Those of the wonder world are known by their rhyme, their rhythm, by their song, their synchronicity, omen, periodicity, presage and magic. Two shining stars of the wonder world, Ms. Bonnie May Paine and Mr. Daniel Rodriguez picked me up at the Tulsa, Oklahoma Grayhound Bus Station.
Although I had been in the United States for about a day and a half I had been mostly speaking Spanish, the dominant language of the buses in Texas and Oklahoma. It didn't feel like I was arrived in the U.S.A. until I was in the company of my friends.
They are young, graceful and powerful in the song. In their presence I am arrived in the song.
We were then bound for Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation and Bonnie's hometown. Then we were bound for the missile base west of Topeka, the home of my good friends Diana and Ed Peden.
I met Ed at the 2001 Rainbow Family National in the Boise, Idaho National Forest. On the way back to Connecticut I was able to check out Diana's and Ed's magical realm.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis the nuclear missile that was housed at the base was prepared and ready for launch against the Soviet Union. It is now a beautiful home that is a place of music, of nurture of the drum circle, of nurture of the song.
On the late night drive from Wichita, Kansas to the missile base we encountered a storm that made us take shelter under an overpass. Soon after we resumed our journey we hit a large, rotting deer carcass that had been lying on the Kansas Turnpike for a good while. We had to make emergency repairs on the muffler. We did not get to the missile base until the dawn.
Dan's blue Volvo which had been dubbed the Blue Spruce Goose, now is known as the Bloody, Stinky, Blue Spruce Goose.
Then we were bound for the Wakarusa, in Lawrence, Kansas where Bonnie's band, "My Tea Kind," were to perform after winning a great battle of the bands.
My Tea Kind is Bonnie, her sisters Annie Rose and Sarah (who together started their careers in music as the child prodigies of "The Rat Nurses") and James, an amazing songwriter, musician, and singer.
They rock!
The Rat Nurses got their name when the girl's father, Michael Paine, killed a large mama rat. When he was about to kill the orphaned babies, his daughters would not have it. They tried, unsuccessfully, to nurse the baby rats. When they formed a band that played with that legendary star of the wonder world, the sorcerer of the fiddle, the Jimmy Hedrix of Red Dirt, Mr. Randy Crouch – the girls wanted to be called, ‘The Gypsies. But Michael made the T-shirts - hence the name.
When we arrived at the Wakarusa, we were greeted by yet another shining star of the wonder world, Ms. Bridget Law.
Bridget's entry into the Wakarusa was as a volunteer obligated to give 20 hours of volunteer work to the music festival. She gave at least 60 hours of focused, effective, hard work and organization. And then she played her magical Celtic fiddle with My Tea Kind and at least five other bands.
I also entered the Wakarusa as a volunteer. The volunteers' camp site was the best camp site in the state park where the festival is held. We were only 100 yards away from the stage where My Tea Kind was to perform. We were shaded from the morning sun. And we were soon joined by Bonnie's family, friends of the family, and many citizens of the wonder world of Tahlequah, who manifested the Great, Wondrous, Okie, Party-Ghetto of the Wakarusa.
There were riches of music at the Wakarusa. Some of the greatest of these riches were in the party-ghetto.
The song of the ghetto was a song of inclusion. It was the song of those of My Tea Kind. It was the song of Daniel Rodriguez, the amazing Dan "Dango" Rose, of Bridget, of the soul-full banjo of Charlie Rose, of Allison and Erin, of Jeff Gray, of Aaron Lee. It even included my humbled and honored self.
When My Tea Kind did their performance – laden with quantum possibilities – I sang the verse of "The Full Moon Song" that I had written during the first journey of the bloody, snake chariot some two-and-a-half years before.
It is a song that was written to an extraordinary full moon that shined down on Tahlequah on a strange, unseasonably warm night in December, 1993.
My verse goes:
It's the outcast light that guides another way
It's the way that veers from the sunlight
The full moon glow shows another path
It's the night travelers' road that shines –
In the moonlight!
These journeys of the bloody, snake chariot are night voyages guided by the alternative light that illuminates the narrow way that few enter on.
This is the road that shines in the moonlight.
As I become arrived back in the U.S.A. I recall the words of the poet T.S. Eliot who wrote:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploration
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
It is as if I am knowing this land for the first time. This land that is my land, this land that is your land – if only you can see by that alternative light that illuminates that narrow way – and enter into the song.