SURREAL SONGHAI MOMENT...

One glimpse of a handmade Songhai instrument out on a sandy road and I find enough medicine for an evening among the lost dancing fragments of my Self...   My friend tells me that the Songhai people's music has its distinct flavor and I feel his excitement as he drives over sand piles and uneven roads on our way to a traditional outdoor concert.

These African hollowed gourds remind me of ancient drums meant to deeply resonate with one's soul's longing for returning home.  As my direct experience of West African consciousness is being played out each moment in different forms and shapes, I am yet to fall in love with these dancing and drumming beings springing out of my new perception of the Universal Self.

One by one, I see men and women lined up to begin their courtship dance, undulating their necks and chests, their arms swaying around their bodies in gentle snake-like movements, making their way towards each other only to pull back once again.  I follow their male-female dance encounters like water waves gathering and dissolving back to the Source, then I contemplate the illusory motion of slithering snakes as free consciousness dictates each movement; their dance entrance me, yet I can clearly see and feel my Soul/Beloved's love game in each and every shape...

Pure omnipresence is here, breathing underneath the heavy dry air.  Many flies come to rest on my face as well as on all the rest of me, the other parts who find themselves in this big gathering of bodies laying on mats around those who chose to do the drumming and dancing roles. 

Soon I see a breastfeeding woman put her baby down as she hides her plump dark breast in her dress, then jumps up to enter into her own seduction dance.  The man with crazy eyes stands up and I find myself startled by his sudden presence. He is wearing ragged clothes this moment, then someone in the crowd throws a white robe over him.  With a quick lightning glance, he signals at a woman near by and soon enough these two have me captive into their world of rhythm and trance.  His woman dances... her face shining with reptile-like reflections... I am staring at myself again.  I smile.  A child smiles back at me; she is wearing colorful cowry shells in her braided hair. 

Towards the end of this powerful dancing and drumming Songhai moment, I see my hand picking up a small piece that fell off a broken gourd, which only moments ago was a whole instrument placed on this desert altar... This calabash celebrated itself until death under the busy hands of an African woman pounding over it with strong bare hands.  It sat among a group of other mismatched instruments such as the half of a worn out world globe, a metal cooking pot and a couple of other calabashes brought in from someone's kitchen near by.  Nothing goes to waste here.  All expressions of life are significant.    

This is a taste of Eternity... within the blue eyes of my friend who was sitting near me sharing this Songhai dream fragment,  I could see the wonder of a new day on earth... this surreal Songhai moment was simply another powerful ritual of embracing the pure Joy and Love BEING reborn  in each breath. 

Time, space and memory as we knew them are passing away...

Welcome to a new day in the rest of your life.

MIRADOR