I walked into a local Taqueria
yesterday and spotted a man I recognized. A white guy with a long gray beard
and yellow foot-high turban, he's hard not
to spot. He lives near us in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I remember seeing
him twenty years ago when we both dropped our kids off at the elementary
school. His turban was blue then. More recently he sold a car to a friend..
This doesn’t sit well with
me.
In my experience, turbaned men are
snake charmers, or magic carpet riders or genies, or all three.
Not car salesmen.
I waved to him and when I turned
to find a table he motioned me over.
“Have a seat,” he said.
I wasn’t sure. I had ordered the
chili verde and I thought he was probably a vegetarian. I didn’t want to
apologize for my order when it arrived. Plus, I don’t really like to eat with
people who aren’t eating. The remnants of his lunch were on the tray next to
him.
He looked right into my eyes.
“Tell me what’s going on in your
life.”
Never one to turn down an
opportunity to talk about myself, I settled in.
His face was so open, so guileless
that I skipped the small talk. Told him about performing. About my passion for
storytelling. About producing a new venue.
“We’ve got some storytellers at
The Crest,” he said.
He said “The Crest” as if it was a
known place. I know nothing about The Crest, but guessed that he lived there
and that it was in the mountains and had panoramic views and perhaps other
turbaned people.
“One of them goes into
schools to help kids understand bullying. He went to this one school and one of
the kids—the bully—talked about how his best friend had been killed. And how he
was so angry he just wanted to make other kids as sad as he was. The kid he
bullied spoke. He said his family moved a lot and he was always the new kid and
always bullied. He talked about how scared he was to come to school every day.
Another kid spoke about how he had seen the new kid pushed around and hadn’t
done anything about it. And he was sorry. The storyteller wove a story about
three friends who were kind even when they were sad and who were brave even
when they were afraid and who spoke up so that they wouldn't be sorry."
The story moved me.
The story moved me.
He looked me in the eye again.
“Storytelling is very important,” he said.
And because of his turban, his
words seemed prophetic, weighty.
I asked him what was going on in
his life.
He told me about an herbal
supplement he had created specifically for women.
“It contains a plant based form of
estrogen that mimics the hormone released in a woman’s body when she’s
pregnant. That hormone is part of what creates that beautiful glow, that
vitality.”
I got a little nervous at this point.
I was immediately suspicious of a supplement that tricks premenopausal woman
into thinking they were pregnant. And in my two pregnancies combined, I had
experienced perhaps four months total of intermittent glowy-ness.
Also, I was slightly offended that
he’d made assumptions about the current state of my hormones.
I nodded and listened. It occurred
to me that he might do a lot of meditation on The Crest. And that he might have
cultivated the ability to read minds. I tried to clear mine of negative thoughts
and nodded some more.
“Karuna and Sativa are testing it
for me.”
I knew these women. Beautiful,
vibrant practitioners of yoga and Buddhism. Facebook friends of mine, they
adore him. Pictures of him are always popping up on their posts.
“Great!” I said, thinking that
perhaps I was my own worst enemy.
He gathered his things to
leave.
“I have to pick up a mouse for a
snake,” he said.
At first I thought this was a
veiled reference to needing to pee, but he explained.
“Dandy Lion is staying at The
Crest. She’s an ecstatic dancer who works with snakes. I told her I’d pick up a
mouse while I was in town. They give it to you in a paper bag and I didn’t want
to leave it my motorcycle trunk while I ate. It seemed wrong—a mouse in a bag.”
A mouse in a bag in a tiny trunk.
That wouldn’t sit well with me
either.
"You should come tell stories
at The Crest some time. Get a group together. We have wonderful
gatherings."
"Oh, sure. That would be
fun."
I wasn't sure. We stared at each
other for a moment.
"How do I reach you?"
He gave me his number.
Later I told my husband about the
invitation.
"That was nice. Will you
go?"
I'm still not sure. Maybe. Maybe
I'll go and tell this one.
I imagine a bonfire at the top of
a mountain. I stand before the man and his friends who laugh and razz him when
I get to the part about the hormone supplement. After I'm done they add more
wood to the fire and Dandy Lion rises up from the circle, a boa constrictor
coiled around her waist, looped over her shoulders. Her well-oiled body
reflects the flicker of flames that split like refracted light as she dances,
throwing back her head in ecstasy.
