NervousMan and The Drum Circle

NervousMan walked along the sidewalk at noontime on his way to the library.

Sometimes on the sidewalks, people were mean and took up the whole sidewalk as you tried to get past.

Well, maybe they weren't mean, thought NervousMan. Maybe they were just unaware of not being polite. They weren't like NervousMan. NervousMan always got out of the way for people.

NervousMan passed a cafe on the corner and saw an overweight man with a big bushy white beard and long white hair sitting in one of the chairs, fast asleep, in the light and heat of the noonday sun.

"Strange to be sleeping in a chair outside a restaurant," thought NervousMan. Maybe the man had no other place to sleep except out in the sun.

Sometime the sun made NervousMan nervous. Too much sun wasn't good. But too little sun wasn't good either. It was a constant challenge, thought NervousMan, to stay in the middle. Like walking along the sidewalk, like he was now.

NervousMan imagined a line of his footprints along a path. But the line of his footprints zig-zagged back and forth back and forth, back and forth, like a wave, as he struggled to stay on the path but to also get out of people's way.

Suddenly, down the middle of the sidewalk came a skateboarder speeding fast right for NervousMan.

NervousMan froze and scowled nervously, not knowing whether to walk left or right to get out of the skateboarder's way. But at the last instant, the skaterboarder pivoted and whizzed past NervousMan, the wheels of the skateboard making a sharp 'ssssshhhh!' sound as they went by.

NervousMan could hear the sound of the wheels rapidly disappearing down the sidewalk behind him. 'Rrrrrrr! (pat) Rrrrrr! (pat) Rrrrrrrrrrr!'.

A car honked nearby with a sharp and sudden bark and NervousMan winced as if someone had pinched him.

NervousMan opened his eyes and sighed. He wondered if he should just go home and call it a day. He was not even where he wanted to go yet, and he was already very nervous.

But NervousMan walked on.

Inside the library, NervousMan breathed in the air-conditioned air. Many people milled passed NervousMan as he walked cautiously through the aisles full of books and newspapers. Some of the people had white wires sticking out of their ears. "Odd for people to have wires coming out of their ears" thought NervousMan. He had seen the wire-people walking by more and more. NervousMan could hear the tinny sounds of music coming out of the people's heads. Some of the music sounded like a tish-tish-tish sound, very rhythmic and metallic.

iPods NervousMan thought they were called. Pod-People.

NervousMan tried to find an empty aisle to walk down.

"Hello!" said a woman happily behind NervousMan. "How are you?!"

NervousMan's eyes turned wide and he put a strained smile on his face as he turned around to greet whoever it was who had greeted him.

The woman was a pretty and tall dark haired lady in a 3 piece suit. She was talking to someone on a hand-held phone.

"No, I'm at the library right now, where are you?" NervousMan could hear the woman say into the phone as he walked quickly away.

In the New Books section, one book caught NervousMan's eye. "Your Immortal Reality" it was called. On the cover was a picture of a huge wave cresting, sort of like the poster of that one movie about the storm that was perfect. That poster had a boat on the wave, but this one didn't.

Looking at the picture, NervousMan remembered a time when his mother and his Chinese stepfather took him to Hawaii. He must have been about 13 or 14 years old. He remembered standing on the edge of the beach. Walls of cold saltwater rushed toward him one every couple of minutes or so.

NervousMan remembered that he, as a boy, would punch the waves as hard as he could as they came in. But the waves would always sweep him off his feet and catch him in some sort of vertical whirpool, like a washing machine, for what seemed like forever.

In the wave's washing machine, NervousMan, didn't know up from down for a few seconds, and he would panic. But somehow, each time, he would find the surface of the water, crawl back to the beach fighting against the pull of the surf, and then start the whole cycle over again.

NervousMan felt the cool smoothness of the book's plastic covering which he held. He looked at the subtitle.

It said "How to Break the Cycle of Birth and Death".

"Hmmm," thought NervousMan. "How strange to think of life as a cycle that you get into over and over." 'Incarnation,' he thought it was called. No, RE-incarnation, that was it. Life cycling over and over like zig zagging down a path.

Maybe that sort of thing made sense, thought NervousMan. After all wasn't the sun in a cycle of sunrise and sunset all the time? The moon too? And weren't the seasons always cycling? The rain going back to the ocean and them forming rain again? Even hurricanes and galaxies and waves seem to curl around and be circular, like the wave.

Maybe life, thought NervousMan, which seemed to be everywhere, operated the same way. Like a circle or a spiral going around and around and around.

How many cycles had NervousMan been through, he wondered? Maybe this was his first. Maybe that's why he felt so nervous and strange all the time, when other people around him seemed to be getting along okay. Maybe he was new here, in this life. Maybe this was just his first time through. Maybe NervousMan was just in a 'spin cycle' here. And being in the spin cycle was what made NervousMan nervous.

NervousMan strode out of the shadow of library's lobby, his newly checked out book under his arm, and walked into the sunlight, making his way toward the park. As he approached, he could hear the rhythmic sound of drums and instruments playing somewhere. It was coming from the northside of the park and NervousMan made his way toward the sound.

Under a tree, beneath the shade that shielded them from the afternoon sun, NervousMan saw at least a dozen men playing drums in a circle. Some of the drums looked tall and the men pounded on them in a very rhythmic and impassioned way. Others looked like bongo drums.

NervousMan watched the blur of their hands as they pounded the drums over and over. BOOM-boom-bah-bah-bah-boom-boom-bah-bah-bah bah bah BOOM and then over and over and over again.

Some of the men standing in the back of the men were sharing a cigarette, NervousMan saw. "Strange some people would share a cigarette" thought NervousMan. "What about germs?" But maybe it was their last cigarette and they wanted to make it last.

NervousMan sat on a bench and watched the nice men play. Most of them had black or brown skin, NervousMan saw and many were smiling.

The sound of the beats seemed to almost describe a texture to NervousMan inside his mind, a pattern repeated over and over, and he ran his fingers over the texture lovingly. And it washed over him.

Unconsciously, NervousMan's foot tapped out rhythm in time with the drums' pattern.

NervousMan felt the wallpaper pattern of the music as if it covered the inside of a spiraling shell.

NervousMan's busy mind rested inside the patterned shell and he closed his eyes and drifted off into the spaces between the beats that surrounded him. And after a minute, NervousMan blissfully lost himself.

And for a moment, which lasted who knows how long, NervousMan forgot to be nervous.