.  The fact that the movie could be enjoyed by children as young as two was due in part to the fact that the entire dialogue for the first half of the movie consists mainly of just two words: Wall-e and EVE.

Parallel to the kiddie flick going on was a movie for all ages with a serious message about what we are doing to our bodies and our planet.

Last night we ventured out again to the Fringe Festival for a Trois. I can’t believe I went out three nights in a row. Pant, pant, pant.

Please, if you’re in Windsor, don’t miss this event. It continues through the weekend. If nothing else, at least go toss a few coins in the direction of the Buskers.

Sylvain and I will not be able to Fringe anymore this week, however, because tomorrow we are off to Toronto for the wedding of a friend of his.

Now I have to get back to packing, folding laundry and getting ready to hit the road tomorrow.

Whew!

Eye Contact

Saturday is usually my day to catch up on all my blog reading, but I was sick and slept all day. Let me tell you something. When you are sick, there is nothing like having a loving partner who hovers and asks you if you want some ginger ale and when is the last time you took your temperature and can I refill your water glass.

Sylvain is an amazing partner.

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The Be Brave act I want to report from last week stems from the work I’ve been doing using Pema Chödrön’s CDs Getting Unstuck. One of the retreat participants asked what she does, what we should all do, when someone triggers your Shenpa. She said a lot of things, but the bottom line was that you STAY present. This means maintaining eye contact with the other person. That is one detail she mentioned and seemed to be stressing as very important.

That got me to thinking. Lately I had been avoiding eye contact with a certain person on days when I was stuck. You know, something about them is irritating you or they’ve pushed your button.

I started thinking about all the times in a given week I avert my eyes and try not to make eye contact with people. Usually it is with extroverts when I don’t want a conversation started because I don’t have the energy for all their drama. There is one at work, for example, who always jokes around in this high-energy, corny way that makes me want to roll my eyes and groan and tell him I’m not a morning person. One day in the deli, as I stood there with my eyes cast down, he said, “ARKANSAS, what are you doing?” That’s what he calls me. Arkansas.

Since he’s a real kidder, I decided to play his game.

“Avoiding you,” I said. That was pretty brave since he is one of the owners of the company.

“I know,” he said. And then we laughed and his tone softened.

So last week my Be Brave thing for three or four days in a row was eye contact, no looking away.

Know what? This is actually easier and takes LESS energy than avoiding. It’s empowering, too.

I think the habit came from an inner fear that I won’t be able to establish and maintain healthy boundaries once the person has my eye. So to avoid having to be assertive, I just put up the NOTLOOKINGATYOU wall.

What Ane Pema is teaching me is the value of staying…staying with EVERYTHING, the hot and the cold, the painful and the comfortable, the difficult and the easy.

If you are interested in learning more, Amazon has the first pages of her book The Wisdom of No Escape for public reading.

Brilliante Premio

Lovely Marianne of Mandalas and More has awarded me this trophy for introducing her to blogging. Thank you, Marianne! I am really glad you joined this wonderful community. Before you know it, Lynn will be paying you a visit way over there across the pond. Don’t be surprised!

Here are the “rules” of accepting the award. (Please note: you can copy and paste these rules from my blog to yours. )

1) Put the logo on your blog.
2) Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4) Add links to those blogs on yours.
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

I would like to nominate EVERYONE who hasn’t already gotten this award, but I will start with these seven:

Annie at Blissful Bohemian for helping me stay on the path, for encouraging words, for wisdom and for the peaceful aura her blog has.

Andrea at Colouring Outside the Lines because her artwork makes my heart sing.

Karen at Art in the Garage for designing my super fabulous, most beautiful blog banner and for her tender heart and giving nature. Did you know she and her daughter sent me a book just because they knew I would love it? They ordered it and had it shipped to me. How sweet is THAT? The world is filled with good people.

Olivia at Happy Luau for her continued honesty and hard, hard work. For being here and being real and not giving up.

