Notes from the Cruise

  At sea, in so many, many ways...sitting in my room, reading the news bulletin, news from the world...Jerusalem, Belfast, earthquakes in Managua, Nicaragua, Russia promising to Nagasaki fewer nuclear warheads, roads in Turkey and Athens melting in the heat wave in which we are presently sailing. Missles and warheads and famine and peace struggles -- earthquakes and heat waves -- all still goes on out there, while here, at sea in the blue world on this ship, all feels peaceful...

Performing on the ship, 2 shows...It feels so right to do this, solidly singing about heartbreak and healing, people weeping -- which I happen to think is good for the world... Karen Williams introducing me in the most profound way, speaking of first seeing me at Carnegie --"Oh my God! They captured a little bird to sit at the piano!" I was so moved by it all, so grateful just to feel moved...women from other cultures, other ways of being or thinking, all managing through very little actual contact, to forge a culture. And here some of us are, on a ship, at sea, about to take a journey through the past, back to the Pyramids of Giza, back to Africa.

Cairo...Citadel of Saladin, mosques where we must cover our knees and shoulders and heads (heads and shoulders, knees and toes!), for these, apparently, cause too much ruckus in spiritually-minded people, trying to worship. Egyptian museum...I've seen the rest of the collection in London, where it was "appropriated" and removed so far from its home...here, in Cairo, the relics -- mummies and statues, and pottery and things from the dusty past are housed in this dusty place. We saw some very old wooden statues, the burl of the wood still evident, some cracked from the heat and repaired. The heat is intense, probably 115 degrees, "hotter than usual," says our guide, Hala (meaning halo around the moon). Three hour bus ride to the Pyramids, down long straight roads with roadside stands of watermelons stacked like green cannonballs. Then, suddenly they appear, rising up out of the sand, these enormous triangles of Mystery. There are tourists and camels and horses and donkeys and men shouting for attention and it all costs one American dollar! Well, that dollar seems to be the basis for all exchange here. Buses come and go, filled with people from all over the world -- including 10 buses of Lesbians!--everyone here to witness these ancient puzzles for themselves. We walk up to the base of a pyramid, touch it, photograph ourselves grinning hugely in the sun...back on the bus, heading for the Sphinx. There she sits, her paws outstretched, the guardian of the Pyramids. She is huge, but looks small in front of the Big Triangles which are 7 city blocks around, just so big, and the stones are massive in tonnage. How was it all done!

The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, the Old City...there is wailing here, and prayers from people for hundreds of years, so much supplication. There is a dividing wall down the middle of the square, dividing men and women...it seems such a strange division here, where it's only the prayers of human beings rising up into this desert sky, this heat. I, like many others there, wrote a small prayer on a smaller piece of paper, and wedged it into a crack in the wall, a place already filled with small bits of paper-prayers. I rested my forehead on the cool stones of the wall, between my palms. Looking up, I saw a tree, a desert bush growing out of the wall, hanging over the people praying and dovening and wailing, offering shade and a place to tie one's prayers in small bundles, much as I've seen at the Medicine Wheel at home in Wyoming. This tree is watered by rising prayers and falling tears. I reach for Quiet Mind and Heart here. Somewhere, somehow, all this supplication by thousands upon thousands for so many hundreds of years, must reach the Great Heart of this Universe, the Great Mystery. It never hurts to make a prayer. My there be Peace in this World, and Peace in my life.