Wan Smol Blog

When they fall

Today’s news cycle has included quite a few articles (like this from WaPo) about the Trump rally that was interrupted as a couple of attendees passed out. The reports focus on the seemingly bizarre behavior of the candidate, who played deejay and “swayed and bopped” on stage for nearly 45 minutes.

I’m quite against Trump and the Republican Party this election, but I didn’t immediately smirk at this. Something that happened near me recently made me pause and consider the room, so to speak.

The other night at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room, as the Wildmans played, I noticed I was smiling, feeling happy and relaxed and delighted by the beautiful song by this young sister and brother.

But then, a woman in the back of the room suddenly yelled out, three times, and dropped to the concrete floor. People around me looked around in confusion, a man knelt beside the woman, the bartender grabbed a phone to call 911.

“Is everyone ok?” asked Aila once her song was finished.

“No,” replied a few people.

But the woman was conscious and being attended to, and people in the front weren’t quite aware of what was going on. So Aila looked at her brother, Elisha, and together they said, OK, we’ll play a song to help the mood, and they launched into a jiggy Appalachian fiddle tune. I was struck by how well they handled the disruption and used their music to lift up the mood.

But I found myself rattled, so I walked to the corner of the room and leaned against the wall. A song or two later, I returned to my spot in the middle of the floor. The woman who’d fallen was gone—I don’t know what happened to her—Aila was singing a covers of These Days and Fade Into You, and the energy of the room was back in the happy frequency.

I guess I just wanted to share my awareness of the energies and emotions that can flow through a crowd. When this incident happened, I marveled at how social we humans are. How connected we are. How quick our concern for another spreads, how swift we are to help the individual and the community.

I know who I’m voting for this election (I hope to celebrate President Harris). The people at that Trump rally don’t share a lot of my views, but for a moment some of the surely felt what I felt. That’s a connection on which we can build.

Toast to Mereva

Right about now, on the other side of the planet from where I’m sitting (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.A.), Mereva Timante is getting married in Port Vila, the capital of the Republic of Vanuatu.

Mereva was just a small child of 2 when Erin and I arrived on the island of Paama as U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers in 1997. Her father and mother, Noel and Leah, hosted us during the two-month training period and then, when we returned to Liro Village as our assignment, they became our constant friends and teachers. They were our family, and Mereva was with us every single day. Ennah and Terry, too. They filled our two years in Vanuatu with much joy, and we cried when it was time for us to go home to the States.

Two decades later, though, Erin and I took our own children to Paama In 2018. Leah and Mereva were there to welcome us, and we saw Terry and more of the clan in Vila. Our time in Vanuatu was much too short.

In the years since, we’ve tried to make up for the distance by sending money to support Mereva in her studies. When we learned last month that she was to be married in October, we even talked about me flying back there for the celebration. Alas, that wasn’t possible.

But if I couldn’t get to Vanuatu for the wedding, where I’d surely have been offered a ceremonial shell of kava, I knew that I could get to Da Kine’s Kava in Durham to have a cup of Vanuatu kava in honor of Mereva. “Tahosis vareis,” I said as I raised the cup to my ni-Vanuatu family. Well done, and I will see you soon.