My friend Violet of Miserablebliss, who introduced me to blogging, for making me laugh every single day.

Sister Kathryn of Hearthtalks for being so very encouraging, nurturing and bursting with Love.

Rick of Hamguin’s Hide-not for always being there for those who need an encouraging word.

This is a loving community and I’m very blessed to be a part of it.

PS: Great post from Sylvain tonight.

Permission

Olivia and I are not the only ones doing Be Brave again. Leah is also doing it AND Jessie is leading a second cycle starting the 21st.

Leah and Olivia are both talking about giving oneself permission. Jessie already stressed that one of the rules of Be Brave is that you make your own rules. Only YOU can define brave for you. You decide how many days to participate. You decide if bravery means tackling something big or something seemingly small.

Olivia is giving herself permission to have days in between brave acts in order to integrate the learning, the experience. I think this is a great idea.

The more I think about what brave things I can do, the more I realize that almost all my fears revolve around the same complex. My freak outs come from thinking I am bothering someone, inconveniencing them, causing them to go out of their way JUST FOR ME. There are more nuances and branches off this main complex, but that’s the heart of it. I do a lot of MINDREADING, putting thoughts into others’ heads. I KNOW! That’s a self-esteem 101 no-no. But at 45, I’m still doing it!

I also have trouble asserting my rights and communicating my needs then sticking to a decision in the face of being asked repeatedly if I’m SURE. Sometimes a friend or loved one will try to persuade me to go along with another idea. I want to be flexible, but sometimes I need to be loyal to myself and stick to the plan I know honours my inner whisperings about what I need right now for my wellbeing.

Yesterday was my alone day. The bravest thing I did all day was stay with the mild feeling of anxiety that rested in my chest all day long without trying to escape from it through any of my usual means. I did not buy a chocolate bar. I did not get a coffee. I just held it in mindfulness and went on with my day.

My brave acts today were small but important for me. I told the Yoga instructor that I’m having trouble hearing her. For the rest of the day I communicated my needs simply and clearly: I need a nap before we go for a walk in the woods. I don’t want to have supper tonight with the family. I’m having a bowl of cereal and turning in early.

That last one was hard because I perceive this household to be very ritual-oriented. I know that if I step outside those rituals, such as everyone together at 5:30 for supper, very often there will be questions the next day. “Are you feeling better now?” It’s hard for me not to feel that I owe everyone an explanation for ducking out. No, I’m not sick. No, I’m not mad at you. No, nobody hurt my feelings. I just felt like having cereal for supper and going to bed early.

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A moment of joy today was picking wild blackberries and sharing them with Sylvain. On our walks, I sometimes find things we can eat. Sylvain is cautious. “Are you sure these are edible,” he asks as I reach into the low-hanging branches of a mulberry tree.

Broke Through

The first times I ever tried meditating, which would have been a good 20 years ago, it was pretty funny. I know now that what happened to me happens to a lot of people who try to meditate. I thought there was something different about me. “I can’t meditate,” I told my friend. She was so surprised to hear that about me. Of all the people she knew, she thought I was the meditating sort.

The tapes and books I’ve been reading lately all have assured me that my experience is perfectly normal. These teachers have let me know that my busy mind is not a problem. It’s human. My getting itches I want to scratch and feeling uncomfortable 30 seconds into what I thought was going to be a comfortable sitting position…none of this is unusual nor is it a problem. I am just to hold in awareness whatever arises and gently guide my focus back to the breath.

THIS breath.

THIS breath.

And THIS breath.

If I find I’ve been thinking, I can say to myself, “thinking” as if the thought were a bubble and I were touching it lightly with a feather.

Then gently bringing my attention back to the breath.

And again.

And again.

With humour and patience and compassion.

But days and days had gone by and I wasn’t adding any minutes to the length of time I could sit before I couldn’t handle any more. I thought I should be getting less fidgety over time.

