Base Camp

Drinking in Ethiopian spiced coffee, I am sitting with my own thoughts. A book on the history of oracles lays across my lap as my my fingers break of a lump of dense bread and dip it into a spicy red sauce I can't easily identify.Outside the grey has gathered. I am so grateful I got to get here early rather than being out there in the weather. Back corner of the restaurant I am out of the way, and I am delighted for the down time. It is an hour I needed to clear my head and step away from the world. Such a great gift indeed.I have missed Zahava. Even though we have only known each other for a year and a half, she makes my spirit sing. Powerful, beautiful, wise. Attending a class of hers I cried in a corner, silently.We each have capacity, she explained, lifting up a glass of water. It was a small glass. We each have capacity.But some of us have more capacity. She lifts up a second glass. Pouring one glass into another. She explains how some of us with more capacity can run dry and need more to fill us back up. That those with less can take on energy in tantra and other ecstatic experiences and find themselves overflowing and unable to process the deluge. I pull away to the side and watch other students engage in physical exercises, while tears roll silently.Our conversation over a vegetarian sampler plate dances across the stars. Power exchange. Love. Relationships. Work. Collaboration.Hope. Dreams. History. Race. New opportunities. Beauty. Fear. Connection.We dance between them all, and scoop up another bite of colorful food with bread squishing between our fingers.I laugh and say I have a need to control my room when I teach. I have an agenda, and though we may snake between points, I want to hit my core points. Students read a class description and deserve to get what they signed up for.Let me start at the bottom of the mountain, and hike a variety of different paths- but by the end of the night we need to have made base camp. If we don't, we can't scale the mountain.She laughs, chimes ringing in the air.Quizzically I look back at her from across the table.She says she is the kind of instructor that goes "ooh, look at this tree."I laugh out loud.But it is true. I want you to get to base camp. And yes, it means sometimes I have to break away from the tangent and say "we have a mile and a half to hike before sundown, come on folks!"And yet, talking with Zahava, I realize I have a middle ground to reach. Let me learn how to find base camp, and yet stop to truly FEEL the trees, not just see them as we go by.The trees deserve it, and so do we.Even as we reach base camp, together.