When we were young and together, long before we were married, a friend of my ex’s gave him a ceramic doumbek lap drum with beautiful blues mixed with cream and white, and animal skin drawn tight over a wide, round rim.
Even then, I sensed he was withdrawing (before my twenty-first birthday) – and I pestered and begged him to teach me the drum’s basics, wanting to connect with my musical creativity and him to heal the mysterious rift growing between us.
His obliging had an effect on me akin to what it must have felt like to humans first being granted fire – and became a way for us to entwine and interact through his and my playing synchronous rythms.
This was when we lived in The Old Biddle House on Pepper Street in San Luis Obispo, California, in a room on the Northwest side upstairs, open to the higher tier of a palm tree.
We had our futon bed outstretched, declared rebel independence from parents – and a piece of owl’s under fluff with a flame design in the center wafted in to greet me one day when I sewed our first Ren Fair costumes, alone and listening to Primus performing “Sailing The Sea Of Cheese” and thinking about our relationship.
I still have the feather in a memory box of sentimental jewelry.
Candid Corvid Productions 