Then yesterday I tried something different. In one of the chapters of The MIracle of Mindfulness (I THINK that’s where I got this idea), Thich Nhat Hanh suggests you may want to try counting the breaths to ten and starting over.

In breath one, out breath one.

In breath two, out breath two.

So I sat under the pine tree on the grass and tried this, keeping track of which cycle of ten I was on with my fingers.

I had a VERY different experience this time. This time I settled into a nice, quiet place where my thoughts intruded less frequently. I did not fidget. In fact, I forgot all about the rest of my body. Everything melted away except in breath five, out breath five, in breath six, out breath six,…

I was able to sit much longer, and for the first time, there was an ease to it. Not only that, but this was also the first time I felt noticeably different after meditation than I had felt going into it.

To me, this was nothing short of a small miracle.

The only problem was… I ran out of fingers. I could only do ten cycles of ten. That’s when I got the grand idea to look into malas. Instead of buying one, I decided to make one.

Sylvain and I are only left by ourselves in this house once in a blue moon, but it happened tonight! After supper, I went down to the basement and dragged out the box marked “craft room” that has been packed away for a year. Soon the breakfast table was buried under pliers, wire, crimps, findings, and tiny jars–each with a different colour group of beads.

The cat was quite interested and wanted to help. Ma peeked in my CRAFT ROOM box and made off with a stack of Marie Claire Idees.

I Just Did

At lunch time after I eat something in the deli, I sit somewhere and read for a while.  I might sit in my car and try meditating. Some days I sit under a nearby conifer on the grassy slope between the parking lot and road.  Lately I am having a lot of fun with a little field guide to the wildflowers of Ontario that I picked up the other day at Ojibway Park Nature Centre. Sylvain is having fun with it, too. It has added a new dimension to our walks.

For a long time I have yearned to see what is over a wild and grassy hill next door to where I work. I’m not sure if the company next door owns the land or if the city owns it. Since I see blackbirds, ducks and geese pitching in behind the hill, I know there is a hollow and water.  But until yesterday, my obsessive adherence to rules (real and presumed) has kept me from exploring.  I might be tresspassing! Someone might fuss at me. Oh, dear.

Yesterday, in the spirit of Be Brave, I decided to have a look.  I found a little pond overgrown with reeds, as well as a new flower to identify with my little field guide: Canada Thistle.

The second brave thing I did was spend the whole afternoon getting started on the dreaded procedure manual. Whew! It feels so good to have BEGUN.

The third brave thing I did surprised the heck out of Sylvain. He found his doppleganger…the one we’ve been jokingly talking about tracking down…on Classmates dot com. I told Sylvain I am a paid member and so I can email him. He thought I was speaking hypothetically.  I did it. I emailed this stranger who lives in our city and told him about all our encounters and would he consider letting us see a photo? Hee hee.

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Today Sylvain wanted to go to the Blues Fest and I wanted to hear some down and dirty Delta Blues, too. But I don’t like crowds very much. So my brave thing today was going to be agreeing to go.  But then Sylvain realized the guy we really want to see plays tomorrow, not tonight.

So there I was at 4:51 with nothing brave having been done yet for today.  I had to come up with something fast. There was one thing I was saving up for when I get braver in a few weeks. I was hoping to get the courage to give my phone number / email to a young woman at work and suggest we could do something together outside of work if she thinks that would be fun.  I was too shy to walk over to her desk and hand her my number, so I emailed her.  Yikes! I had to hit SEND really fast before I changed my mind.

When I told Sylvain about it, I said. “I never do that. I am always the passive one. Either people initiate things with me or I just don’t do anything with other people.”

“I’ve learned that about you,” he said.

Maybe I need to stop thinking in terms of “I never.”  I almost never.  I used to never.

I just did.

Being Brave

Back when Jessie sponsored the Be Brave project and a bunch of bloggers committed to doing one thing each day that scares them, I didn’t participate.  But now, inspired by Olivia, I want to do this for 30 days.  I know I’m stuck being a lot of silly, small fears and I think this challenge may be just the push I need to get me out of this fear rut.

