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July 28, 2005: Walking in the Day

Molly Brown has left the building. I suppose I forgot to tell you guys that I found her, that she was here. She was visiting her mom in Chattanooga, but she flew in and out of Atlanta, so I got to see her, too. I've always been a little jealous of her travels and those of my friends Laurie and Jyoti, too, but Molly said, "Someone has to stay in Atlanta. Otherwise, who would we visit?"

Molly and I had a good talk about karma. She says she has learned to believe in it enough to really think about the effect her actions will have both on others and on her own future. She says she thinks she was lured into a false sense of security in her childhood by her religious upbringing, which only allows for things happening once: "Either God strikes you down, or you get away with it."

Our conversation reminded me of something Ursula K. LeGuinn talked about when I went to one of her readings at Emory, years ago. She said that Westerners think of time as a straight line (thus the word "timeline"), with the past leading to the future, which leads to more future. She told us about a Native American tribe who believe time is a circle. The past leads to the future, but the past always comes back. They believe that every day they live will come back to them again. Therefore, they believe it is important to tread carefully while walking in the day because whatever one does will affect the way that day will unfold the next time it comes around. I think I have days that I live again and again, or at least it seems that way. The idea of karma, according to most religions that use it as a concept, is that it is earned and spent over the course of many lifetimes. I like the idea of a different kind of karma that occurs over the course of one lifetime. There's this day that crops up once in a while on which every little thing Derik says or does gets on my last nerve, and vice versa. The next time that happens, maybe I'll figure out some way to make it better and, by doing that, improve that day every time it comes around. There's also a day that happens every once in a while during which everything seems to go my way and I feel incredibly lucky, as though I'd drunk Harry Potter's felix felicis potion. It always feels like a one time thing, but maybe it really is the same day coming back to me. If every day is going to come back, it's important not to waste any of them or take any of them for granted. (For the record, I do not consider a day spent mostly sleeping or spent mostly watching TV on the couch to be a day wasted. A day spent bored and wishing one were elsewhere, on the other hand, is, in my opinion, a wasted day. That day won't be worth anything when it comes around again.)

Molly Brown and I didn't talk about religion and philosopy the entire time she was here, of course. There was plenty of occasion for adventure and fun. I took her to help a friend move boxes (I'm such a great host, I know), and later, as we were all sitting around eating pizza, she suddenly remembered that she needed to sell some dried bananas. She had been selling Peruvian jewelry the entire time she'd been in the states, but she had neglected her produce sales. She went to her car and brought in her stash of dried bananas, which looked like slugs or, let's face it, turds, and promptly tried to talk my friends (people she'd never met before) into buying them for a dollar a pack. Kara's new roommate, Nina, who had been to Peru and was sympathetic to the cause, bought five of them and spent the rest of the evening trying to find a delicious way to serve them. (Just so you know, marshmallow fluff does not complement the taste of dried bananas.) In Molly Brown's defense, I should mention that dried bananas don't taste bad. They're a bit gummy in consistency and taste like bananas, only sweeter. The thing is, though, Molly Brown had specifically told the farmers in Peru to give her dried bananas to sell because Americans would surely snatch them up in a heartbeat. Bananas grow easily there and are a sustainable crop that do not require the burning of the rainforest. So now Molly Brown was duty-bound to try to sell dried bananas to Americans in order to save the rainforest. She had planned to target health nuts (she swore to us that dried bananas are very popular in health food stores like Sevananda), but since she hadn't been able to figure out a way to combine the dried banana business with her Peruvian jewelry business, and since the jewelry business was the more profitable enterprise, she was stuck with only one night left in Atlanta and a group of Americans who, though not necessarily uncultured junk food addicts, could not really be called health nuts. When the taste test failed to produce much interest, she was forced to play on our guilt, explaining to us how much it would mean to the future of the rainforest if we each spent one dollar on a pack of dried bananas. We told her to write a letter to Ben & Jerry's and pitch them a "banana split" flavor that would incorporate all the products of the region where she lives: cacao, dried bananas, and Brazil nuts. Nancy reminded us that Ben & Jerry's already had a Rainforest Crunch flavor, which took the wind out of our sails a bit; I'd forgotten about that. I still think she should write to them, though. Now that she's working for an actual nonprofit organization to save the rainforest, it would look very official. Part of the reason they hired her was because they figured she could help them make contacts in America. I imagine Molly Brown flying into D.C. and talking her way into the offices of various people in power, and it makes me smile.

Tomorrow, I am going to play a gig at The Crimson Moon in Dahlonega. I'm really looking forward to this gig. I love The Crimson Moon, and I haven't played there in two years. The last time I played there, Derik, who had a crush on me but hadn't yet asked me out, came to the show. Talk about a long time ago! If all of our days really do come back to us, they sure do change a lot in form and content.

The day after the show, I get to drive up to Floyd, VA to vist Lee and Tom and my mom and go to the FloydFest, which is one of my favorite music festivals, despite the fact that they still haven't booked me. I apply every year. Maybe some day it'll happen, and I'll be on one of the side stages in the middle of all the bluegrass, old time, Cajun, funk, African, and everything else. It really is a very cool festival. It's become a family tradition to get together for FloydFest and celebrate Mom's and Tom's birthdays. We have something else to celebrate this year, too, because I am going to be an aunt!!! Lee and Tom are going to have a little nipperkin for me to spoil and corrupt. I can't wait! I've known about this for a while but haven't been allowed to tell anybody, and it's been torture. I hate secrets! But I have been given permission to tell the world, and I'm doing exactly that. (I hope she understands that when I said I wanted to tell the world, I really did mean "the world.")

I'm listening right now to a compilation of 80's music I won from Entertainment Weekly. Who else remembers "Dancing In Heaven" by Q-Feel? I'd forgotten all about that song, but, listening to it on this compilation, I know I've heard it a million times. I have a feeling it might have been in the original Breakin' movie. I saw that movie more than once (more than twice, probably), but all I remember about it is that it led to the misguided purchase of a belt that I thought looked really cool (even though it wasn't made of actual handcuffs like the belt she wore in the movie) but that ended up the butt of a joke my junior year of high school when we had a French language yard sale. By that time, I no longer thought the belt was cool, but I still did not appreciate the snickers from the room as my French teacher modeled it and said, "Ah, la ceinture est tres chic, non? Peut-etre pour le 'S et M'?"

Now I'm listening to a song to which I once choreographed a dance when I was in middle school. I performed it in public, more than once, if memory serves. I'm not walking in that day, but I am nostalgic for it, even as I breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not that girl anymore (though I readily admit that I still remember the dance).

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