The first time I had an experience of this – this woo-woo factor – was in the south of Spain. We were a gang of
ex-pats, most of us living on the cheap, me earning my way singing in the local
bars and clubs that lined the coast between Malaga and Nerja. Mia and some of
the others by giving massage or teaching Yoga. There we were up high in a white
hilltop village just above the coast that on a clear day you could see to
Africa, with Mia at the helm. She was a registered Shaman, this well before
that and the word mindful became overly-common. Michelle actually lived this
way of life in everything she (consciously) did and thought and ate and dreamt.
Mia had come from a rather established well-heeled family, and could
have lived a comfortable life with everything she wanted, but what she wanted,
however, was not the material-based life of her youth, but to find a way to
live simply and in harmony with the earth. Her plan was to give Indian head
massages at a restaurant by the coast but was concerned about the cats, the
numerous mewling, feral, hungry cats who made it impossible to create a calm
meditative atmosphere. So she decided to have a talk with them, the cats. Not
directly and definitely not one by one. She closed her eyes and talked to all
of them. She told them that she loved them, that she would help them find food
– but not there, and not while she worked. I was with her when she did this. I
couldn't hear what she said, though she told me afterwards, her communication
was meditative with eyes closed, similar to how she’d talk to the dead (a thing
she would also teach me). But I saw her face change. She was blonde and fair
and quite wrinkled from the sun. Yet while she conferred with the cat's higher
beings her skin smoothed out and her face seemed to open.
“Let's go and see,” Mia said later that afternoon. “Let's go see if
the cats have heard my wish.”
I was already quite a fan of hers, the whole gang of us living there
were. But still I was skeptical. Yet there was definitely something, as I
followed her down to the restaurant, something (the woo-woo factor?) making the
hairs along my lower arm rise up. If someone had told me what we’d find, I’d
not have believed it. I was never the kind, growing up in New York, who went to
EST, or a Moonie’s talk; never once entered the halls of Scientology. I called myself
a secular, political ‘radical’ Jew, not at all religious or fundamental. I had
once stretched myself to live several months in an Ashram in Ann Arbor where I
learned a lot there about chanting and meditating, but in terms of woo-woo, of
talking to the higher souls of cats, or communing with the dead, I had no
experience with any of that until meeting Mia.
And when I saw it with my own eyes, when we walked out to the patio of
the restaurant, and there wasn't a cat in sight, I was so taken aback I could
hardly breathe. Michelle, on the other hand, seemed not at all surprised. “Okay
good,” she said. “I'll be able to give my massages now.”
My encounters in the land of Woo-woo continued, albeit not consciously
(though the ones more familiar with that enchanted world say there are no
coincidences), in the form of my dear friend David with whom I co-taught tango
and the Alexander Technique. He'd fought off cancer five years longer than any
doctor thought he’d live. When I held him in my arms shortly before he died, I
knew somehow he wasn’t ready to go.
I’ve always been mostly shy, though I perform, act, lead workshops,
but unscripted I often get tongue-tied. Never with David – I felt completely
at ease with him while he lived and even more so after he died. At times I feel
David’s presence so strongly, it’s as if he’s contacting me – like when
a person happens to phone just seconds after they’ve popped into your head – so
it doesn’t seem odd to talk to him silently in my head. I don’t have to speak
out loud; he hears me. I’ve never had occasion to talk to animals, only time to
time hiking the woods when a stray angry dog comes my way. I really do ask that
dog not to bite me. And so far they haven’t. But mostly it’s with the dead –
David and my grandfather – that I’ve gotten more comfortable contacting. And
this, I’ve just discovered in looking up the meaning of this term, is intrinsic
in Woo-woo. Having the belief in talking to the dead, and in all things with
little ability to prove evidence of.
Last year in La Gomera (one of the smaller Canary Islands) I had a
fall while hiking in the mountains. There was no way down the treacherous slope
but to continue on, so completely terrified after my fall (people have died on
that slope), I clutched my walking poles as if my life depended on it. Oh to
have had David alive then, his marvelous healing hands, guiding me down. But he
wasn’t there. About a week later, a strange pain began first in my right hand
and then my left. It turned out that my desperate clutching of poles, something
I was not used to, had damaged the nerve and blood vessels around my shoulders
on both sides, inhibiting blood flow to my hands.
I had a lot of gigs lined up there in La Gomera. We were a trio, me on
guitar and voice, a violinist who played wooden flute, and a lively Spanish
percussionist. Before the accident, I went often with my guitar to the little
church in the old town to practice. The priest had given me permission to be
there between four and six when the church was hardly in use. After the
accident, I wasn’t sure I could (or should) play, it hurt so much. So I went to
the church, without guitar, more to pray than practice. The little church was a
place to be alone: to cry, to think and hopefully heal.
Though I grew up pretty Jewish, I've always felt comfortable in little
churches jutted along the hillside, especially with no one there. The ancient
acoustics, for the few times I’ve sung acapella, and perhaps the strange
comfort from the suffering Jesus and Mary, who they call Maria in Spain.
That time, after the accident in that empty church in La Gomera, looking into Maria’s
eyes, an enormous voice poured out of me. I felt frightened, something like
that had never happened before. I don't sing badly, but mine is not a big
voice. Yet there in that darkening church (there were no lights and the sun set
early behind the mountains), a voice poured out so huge and full that it
couldn’t be just mine. But it felt so good, and healing, and wonderful that I
went every day to sing, or rather to be sung.
One day, my eyes closed, the voice gushing out like some miraculous
angel borrowing my body, I sensed someone in the church. I opened my eyes a
crack, and in the darkness saw a form kneeling in prayer. I suppose she had
been there a while and must have heard me. I wanted so much to keep singing but
now aware of her presence, I asked in Spanish if I disturbed her, if I should
stop. “Please no,” she said, coming in closer to me. In the whisper of
light, I saw her eyes were moist, her face wide open and smooth, similar to Mia’s
face in the state of communion. “Please continue.”
I’m not sure how long we sat in this state of bliss. Time to time I
heard her voice joining mine, or the spirits, or the woo-woo encircling us.
When at last the river of sound calmed, I turned and looked gratefully at her.
She smiled back at me, thanking me.
“Are you Catholic?” she asked.
“I
suppose I am now,” I said.
And with one last gracias, she left.
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