It’s kind of scary to post my be brave things from each day because you are possibly going to shake your heads and think, What a WUSS! THAT took courage? Anyone can do that. Pffft.  So I guess this blog post is a Be Brave thing, eh?

There are a whole mountain of tiny things I have been putting off and off and off and off for MONTHS because of small fears or low level anxiety around them. Yet that is probably a good place to start…with a baby step or two. Who knows where I might build up to over 30 days?

SO! Day one was yesterday. My first small challenge was to try driving my car in the auto-stick mode for the first time. That was fun. Somehow I had managed to build some fear/anxiety around trying that for the first time.

Actually, there was something else before that…the night before. I have been going around for a year with this huge chip on my shoulder, this giant pet peeve that has to do with something in this household. The refrigerator is very full all the time. And so I had this story going in my head that I couldn’t buy myself grapes for my lunch or veggies to have on hand because there was no way to keep them cold. No room left in the fridge for my stuff.

The fact is that the pet peeve was just my way of avoiding asserting myself and claiming something for myself that I need for my health and wellbeing. Instead of broaching this subject with another household member, I just went around denying myself what I needed and grumbling in the shadows.  ENOUGH.  I bought the grapes. I made room in the fridge to stash them until morning. I ate them at work.

The third brave thing I did Tuesday was stay with meditating past the point when I usually give up on my fidgety self.

The fourth brave things I did that day was tell my supervisor that I still haven’t started work on the procedure manual she asked me to start writing when I had time.  Well, I haven’t had time. Or haven’t made time. Maybe the project is overwhelming me and I’m procrastinating.  In any case, I told her.  Her response left me with a new challenge. While I feel I am barely keeping on top of my case load and don’t have time for this extra project, she reminded me that my case load is a lot smaller than a few months ago.  So what’s my excuse?

Starting the damn thing might be another day’s challenge. I think the key to being able to start will be reminding myself that it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be the best procedure manual ever written on planet earth. SIGH.  Sometimes I want to hit myself in the head with a self-help book.

Today I only had one Be Brave thing on my agenda. I was to pick up the phone and make an appointment for a massage or some sort of body work. It doesn’t help that we are not supposed to make such calls from our desks and the only phone we are permitted to use for personal calls is high on the wall in the small, crowded deli.  Once again, I was using the inconvenient setup as an excuse to grumble day in and day out about what stupid company would not give their employees a private area where they can make calls.

Now that I’m tackling these small things, it feels like a Feng Shui master has rearranged the furniture in my psychic space. The air is moving again.

Yesterday I had to get some tax papers out and ended up sitting in the middle of the den cleaning out and re-labelling all my files. I had so much energy yesterday, it was almost scary. Instead of leaving things at the top of the stairs for the next time I went down, or at the foot of the stairs for the next time I went up, I ran up and down all evening in this “no time like the present” state of mind.

Wherever I Go There I Am

When I posted this question, I was grappling with something.

Today the title chapter of Wherever You Go There You Are came up and grabbed me by both shoulders, looked me straight in the eye and gave me a good shake.

Have you ever noticed that there is no running away from anything? That, sooner or later, the things that you don’t want to deal with and try to escape from, or paper over and pretend aren’t there, catch up with you–especially if they have to do with old patterns and fears?  The romantic notion is that if it’s no good over here, you have only to go over there and things will be different. If this job is no good, change jobs. If this wife is no good, change wives. If this town is no good, change towns. If these children are a problem, leave them for other people to look after. The underlying thinking is that the reason for your troubles is outside of you–in the location, in others, in the circumstances.  Change the location, change the circumstances, and everything will fall into place; you can start over, have a new beginning.

