The next several days were a bundle of pent up energies, with an ample twist of the bizarre. Of course after hearing Jerome tell us he would share the Wanderer stories of his youth...would
show us the historic ruin on his property where he'd seen the Wanderer
symbols before, we were exultant for about 63 seconds. It was
Syha who first tugged us back to earth.
"We have several days of hard work to tend to first, of course."
There was a group deflation of "whoopee cushion" proportions. We collectively gave out a universal raspberry of disappointment.
"Crap," Del'yar summed it up brilliantly. She hates waiting more than any human being I've ever known, impatience being a very odd trait for an
Ez Perjezlah.
There was nothing to be done, we had to meet our commitments in Reston. The performances were intense to say the least...highly energized pockets...burning frustration like rocket fuel. While still deeply meditative, I think we may have overshot our audiences for the first few engagements. After a couple like that, we huddled as a group, settled down a bit and came at our jobs with renewed focus, pushing the frenetic energy to be resolved in our personal practices.
While it might have been helpful if Jerome and Anna could have stayed on with us in Reston, a delay of several days was more than they had counted on. They needed to get back to their home and their lives. We dearly missed our new friends and would have questioned Jerome endlessly each evening to take the edge off our curiosity, but we did understand, of course. We made arrangements to meet in 4 days...Anna and
Tindar consulted extensively over the directions to their home.
In their absence, the evenings crept by ever so slowly. Del'yar paced a lot. Sometimes she paced for several miles in any random direction before turning around and returning. Tindar of course tended to the details of the next day's agenda, fussing over times and places, as well as taking account of our success thus far. Aside from that, his time was spent yelling at the radio. Why he aggravates himself I'll never know, but he has taken to listening to programs of a political slant
he finds infuriating. Every once in a while there will be a burst from the tent outside where he spends much of his private time:
"Sound-bite psychologist! Hack!"
"You can't draw that conclusion from 45 seconds of inane questioning!"
"Arg, you can't be serious!"
It's one of the reasons we tend to look for a camp on the outskirts of towns. Still, as wrapped up as he gets in it all, he swears he's learning about others thought processes. I think he writes several letters a week debating and rebutting what ever he's listening to. Such are the hobbies of our dear Tindar.
The rest of us spent the bulk of our evenings playing amateur sleuth, reading up on the mystery of the stolen statue and comparing notes. Our concocted theories seemed wild at best.
"Obviously the university researching it took it,"
Danidesh claimed.
"Why would they do that?" asked Syha.
"Because they couldn't solve the mystery and didn't want to appear foolish," I guessed.
"Worse, it's further publicity for them when it reappears, which translates into more funding,"
Ascher took his shot.
"What if it was a Wanderer group that took it?" Syha said so softly we asked her to repeat it.
"Why would they do that?" I asked.
She shrugged. "To stop the circus?"
We all thought about that for a while.
"If that's the case, it seems not to be working," Ascher noted.
"It could have simply been a theft motivated by nothing but greed," Danidesh suggested.
"For the treasure?" I asked.
"Or for a private collector. There are some quirky folks in the world", Ascher stated the obvious.
Around and around we went for hours that week, looking at the pictures in the paper for clues...surfing the Internet for leads.
Yeah, us and thousands of other curious pilgrims. One thing we did notice...the longer we stayed and performed in Reston, the more packed the city and our shows became.
"The circus became freakin' Mardi Gras," Del'yar was fond of saying.
Hustlers on every corner sold genuine Wanderer "artifacts". Small brawls broke out all over the place over such transactions, particularly the ones who were selling "maps to the treasure" to dozens of gullible people at once. City officials were not amused.
Tindar, however, was deeply amused.
"There was a crackpot on the radio yesterday claiming the statue was stolen by aliens. It was just a matter of time before they blamed them or the Loch Ness monster."
Finally we made it to the last performance of the week. We no longer pretended to ourselves we were creating an experience. The crowds were simply too large now to get a handle on them. They came not to learn about meditation and movement, but to see spectacle and parlor tricks. Our goal was to engage them with tools to work with in their daily lives. As
Ani DiFranco once wrote, "every tool is a weapon, if you hold it right".
We had to get philosophical about it. We'd long ago sold out of our stock of
books and videos and were quickly collecting a list of back orders. In that sense life was good. We just needed to get through this one last event and we could withdraw.
Yogi Berra once said, "it ain't over till it's over".
Our last dance in Reston was in a public park. We'd spent the afternoon signing books after giving a talk at a nearby bookstore. Crowds spilled out the doors there, winding up here. People passing by stopped to look on until eventually the crowd had to number almost a hundred. Tindar had out done himself to arrange all the details, get the appropriate permissions, create the buzz.
