Venturing out...

I'll be venturing out into civilization today for John Morgan smoking cessation & weight-loss seminars in Hagerstown, MD. My friend Doug O'Brien is the hypnotherapist, so I'm looking FW to seeing him in action. He's v. funny and eloquent and Ericksonian. We first met years ago when we both staffed for Tony Robbins back when he was doing firewalks every weekend. I remember the last one we were at together back in the 90's. We were in Philadelphia and there were 14? 18? firewalk lanes, 1500 people, and we just shoved them all across the coals in 45 minutes because the fire dept. was threatening to shut us down. As they often did. So it went something like this:

Ready, Mary? Get in state, make your power move, & GO!
Cool-moss-cool-moss-cool-moss-cool-moss-cool-moss! OK, celebrate!
NEXT!

Ready-go-cool-moss-celebrate-next! Ready-go-cool-moss-celebrate-next!

"Cool moss" was what Tony told everyone to say as they were walking. Pretty cool, but not mossy. More...crunchy. Doug was at one lane & I was next to him and after participants were finished, staff could walk.

I looked over at Doug and said, "You gonna walk?" He said, "I dunno. Are you?" I said, "Eh. I have to take my shoes off." So in the end, we didn't. Funny how something so life-changing can become rather mundane...because it's integrated, perhaps. At the time, it was useful as a reference to prompt me to do things I might not have thought possible. If I can walk on fire, what else can I do that I didn't think I could? Good stuff.

I'm hoping to do the pop-in with a few friends along the way as I travel back through West VA. It's been a long time and there's never enough time to do everything and connect with everyone I want to see--but I will do my best!

One person's normal....

So I was having a convo with John Morgan last night that started with me saying, So my drum circle was cancelled last night.... and I was talking about the email cancellation I'd gotten and how now I didn't have to go out into the world on Saturday, but I could stay home and listen to XM Radio Guy tonight on the Lucy channel 54 (9 p.m. EST). WOO-HOO!

Lucy...all the music you listened to when MTV just showed music videos all the way to when MTV taught your teenage daughter how to be a slut. The deep-voiced radio announcer that XM Radio Guy uses on Lucy was whisked away by Oprah and now he's exclusively the voice on her channel.

I've never heard him say normal things.

Anyway, so I'm yackity-yacking away about all this and John says, "Woah-woah-woah! Drum circle?"

I forget until I remember that what I take for granted as normal-everyone-knows-about-this is often not. But it's quite normal. Really. Mum goes with me. And it's led by this wonderful gal Wendi who is like an orchestra leader, so it doesn't matter what your level of experience is. There's nothing like beating on a drum, it's so...tribal. You can't drum and not *smile*.

But tomorrow I'm going out. Really, it's all-day event if I leave the house. And I coordinate it with my groceries--altho, Mum calls my pantry the Mormon Pantry. It's v. well-stocked. I could not go anywhere for months. Anyway, I'll be delivering a b-day gift to my nephew & attending some Bonfire Event at Mum's.

And if it's not too chilly, perhaps we'll even have an old fashioned firewalk.

Woah-woah-woah! FIREWALK???

Another day, another post. ;-) H.