You’ve been taking care of the goats again, since your cave experience. The boy had to go for supplies.
You remember a drawing or painting that looked like a moon on the wall of the cave, but when you had looked again, it had vanished. Then you saw another moon with a fire around it. And another with dancers holding hands around it. Every time you saw these, the images disappeared.
Now while you watch the full Moon rise in the East and gaze at the brilliant sunset in the West, you dream up a Full Moon celebration.
First you light a small fire and you haul logs over, arranging them around the fire in case any guests come. You never know.
You put on the garland you’ve made with wildflowers and grasses, you highlight your eyes with charcoal liner, you hang vines around your ears and your neck. You wrap vines in crisscross patterns up your legs. You twine wildflowers in your hair. You rub your lips with berry juice.
You cook a stew using roots, forest greens, spices you collected, and rice from the dwindling supply. After a while it smells delicious.
The border collie trots over to check out the stew. You give him a few morsels. Then the goats, unable to sleep, meander over one by one, their bells tinkling. They collect near the logs you’d arranged for sitting on and look with cocked heads: “What’s up?”
You pull out the flute the boy had made for you and begin to play it as he showed you how. Even though you’ve not yet learned it perfectly well, it’s well enough to give spirit to a song.
The Moon is high in the sky, its light lending a silver cast and hazy shadows, all over the hills and meadows.
You and your friends dance around the fire, fire flies blinking in and out, sound of flute echoing across the land.
“The song of the flute, O sister, is madness,
I thought that nothing that was not God could hold me,
But hearing that sound, I lose mind and body,
My heart wholly caught in the net,
O flute, what were your vows, what is your practice?
What power sits by your side?”
—Mirabhai
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You remember a drawing or painting that looked like a moon on the wall of the cave, but when you had looked again, it had vanished. Then you saw another moon with a fire around it. And another with dancers holding hands around it. Every time you saw these, the images disappeared.
Now while you watch the full Moon rise in the East and gaze at the brilliant sunset in the West, you dream up a Full Moon celebration.
First you light a small fire and you haul logs over, arranging them around the fire in case any guests come. You never know.
You put on the garland you’ve made with wildflowers and grasses, you highlight your eyes with charcoal liner, you hang vines around your ears and your neck. You wrap vines in crisscross patterns up your legs. You twine wildflowers in your hair. You rub your lips with berry juice.
You cook a stew using roots, forest greens, spices you collected, and rice from the dwindling supply. After a while it smells delicious.
The border collie trots over to check out the stew. You give him a few morsels. Then the goats, unable to sleep, meander over one by one, their bells tinkling. They collect near the logs you’d arranged for sitting on and look with cocked heads: “What’s up?”
You pull out the flute the boy had made for you and begin to play it as he showed you how. Even though you’ve not yet learned it perfectly well, it’s well enough to give spirit to a song.
The Moon is high in the sky, its light lending a silver cast and hazy shadows, all over the hills and meadows.
You and your friends dance around the fire, fire flies blinking in and out, sound of flute echoing across the land.
“The song of the flute, O sister, is madness,
I thought that nothing that was not God could hold me,
But hearing that sound, I lose mind and body,
My heart wholly caught in the net,
O flute, what were your vows, what is your practice?
What power sits by your side?”
—Mirabhai
Read More