The trouble with this way of seeing is that it conveniently ignores the fact that you carry your head and your heart, and what some would call your ‘karma,’ around with you. You cannot escape yourself, try as you might. And what reason, other than pure wishful thinking, would you have to suspect that things would be different or better somewhere else anyway?  Sooner or later, the same problems would arise if in fact they stem in large part form your patterns of seeing, thinking, and behaving. Too often, our lives cease working because we cease working at life, because we are unwilling to take responsibility for things as they are, and to work with our difficulties. We don’t understand that it is actually possible to attain clarity, understanding, and transformation right in the middle of what is here and now, however problematic it may be. But it is easier and less threatening to our sense of self to project our involvement in our problems onto other people and the environment.

It is so much easier to find fault, to blame, to believe that what is needed is a change on the outside, an escape from the forces that are holding you back, preventing you from growing, from finding happiness. You can even blame yourself for it all and, in the ultimate escape from responsibility, run away feeling damaged beyond repair. In either case, you believe that you are incapable of true change or growth, and that you need to spare others any more pain by removing yourself from the scene.

The casualties of this way of looking at things are all over the place. Look virtually anywhere and you will find broken relationships, broken families, broken people–wanderers with no roots, lost, going from this place to that, this job to that, this relationship to that, this idea of salvation to that, in the desperate hop that the right person, the right job, the right place, the right book will make it all better. Or feeling isolated, unlovable and in despair, having given up looking and even making any attempt, however misguided, to find peace of mind.

By itself, meditation does not confer immunity from this pattern of looking elsewhere for answers and solutions to one’s problems. Sometimes people chronically go from one technique to another, or from teacher to teacher, or tradition to tradition, looking for that special something, that special teaching, that special relationship, that momentary “high” which will open the door to self-understanding and liberation. But this can turn into serious delusion, an unending quest to escape looking at what is closest to home and perhaps most painful. Out of fear and yearning for someone special to help them to see clearly, people sometimes fall into unhealthy dependency relationships with meditation teachers, forgetting that no matter how good the teacher, ultimately you have to live the inner work yourself, and that work always comes from the cloth of your own life.

…

There is no successful escaping from yourself in the long run, only transformation. It doesn’t matter whether you are using drugs or meditation, alcohol or Club Med, divorce or quitting your job. There can be no resolution leading to growth until the present situation has been faced completely and you have opened to it with mindfulness, allowing the roughness of the situation itself to sand down your own rough edges. In other words, you must be willing to let life itself become your teacher.

This is the path of working where you find yourself, with what is found here and now. This, then, really is it…this place, this relationship, this dilemma, this job. The challenge of mindfulness is to work with the very circumstances that you find yourself in–no matter how unpleasant, how discouraging, how limited, how unending and stuck they may appear to be–and to make sure that you have done everything in your power to use their energies to transform yourself before you decide to cut your losses and move on. It is right here that the real work needs to happen.

Documenting Pill Effects and Yoga

Friday – first day on lots of pills (10): headache. Fell asleep with the mild headache and it was still there in the morning. No nausea, as some report. Lucky me.

Saturday – day two. (12) Headache came and went. It was mild.  I was very down and had zero energy. I slept.  I went for a long bike ride with Sylvain in the sun, and then I went back to bed and slept some more. I got up for supper and retired early so as to be able to rise early for yoga on Sunday (class meets at 10:00 but I like to be early).  Felt good to give myself permission to sleep, minimal pangs of guilt over “how it looks” to other household members.

Sunday – day three. (14) Awoke at 7:00 feeling very refreshed. Did not need alarm clock. Ate breakfast before shower so tummy would be settled by time for yoga. Left house very early, did stretches in Mackenzie Hall parking lot.  Yoga class was comfortable, nothing especially scary. Need to tell instructor that I’m hard of hearing, though.  Called Sylvain on his cell phone and we met at Ojibway Park for a pinic and long walk in the woods. Studying the wildflowers was fun.

Day 3 Lots of Pills

Today was day 3 on something new I’ve decided to try for anxiety and crazy head, for lack of a better word.

