Hmmm a square peg going into a round hole?
Where do I fit in
Where do I fit in in life
It’s like
What’s my purpose
I don’t know
I just feel like I am
I’m not getting it
I don’t seem to be
You know just really creating what I want in my life
Or in the world
I just feel like
I am just existing
I am not doing my part
It is not about doing
It is about being
It is not what you can accomplish
It is really about how you feel
How you go about your day
How you view your self
Do you have to have everybody love you

Introduction

John:

I’m here today with Matt Del Rosario. Matt, I met you at the Newtown Senior Center. Unexpected, unannounced. I was there for something totally different, and you walked in, and invited a group of us to join you in a class. Could you please tell us about that class. It was the most amazing moment experienced in about a thousand years.

Matt speaks:

Thank you so much. So the class that you got experience is called Hula Noho, which is a seated Hula class, or a Hawaiian form of storytelling through dance and music.

Listen to that sound
The sound of those waves hitting the shore
Just coming in
The coming out
Just The heavenly sounds
The planes now flying over head
The birds making a chirp
Think of all the noises we hear in a day
What kind of noises are we paying attention to
Are we listening to the children’s laughter
The breezes that hit our cheeks
The drops of rain that fall
All the things
That just hear nature at its finest
What are we paying attention to
What kind of chatter is going on in our mind

I say to myself I need 5 minutes, I need a time out, I just gotta get away from all this stuff I’m doing.

So what do I do? Well what I do is I step outside.

I stepped out the other day. There was a patch of snow, covered the ground. Patches of grass broke out. The air was cool and cold. And as I breathed it in, it filled my lungs with this wonderful fillness of freshness and light itself. I looked up and the sky was crystal blue and clear.

A single hawk was soaring high. It just kept going higher and higher, and I watched him for a few minutes.

Introduction by Phil

If you listen very closely, the souvenirs that you gathered over your lifetimes and placed in your home might whisper their history to you.
Can you hear them?

   The actual song itself is available only in spoken form, as requested by Philip.

Response by John

I love that last GEM recorded by Phil, entitled Something Says You’re Home.

One day I went outside and saw mushrooms everywhere. Not only was the yard absolutely full of mushrooms, but they were all so different from each other. It’s like elves and fairies were celebrating there in the night before.

Some were large and off-white. Some were small and orange. Some were dark, dark brown, thin and tall. Some were white with an orange ring at their edge. Some were tiny and delicate, the size of a dime. Colony upon colony of each kind.

There was a huge 8 inch mushroom. There were colonies of bright yellow sprouts, just stems forming, of young mushrooms.

When my children were very young, we would play a game. They would smell spices, herbs, and other flavorings. The idea was not necessarily to know their names, but rather to become familiar with them directly, meeting them, letting them talk to the children.

Remarkably, many years later, I learned that this is how indigenous people would learn about healing plants – by meeting them and learning from them, rather than human experts.

The children really had definite opinions about each flavoring.

Singing
I love to sing
How healing
How fun
How silly
I feel great , challenged, healthy from the art of sounds I am trying to make
Giggling, understanding, figuring out all the things that go into this
Mainly it is the pure joy of doing something that lights go for it
Don’t let others stop you
I was once told not to sing
Had I listened I would never have learned to sing
I instinctively knew I enjoyed doing it
You may also know what you may love to do
You may get talked out of doing it by yourself.

I’m in a concert
I’m being serenaded
I walked out
Listen to this
It’s amazing
The sounds of summer
The warm weather is here
And I am up in New Preston
I was just leaving a great event with friends and I said
Listen, listen to this
Wow you can be entertained anytime during the day by nature
You just walk out and there it is
I love the sound of the serenade
Encore, encore
There is all kinds of music out there
But the music of these peepers, frogs and nature
I just can’t explain it what a concert this is

Artwork by Bruce Zboray www.bruce-zboray.artistwebsites.com


I am drawn to thin books. Books you can read in one or two sittings. With pictures or a fancy border – like an ancient manuscript – decorated. And a hard cover with cloth, where you can feel the weave.

Others may enjoy epic novels of a thousand pages – not I. Maybe it’s me wanting to “know” the whole book at once – no need of bookmarks for me.