As the first drum beats sounded, a light mist started to curl in with an early twilight. At first, it was nothing special...very much the spectacle we'd expected it to be. I was just starting to sink into the experience despite the huge crowd when I heard a flute. It took a minute for me to recognize it wasn't simply my own imagination. I wasn't entirely sure until I saw a man jump into the circle of whirling dancers, still playing. I smiled, this was going to be a better experience than we'd bargained for, now that someone in the crowd had joined in. The next thing I knew, there was a harp adding some flowing sound. No one just carries around a harp! This had to be part of something Tindar arranged. Bless
his heart for making the finale special. I do love to improvise.
A glance at Tindar revealed this was not his doing.
With my voice, I played a game of tag with the flute. A guitar came from somewhere, then a saxophone. Dancers toned, their voices filling the early night with the most fantastic sounds. Del'yar said the circus had become Mardi Gras before, without knowing the full truth of it. The more we became intoxicated by the music and the night, the more it had that feeling on the cusp between elation and danger.
Then it hit me...these people we were creating this experience with were not the novices we usually met along the road. We were not giving these tools to those who had joined in. These were people experienced in these practices. With this sobering thought, I stepped back from the experience a little and watched, feeling the chill of the air as I always do after a good workout. A short man with a beard leaped and landed with remarkable grace. He was at home in his body...had a vocabulary to express with his movements. He was not self conscious for crying out loud! This is not common for your average Joe on the street. Another moved slowly, low to the ground vocalizing, improvising, letting herself go in a way rarely seen these days around our campfires. The musicians watched the dancers, letting their notes create the music with the movements. Sometimes our sept has group experiences like this when we work amongst ourselves. Never in public. Not like this.
Who were these people? Where had they come from?
Tindar had noticed too. Del'yar stepped back next. Syha and Danidesh were lost riding the waves of emotion. Left to their own devises, they would be the last ones moving this night. Ascher stopped eventually, more from exhaustion than anything else.
As we each came up from the experience, we moved to huddle together absorbing the incredible scene. I know I felt ridiculously relaxed, drifting in and out of wonder.
Eventually, gradually the musicians faded to a breath and a whisper. The last three rocking gently were Syha, Danidesh and the short bearded man I'd noticed before leaping about. They brushed hands approaching us, then collapsed to the ground. The park was completely quiet. A hundred strangers awed into stillness and silence. Applause surely didn't fit. Eyes sparkled...that was enough.
The crowd of observers slowly started to disperse. Some would be changed by what they witnessed. All of them had a story to tell about it. Some came to thank us...talk to us. Even Tindar was so mesmerized that he barely made any attempt to engage the interested spectators. Eventually all that remained were our sept and nine others...the dancers and musicians who had joined in the experience...had helped create it, actually.
"Who are you?" Tindar blurted out, bless his tactless, direct heart.
The small bearded fellow had been lying on his back on the grass before us. He seemed to be their spokesperson, because he sat up at this point with a huge grin on his face. "That was just marvellous," he said absently.
"Who are you?" Tindar repeated without any sign of impatience in his voice.
"You might not believe me if I told you," he laughed and his merry band joined in on the chuckling.
"I for one am willing to take a chance on disbelief," Del'yar told him.
"Of course, of course you are Del'yar," he laughed again.
We were all taken aback he knew her name.
"Disbelief, indeed, tisk tisk. Hm," he muttered to himself. "Well, you can call me
Serghan. I've been called worse by better, hehe."
"I have a feeling this is no chance meeting," I said leading him, hoping for more information.
"Chance, you say, hehe, no, no chance...well less than 2%, give or take, of course...96 times out of a hundred."
"That's...very specific," Ascher smiled.
Serghan roared laughing again. He was surely an odd little duck. If a foot shorter, he could have passed for a garden gnome, less the silly hat. While dancing I'd have sworn he was maybe 25 years old. Now, looking into his face up close, it could have been double that or more. There were lots of well earned wrinkles where his smile curled up his cheeks.
"I'm joking of course! There is nothing but chance in this grand old Universe! Well, Choice actually...sort of the same thing, or they blur into each other, or something."
There seemed nothing to say...stunned by this fellow we managed "gawking silence" admirably.
"You know of course, we've come to ask your help," he seemed almost impatient we hadn't just offered the obvious.
Without so much as waiting for us to blink, he continued, "Well, much to do...much to do. Packing up that home of yours first I'd say."
"But..." Del'yar got that far at least.
"Come, come, Jerome will be waiting!"
"You know Jerome?" Syha asked.
"Well, not yet...not yet. Hurry now!"
Never more befuddled in our entire lives we did the only sensible thing we could...we packed up our camper and got ready to leave.
