Good Vibrations

On my mom’s fourth deathday (like a birthday without the gifts), I went by the Third Street Center to drop off winter coats I had collected the night before at Ladies Wine Night. As I walked into Third Street with a big pile of Glamour Do’s, I wasn’t sure what I would find. All I knew was that a large number of people from Venezuela had been living in our town without the necessities and someone had organized a coat drive. What I found was Carbondale at its finest. People pulling winter clothes out of a huge heap of bags to sort and display by size throughout the room. No one was really in charge, and yet everyone was busy setting up the epic display of free winter gear. It was enough to make anyone cry, even if it wasn’t their mom’s deathday.

My sister likes to say we were brought up as Buddhist sympathizers. Mom went to Nepal in the early days of the Peace Corps and while those years definitely had an impact on the rest of her life, I feel like her ability to share— not only her things, but also her time, was innate. And she hummed. All the time. It was almost like she had an endless tune playing in her head that came out as a hum even when she wasn’t consciously aware she was doing it. It was just part of who she was, like the wool sweaters that somehow weren’t scratchy or the tea cupboard that could not be contained. Mom was the epitome of the adage, ‘When we have more than we need, it’s time to build a longer table.’ And that’s exactly what happened in Carbondale that Saturday, on the anniversary of her death, as they brought out more and more tables to accommodate all the donations.

It feels really good to give away what we don’t need, both emotionally and in our closets. Especially right now, our country’s chock full and I for one, would like to see a shift in worldly goods and sentiment, with the US taking less and giving more. I also think we should embrace the idea of automated jobs, starting at the top. I mean, what do these CEOs do all day that a computer couldn’t master with a little get-up-to-speed session? I’m sure we can find a millennial to write an algorithm that simulates the elite corporate culture and I know the shareholders would like the sound of golden parachute-sized savings.

As sentimental as we may be for the good ole days, if we’re being totally honest, they weren’t all that good (or fashionable!) for some of us— actually, for most of us. This is where I give credit to GenX for shaking up the system by normalizing our differences and pointing out the banality of Leave-It-To-Beaver-land. In the last few decades, the world’s concept of what we should all look like, or be, has shifted drastically (and there are plenty of podcasts dedicated to the discovery that even the Ward Cleavers [Caucasian hetero cismen] weren’t that happy with their role.)

A major influence on GenX was the music: Prince, Joan Jett, David Bowie; all the artists who refused to conform to the record label’s monotone, instead choosing to follow the sound of their own beat. The vibration of how we all live here, together, on this spinning ball of capitalism and denim is fundamental to our vitality. From the beginning, tribes and clans would get together at night to dance around the fire, and aside from a shared sense of community, there was a vibration sent into the actual planet that cleared the cells of all living things.* There were even nightclubs in the 80s that shook the Earth, but today, everyone at home, plugged in to their individual device, does not give back anything to the planet. It isn’t healthy, our solitary dance of creature comforts and consumerism, not to mention how full our closets have become…

So, the good news is that winter’s coming (bet you never thought you’d hear me say that!) Plenty of time to clear out all that messy clutter— on both our selves and our closet shelves. My advice: get yourself into a sound bath or get out and dance in the moonlight, because your good vibes are worth sharing.

*The discovery of the cellular symphony was made in 2001 from a biophysicist, Jim Gimzeweski… He found that certain cells emit a beautiful eerie hum. …Gimzeweski also noted that cancerous cells emit a horribly out of tune sound, discordant and aggressive. This tells us that cells are in fact highly sensitive to sound healing and vibrational frequency can tune into any out of tune cell sound and alter or change its frequency into a sense of calm and peace through the science of entrainment and periodicity.