QBLOG #6 DREAM! SING! DANCE!

11 Feb 05, Friday evening.

It’s been an interesting and hectic week. I’m feeling good about being here, because I feel as if I am contributing something. I received a much awaited package today…my music. It’s sort of my soul connection. I’m listening to one of my Buddha Bar CD’s. It’s filled with this amazing music, a combination of modern and middle eastern sounds blended into songs that call your soul. Close your eyes and imagine you are out in the middle of a desert. There is a huge fire with men and women and children dancing around it. Drums are beating. There is the sound of a string instrument creating these high pitched exotic sounds. Wind instruments join in and begin to whisper their music to the drums. The drums beat rising and falling in syncopation with the dance as if all of this were interconnected, the fire, the dancers, the music... and then a women’s voice enter’s, singing in a tongue that is foreign to my ears, but familiar to my soul. I want to get up and ‘connect’ with this vision in my head and this feeling in my heart and body, reaching up to the heavens, almost unconsciously, naturally.

It is the music of this land that I am now in. Desert nights filled with diamonds hanging in the sky, twinkling, speaking. Dancing around a fire with these ancient souls, your feet know the rhythm, your head is intoxicated with the crisp cool air and the beautiful voices echoing from a place you cannot see. The music run’s through your veins, moving through your body like blood. Like blood. Something every human being has in common, blood.

I’ve been trying to communicate with one of the foreign workers in the dining facility. We’ve greeted each other and smile at each other. His name is Mahendra Paudel. He is from Nepal. From a village, he says, named Annapurna in the Himilayas. It is also the name of one of the 8 tallest mountains in the world. He is a handsome man and is very forgiving and generous in nature. Extremely polite. I’ve introduced myself as Robert, but he continues to address me as ‘sir’.

I’m thinking about Mahendra and all of the third country nationals (TCN’s) working here, as well as the local Iraqi’s. What drives a person, whose country is not involved in this war, to come here and work? Is work so scarce, life so bad that they would choose to leave their lives, and come work in Iraq for Americans? Or, the local Iraqi’s, who literally risk theirs and their families lives by working for Americans. This is not being dramatic. This is life here. Prior to elections, there were flyers warning the Iraqi’s and TCN’s that they and/or their families would be killed if they were caught working for the Americans. We know of one instance where this happened. I know that each person has a different reason for taking this risk. Just as I am sure my reason’s for being here are different from other civilian American’s reason(s) for being here.

I spent one of my best vacations on the Turkish Mediterranean about four years ago with two friends, Alberto Bassani and Troy Murphy. It was an incredible two weeks! We stayed in the city of Alanya, the region of Antalya, whose history dates back to 333 B.C. but was inhabited over 50 thousand years ago and where there are still standing examples of it’s powerful history and importance in the ancient world. The Turkish people we met were incredibly warm and friendly. They were so willing and wanting to share their world and let you know their part of history in it. The desk clerk at our hotel invited us to tour his city with him on his day off. He took us to museum’s, churches, mosques, the famous Red Tower dating back to 1225. We walked down the ancient wall surrounding parts of the city. In every place we stopped our new friend was greeted warmly with a kiss on each cheek, from young and old alike. We were treated with respect and introduced with a slight bow of the head as acknowledgement. In many ways this was such a humbling experience, standing in buildings and on ground that was inhabited before any semblance of civilization showed itself in what we now call the Western world.

We stopped for lunch in a very modern part of the city, each restaurant vying for our lunch business. When we stopped at an outdoor café for a drink, we were surrounded by several young Turkish men. We were a strange trio for this region, a northern Italian, black American and me,a hispanic American who they insisted that I was Turkish and not American. Russians and Germans are the main tourists here. When they discovered that there were two American’s they asked why more Americans did not come to them, to visit and enjoy their wonderful beaches and history. I responded that the riots and terrorism in parts of their country were shown on the American news stations and that this kept many people from wanting to come to Turkey at all, or that most Americans choose Istanbul or Izmir for vacations. In response to the riots and terrorism, one young man responded that, “We are also afraid of these areas and do not go there. So we are the same. We have the same blood you and I, Turkish and American. We want the same things…better lives for our children and families, to live in peace, to love! We are the same! It is our governments that make us different, but that is politics and not life. We are the same.”

We are the same. Each of us born with this life giving blood, this music of old in our soul waiting to be released by our dance. We are ready to Love. Yet, we are taught not to love. We are taught to be afraid. We are taught that releasing the song in our soul may not be acceptable and soon all the sameness that we are born with turns into these differences that we have learned to place our focus.

Why would a man with kindness in his heart, great friends, leave his home, his family and his beautiful “village” of Annapurna, Piacenza, Memphis, Boulder, Pampa, Santa Fe or any other “village”? Maybe he is looking for the place where he can play his soul’s music and reach to the diamonds in the sky as he dances to the rhythm of the songs of old as others join him around the fire that transforms their differences into one Body…one blood of mankind.

Maybe.

Won’t you join in this life dance? Share the Love that you were born with? Put the fear you learned aside and join your hands together, letting the music be the blood line that connects you to the sameness we all share.

I end with this poem I wrote in 2003. I hope you enjoy it.

Dream, dream, the little dreams
that give your life that extra thing!

See beyond the dirty grind...
That life seems to bring and find.

Fly above, the earth and sky!
And see the life of all that breathes.

SCREAM, SCREAM, the little screams,
that hide in that little place of anxiety.

Get it out! Shout it out!
And start your sanity, and do not doubt.

Sing, sing the song of life,
to plants and animals of every stripe

Trees and shrubs and grass and grain,
mammals and fish, and human beings.

Dance, dance the dance you can’t,
move your arms, your hips, your head.

Move your body in all the ways,
that create the biggest kind of waves.
Step out of that little box,
that society has decided to keep locked,

Dream and Scream and Sing and Dance
your life is waiting, give it one more chance!

02 Aug 2003
Robert L. Quintana