I remember waking up this morning to the sound of my phone alarm going off - harmonious church bells blaring in my left ear, reminding me that I had to get up earlier than the others to go get milk. Sure enough, Trey and I were out the door ten minutes later. The chilly 32 degree morning and crisp wind flew into my leather coat and numbed me until we reached the nearby gas station. I remember the stares vividly...a blend of curiosity mixed with apprehension. This is understandable. After all, we were two oddly dressed wasichun (white men) darting in for a gallon of milk and scurrying out.
After coming back and filling ourselves up with some good breakfast, we headed out to what was supposed to be a community hall for the reservation. Only, it was never finished. Our job today was to work with Mike, a very generous and skilled handyman, and begin installation of a bathroom. Justin, my co-author, was sent off to drive Floyd a good hour away to the VA hospital. While he was on a thoroughly enlightening one-on-one trip with Floyd, we began work on marking and cutting up planks of wood for the bathroom walls. Throughout the day, our group fluctuated and rotated members through different tasks, such as delivering lunch and sewing supplies to Grandmother Mary Ann and helping Aunt Natalie put together lunches.
I hovered around Mike and Trey for the most part, popping in where I could with a drill or a saw. It was refreshing to see those walls go up and that ceiling slide into those brackets. We had to stop at a point because Mike didn't have all of the necessary supplies with him, including the equipment for hooking up the lights to the electricity. From there we made our way back to the Retreat Center for a break (whoa!) until the after-school children arrived to play for a while. I had a very interesting experience with one kid named Chris who persistently tried to run up behind me and spin me around. Either that, or he was trying to climb up my back. Regardless, the introduction of another kid led to an energetic game of monkey-in-the-middle that sent bursts of nostalgic adrenaline to my head.
After a while, we went back to Floyd and Natalie's for dinner and more learning. Bob, the current director of Conscious Alliance and a manager for major country music stars, was there and offered various anecdotes and insight into our conversation. Though, as usual, we played the part of eager students and listened to Floyd's words. The group consensus has been that Floyd's manner of speaking - this circular way of talking - may seem repetitive and contradictory to the half-hearted listener, but it's actually quite profound and makes a great deal of sense as time goes on. He speaks in webs, which is to say that he introduces various topics and stories to you at the beginning, and then he tells them again later with more detail and new minutiae. He weaves his way into a carefully drawn circle all the way to the center, which I often find is the, "Aha!" moment for me. What he spoke of yesterday with the evils of the internet, the methane gas that will kill all inhabitants of major cities, the cause of alcoholism on the reservation, and importance of the four directions all came back to us today in a slightly different way that helped to structure the context of what he was saying. It's all a matter of creating "the big picture" for us so that we may understand (or at least attempt to understand) his vision of the future and what needs to be done if traditional ways are to be preserved.
The arrival of Justin and the other Conscious Alliance folk who happened to get their massive truck stuck in the mud (25,000 pounds of food will do that!) signaled the final slice of the night. We left, tired and slightly apprehensive of the imminent unpacking of food from the truck tomorrow. With a good night's sleep and our continuing infectious positive energy, however, I feel as though we'll dash through our jobs with grins and joy to spare.
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