Sema at Fort Dix, a Rendezvous With Rumi

Ft. Dix NJ,  Feb. 1986.

We're Companies Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.  I'm with Bravo.  We're all on "bivouac" training.  That means, we're out in the woods somewhere, freezing our asses off, combining my own rain poncho with that of my buddy's (Vince N., Civil War freak), to make a tent for two.  Our M-16s and "combat gear" remain in our tents as we go to chow.  One company after the other.  We're up.  Alpha and Charlie are finished, or at least Alpha, I don't know where Charlie is - probably in the trees sniping - a little Vietnam humor there.

Some other dude and I show up a tad late for instructions of how this buffet works:  There's a big concrete slab outside the Drills' tent (a real tent) - on this are a couple of long tables set up with grub.  Sorry - chow, grub went out with WWII.  At the end of the chow line are 3 big water drums set up, one with soapy water, one with plain hot water, one with...whatever.  And that was the rub:  We'd missed out on the instructions and weren't clear as to which drum came first when you dipped your chow-smeared mess kit and utensils to wash them clean.  And like a day out of my 12 years of Sufi training, there were consequences for missing out on instructions and not being clear about the micky-mouse rules.

Out came a big Alpha Drill Sgt. with dark hair and glasses (we spec-wearers all carried the field-approved "rape-prevention-glasses," or RPGs, which were like the black horn-rimmed '50s model - later at Monterey's Defense Language Institute with my David Niven-regulation moustache the glasses made me look like Groucho Marx in "You Bet Your Life", or like the glasses-nose-moustache you buy at gag shops...which we did there at DLI when I became captain of our running team and I led with my own face, 16 other guys carrying the gag number, so that you had 17 "Sams" running the two mile race for Bravo Company at DLI...we always came in second, but as that was the start of a new gag each month we had more fun than the other companies and everyone loved it - but I digress and I didn't want to do that.  Another story, so back to ours: Ft. Dix, the woods)... Out came this Drill from the other company, and barked at me and this other guy for using the water drums in the wrong order: Penalty!

For the penalty to come across I have to explain:  of the basic principles of a soldier, one of the first we learned, after the Greek one about never leaving your buddy's behind, was never to leave your post (for example when on guard duty) until your relief comes or you are dismissed.  This I could understand and relate to - after all, how many years of Sufi training... So this in itself was for me, a no-brainer.  And in context here, it recalled for me the term "Post" in regard to the Mevlevi Sema, where the dervishes turn in reference to the Sheikh in the Sema functioning as Post.

"Hey, you!  Yeah, you!  The dumb one with the glasses."  That was certainly me he had in mind.  We both had to go back and get our respective combat gear (as if for guard duty): flak vest, M-16, Kevlar-helmet, combat belt, the whole 9 yds. - and return pronto to "guard this drum" as if to keep others from falling into the same mistake, which was pretty humorous as we were the last two anyway.  But alright, thought I, I'll bite - I'll play your silly little game.  You have me for 8 weeks.  So I returned, the other guy didn't.  Drill wasn't even around anymore to check.  I just followed instructions, and a little something told me to treat my Drills as "Sheikhs".........see what all those years do to you?  So the following actually occurred, exactly as it reads - my thoughts, what was occurring, the timing, the effect on me.

In full gear, I turn my "guard duty of this stupid drum" into a circumambulation around my Post, or around that imagined Sheikh sitting on the red sheep skin.  I am entering dervish-heaven.  I "march" around this drum in a sema rhythm, my mind is absorbed in zikr and Mevlevi music and overtones.  I don't know anyway how long the jerk's going to make me do this stunt so I'm resigned utterly to possible hours of it.  (The total running time of this unique meeting of dimensions if not universes, was indeed a solid half hour.)

As I'm doing this a truly extraordinary event takes place about 50 yds. distance or more.  These "grunts," these hormone-stupid numb-nut kids in Charlie Company are about to add their own, albeit profane - and that's the Rumi-inspired beauty of it! - Hadhrat (Sufi ceremony of zikr, or remembrance through repetition), and all for the benefit of my psychotic fantasy that we are maybe not in Ft. Dix after all, but Istanbul or Konya.

Someone among them had a birthday and received a cake from home.  Nice.  One of their Drills, a short guy with eyes right out of Doonesbury, was about to pass out to each of them a slice of cake.  That meant, they all had to line up in an orderly fashion, in formation, and receive that slice from his hand.  In their very grunt-mentality they created a loud festive atmosphere.  Now think for a moment of what it sounds like when dervishes recite zikr in an overwhelming rhythm and some ecstatic God-intoxicated idiot among them shouts "ya Allah" or such out of turn, and yet in no way disturbing the procedure but on the contrary embellishing it with........mood.

 This was neither being imagined, nor hallucinated!  As I did my "Turn" they began to chant, yes, chant in one united husky college-fraternity voice:  "Piece of cake!  Piece of cake!  Piece of cake!"  Just like one might have heard "Allah-hayy, da'im-hu!" or similar.  This was already sending me into fits of quiet ecstasy.  Their Drill "became" a Sheikh handing out prasad, plain and simple.  Period.  But that's not all.  In the midst of this chant, one or another would suddenly shout out above the other voices, "fuckin'-ay!...........fuckin'-ay!"  This went on.  And on.  I was beside myself with joy and ecstasy.  It was purely God-inspired, I felt so un-alone and un-forsaken, I wished it would continue without end.