I was thinking back today on how far I’ve come since I was a kid. I no longer have OCD to the degree I did and I no longer compulsively pull out my eyelashes. It is a bummer having no eye lashes; a lot of dirt gets in your eyes and other kids tease you.

With Seasonal Affective Disorder, I would get progressively more down through the winter until by March I would be almost… you know. Let’s just say desperate. Let’s just say having one of those meltdowns where you curl up in the fetal position and don’t go to work, you get someone to call in sick for you.

I’ve had some pretty good years, thanks to therapy and Effexor and good environment.

Then I went on this health food kick: no gluten, sugar, caffeine, dairy, etc. and suddenly it just didn’t feel right putting the pills in my body. I wanted to try to phase off them.  The jury is still out on whether that was the dumbest thing I ever did. Maybe it was the smartest. In any case, I am still trying to build coping skills and ways of staying off the meds without going bonkers.

No doubt about it, I’ve become more anxious again. Social phobia has returned.  This is making it hard for me to get back into therapy for a while or find a new chiropractor. It’s even hindering the process of finding an apartment. I do not like picking up the phone.  Pretty hard to schedule a massage or do so many of the things I need for self-care when I refuse to make phone calls. Ack!

Fortunately, I was able to register for yoga ONLINE! Hooray for email.

Ane Pema’s recorded weekend retreat Getting Unstuck is helping. Olivia blogged the other day about a book she just finished. One passage she posted struck me and stayed with me.  It’s about acting as if the fear were not in your way.  This notion aligned perfectly with the section of Getting Unstuck I was listening to where Ane Pema talks about the huge impact the movie A Beautiful Mind had on her. I can’t really quote the whole thing here; just know it has been helping me. In fact, I can’t recommend that 3-CD set highly enough. I’ve listened to it about twenty times now.

For me both “act as if” and Ane Pema’s movie scene both showed me that maybe I can find a way of tricking my mind into looking the other way just long enough for me to DO IT.  I have these neural pathways that are so very rigid. But if I can find a way to punch through, I am making an easier future for myself.  If I cave in and follow the same behavioural route as always, I am making an even harder future for myself.

I would like to be co-ordinating all these efforts (mindfulness training, the nutritional support, etc.) under the guidance of a counsellor, preferably one who is into MBCT. But alas, that would require two things: 1) for there to be such a therapist in the WIndsor area, and 2) for me to be able to pick up the phone.

Essex County Drum Circles

I promised I would help spread the word about this gathering.  Every other Friday Nelson (aka DrDrum) leads a drum circle in Windsor. Many times they meet at Ojibway Park in the picnic shelter at 7:00 and drum till sundown. There are extra drums, so don’t let the lack of a drum keep you away.

When I was in Little Rock in October, I bought a djembe. I don’t know anything about drums and have no idea if I got a good drum or a crappy drum. I thumped on it a few times and it seemed okay to me.

In any case, I have been wanting to learn to play it and tried YouTube and other video lessons, but they didn’t work for me because the teacher cannot give me feedback on my form. Also I have long known that I don’t do well with distance education, correspondence courses, and the like.  I need the structure of someone expecting me to be somewhere every week at the same time. I need a certain amount of practice expected of me by another human, or I just don’t get around to it.

So I posted an ad on Kijiji for a tutor. I didn’t find a tutor, but a nice fellow by the name of Ian invited me to the drum circle.

There were many things I liked about this drum circle. It was laid back enough that I felt perfectly at ease even with no experience at all. There were others just starting out. The emphasis was on communing, getting primal, going back to the heartbeat that was the first sound any of us heard at the beginning of life.

I also appreciated Nelson’s enthusiasm. The evening was punctuated by his asking regularly, “are you having fun?” Or funny comments like, “I don’t know why we aren’t more popular…we sound good!”

My one caveat would be to those who are sensitive or averse to cigarette smoke. It’s not the drum circle for you.

PS Nelson also organizes a drum workshop in Leamington. For more info, see the Meet-up page.