Marking Time
The drum major barks, “Attention!”
Plume helmeted musicians snap in unison.
“Mark time. Mark!” Knees of long legged trombonists, XXXL Sousaphonists and petite piccoloists rise as one. Percussionists kick off their cadence with snare and bass drum beats split and flare as tri toms add melodic syncopation. A whistle blares. A brief pause before three short evenly times blasts follow. The spat-clad band steps off as one, with their perfectly timed and placed twenty-two and half inch strides.
Marking time. We do it with our daily routines. We do it with birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. Often, like a marching band, we don’t even realize we are moving.
This month marks two unusual events in my life. Since leaving home for college at the ripe (young) age of eighteen, I have never lived at the same address for more than three years. (And yes it does seem like a very long time ago since I left for that small school in the cow pasture in SW VA – at the time, it wasn’t the end of the world, but I thought I could see it from there.) Starting this month, I march onto a field longer than three years long. Given the wonderful cadence I am marching to, I can’t say I am concerned.
The second event of note this month is the twenty year anniversary of when I hopped on a plane, waved goodbye to the Blue Ridge Mountains and flew to Papua New Guinea (PNG). Twenty years since meeting the most remarkable group of teachers and fascinating personalities. Peace Corps Papua New Guinea Group 14 met in Hawaii on November 29th, 1998. The following twenty-six months would require me to draw on everything I had ever learned, experienced and believed in. It would push me to my limits and redefine the perspective I had on work, life, the world, my goals and how I live my life.
My move to college seems so distant and unremarkable. My move to and time in PNG continues to seem much like a Chloroquine-induced dream full of vibrant colors displayed with millions of pixels revealing depth and complexity while traveling through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge allowing a fluidity of movement between dates and time.
There are times, still, if it’s quiet enough, if I am pensive enough that I can close my eyes and I am back down there…
South of the equator; in the little latitudes, watching “o sun e red, e go down long ples long mi.” A place where the fruit bats circle at sunset around the giant rainforest trees tied up with liana. A place where the cool morning air is filled with the bouquet of frangipani, bougainvillea and salt air. In the evening, as the heat and humidity slowly fade, the air is filled with the fibrous aroma of freshly scraped coconut, the slight acidic bite of garden fresh pineapple or the citric spray of moli over papaya or the tang of a freshly picked guava.
A place where loud laughter and stories retold in Tok Pisin are supplemented by smoke fire burning your eyes and the pungent stench burning your nose of beet-red spit that accompanies the hot flash of a buai chew.
A place where humidity weighs you down; where unspoiled nature takes your breath; where the ground shakes daily reminding you of your location on the ring of fire…in case the extinct volcano framed in your kitchen window, the dormant volcano framed in your bedroom window or the active volcano less than 30 kilometers away weren’t reminder enough.
When I go there, its not just the days I recall. Orion’s belt would line up perfectly between the grade ten and grade seven classrooms, as if they were an extra belt loop. The way, on moonless nights from the hill that overlooked the boys’ dormitories that the sky and Bismarck Sea would become one: stars twinkling in the pitch black sky where indistinguishable from the lanterns on local fishermen’s dug out outriggers that danced on the waves. Or the Southern cross that would rise, counterclockwise to stand upright above the southwest end of the soccer pitch. The complete darkness when the town generator would cut off. Writing letters by the still light of a candle in a Pepsi bottle on sleepless nights. The stillness. The quiet. The tranquility. The sense of complete isolation that comes from the knowledge that you are surrounded by virgin rainforest; or the sense of being rocked to sleep by the waves that carry a sea breeze over pristine coral reefs.
…then again, maybe I don’t have to explain why I close my eyes and visit still.
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