Mukluks to the Inner Passage

This is structured from an email I wrote last week.

July 21

There's burning in here too. I want to hear the beat of a drum that pervades everything, I want to be taken over by it, to become rhythmic waves. 

 I'm in the anchorage airport. I've been here for a few days, it's been raining outside, so I'm making this basecamp as I get caught up with the Internet before hitch hiking north.  A few hours ago I followed the sound of loud guitars and singing voices.  I sat at the source across from two guys around 19, jamming without a care.  One sang a song he wrote, singing from his soul, opening his chest wide open, lifting up his head and closing his eyes...the sound echoed through the entire airport.  There were some uncomfortable glances, but no one stopped him.  As I sat there, I wished I had what he had, so in line with a deep fire and creative force, being a vessel for it to break through this boundary of silence...of distance.

Upstairs there was an unveiling of a new Native American exhibit.  I watched as natives beat drums and sang native chants and girls danced in sync, with animal skin boots, and fans made of fur. I was overtaken for a moment, imagining them and me, in the woods at night, around a big fire, dancing, in it for real, not this recreation for the white folk in the airport. Tears came to my eyes.  I long for so much.  I long for so much.  I feel so alone sometimes and I think I've been trying to avoid that feeling.  But in my most honest hour I feel far from others souls.  I long to be found, but so few are looking.  And I long to find, but so many are inaccessible.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "souls never reach their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with."  I feel him, but yet something in me sails on through these silent waves.  Something in me feels that, though this sea remains uncrossed, maybe if I keep sailing deeper I'll find that inner passage. And soul will touch object.  

Most of the dancing girls were half-native and in their late teens, but one was full native and maybe 13.  She was the one I watched, she was fully submerged in it, fully undivided, she moved like the ocean, the waves from the drum moved her soul like seaweed in the surf. She seemed completely at peace, not a thought, effortless.  Something tells me that I was seeing a glimpse of the truth, right there, in this girl's movement, so simple.  

Very few people watched, most rushed by, nervously trying to make their flight. 

What do we do when the beauty that has been tucked away in corners is pulled out for once, and most rush by unaware?

I don't know, but I'll keep looking in corners.