Then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.  They had their cake....yes, and ate it.  And at that exact moment, as I was sort of coming down from my peak, the big Drill who'd put me there came out of his tent, he'd forgotten the whole affair, told me to quit and go, asked me where the other guy was, I told him he never returned, he shook his head and that was it.  I could have apparently ducked out as well, but didn't, and received this very off-color blessing form the Sufis in the Unseen.  All directed and arranged by that clever sonofagun we call God, and it should be no wonder that I am in Love.

Where Peace is Power, Prayer is Sovereign

I share this very very rarely with anyone, normally where it's applicable to present a living metaphor. But it's no metaphor, I'm telling this as always, as it happened, to the letter and without any further embellishment, as the events in my life, when they occur like this, stand on their own as living metaphors in actual literal expression:

It was in my earliest period in Berlin, maybe '89. I lived on a barracks installation which had once been Adolf's own private HQ and installation, complete with private 'Praetorian Guard'. There where I massaged as a side occupation, Gestapo had onced ripped bones from flesh. There where our dental facility was were the bullet holes still left from the 'Night of the Long Knives' when Adolf purged his SA command. I rejoiced in the irony of being part of the Allied Occupation which now raised its stars and stripes every morning where this motherfucker once ruled from. A Jewboy from Colorado-in-America.

Every morning (sometimes I even had the honor of this duty) the flag would go up with the manner of ceremony which I've only ever known among us Americans, dismayed that not even the Brits did this half as well with theirs. Now the "German-national" guards employed by us manned the gate, and they put on the recorded 'Reveille' on the raising and lowering of that flag. On the minute. That meant mornings exactly at 0600 hours, x7, rain or shine. You could hear that recorded Reveille for a span of blocks. Now to what happened.

The windows in my humble quarters, the room I shared with friend Brad, faced in the direction of that gate and that parking lot where the flag went up, blocked from view only by the next barracks which stood between us. Every morning, without fail, I was up early enough to do my set, whatever form that took, before the 'Army-world' even woke up – to the sound of its 'Reveille'... Normally I had finished my breath practices, my 'morning set' of Sufi prayers, and would sit in the lovely morning stillness until I was finished or until that 6:00 Reveille broke out.

On this particular morning I had neglected to notice the time, and on this particular morning, a Saturday where everyone slept-in anyway, like my roommate Brad snoring through this entire episode - on this particular Saturday at one minute to six, sitting on my prayer mat, facing that window (because it was a window, the direction being of no consequence), I was in a particularly intimate feeling, having nearly completed my set and just sitting there with The Beloved, continuing my concentration. It was that soft-morning-light-after-having-just made-love feeling: intimate, close. Not to be disturbed. I'd forgotten to register that my timing was off, that Reveille would blow before I was finished, with a thoroughly obnoxious interruption. It did.

The problem was not merely that it made a bumptious and crude interruption, it was the fact that I was just in the middle of completing my prostrations, toward that window which happened to overlook the area int he actual direction of the recorded military-national music blaring its guts and the raising of the flag which under any other circumstances would be okay, just – not – this – circumstance. That was too much.

Without 'thinking' but with a colossal mega-wrath pointedly directed at that flag and trumpeting, there went a vector of thought energy, literally a command out of my third eye, wordless and nano-second swift, yet robust and vulgar, that is, if I were to put it into words, which it nearly was but nano-second time: 'Shut the fuck up – right now!!! Now!!! I am prostrating to God and never to you!!! Now you shut...the-fuck...up!!!' Like a finger pointing, this went out from my third eye not as a wish but an order. Exactly seconds after that occurred, the music went haywire: obviously, in the physical world, the recorder was eating the tape in the cassette, could happen any time, I knew this.

Only this time it happened now, on command, I knew this as well. I found it later remarkable that I was not for a second the least bit surprised at what was happening, it felt very very natural. And I knew that since a tape had just gotten eaten, they'd be scrambling for a reserve one, find it, slip it in and start over. Until then the flag itself had to wait. And this would take at least a good couple of minutes, which were all I needed. And as I sat there those next seconds, the next wrath-command-thought shot out of my third eye – never once did I think 'wow, gee, didja get that?' - sovereign, one-minded, exactly as follows, 'pointing': '...And you'll stay the-fuck shut-up until I'm finished...until I'm finished!!!' And it did. As I was really finished and satisfied, I sat there erect, at peace, and only then it cranked up anew. And that was okay.

Right after it all happened, and I was sitting there, having "made" the US military tradition and custom "bow" to my morning practice, so to speak, and quietly remarking to myself, "So. ... So be it" - and I could hear my Teacher all the way from the West Coast clearly laughing in my skull between my ears, bellowing with characteristic humor and irony:  "SO!  NOW WE KNOW THAT GOD IS GREATER THAN THE ARMY!"

Now being methodic and scientific, I went out to check whether I'd dreamed the whole thing up. Only I needed to know objectively what had happened with me, no one else, but I needed to corroborate with the outside whether what had happened 'out there' was objective fact or merely subjective on my part. Brad had slept through it, the compound was all in slumber, those who'd raised the colors had long since gone, but there were the guards, they had duty. I asked them casually if anything odd had happened. They confirmed the entire occurence, down to the minute, down to the detail. I kept my side of it to myself, they'd had enough excitement for one morning.