Quinta Tonantzin Retreat House Tepoztlan
09.33
Quinta Tonantzin Retreat House, Tepoztlan, Cuernavaca, México.
Morning Sitting: in the Chapel, 07.15 for 07.30.
Breakfast at 08.00.
Silence; following which reports, comments, observations, noticings and Points of Seeing were invited.
Several especially insightful comments on yesterday evening.
I worked hard to say nothing. However, one comment: We only know we were not listening when we find that we are.
Table conversations with Sandra.
Work called for the morning,
Beginners are welcome at Kitchen Team with-guitar meetings with Robert;
Kitchen Team welcome at Beginners Meetings with Robert.
On leaving the Dining Room, very good questions from a Beginner: what-to-do as a bandleader working with musicians in the band.
A: Become enlightened! Function is what you do, and there are various strategies to be employed. However, a suggestion: address Being. That is, become more present. Everyone in a group is the same person. So, if you become more present, everyone else in the group becomes “more present”.
Back to the room…
… to open Valentine cards and presents from my Wife, carried here from England I…
II...
III...
12.26 Kitchen Team meeting at 10.00 with Chris introducing a suggested / available project.
Followed by Kitchen Team with guitars and Robert.
Moving notes without thought, demonstrating how (what we usually refer to as) thinking gets in the way.
Into two groups, moving incrementally and gradually to 25 groups via trios, quartets, quintets, sextets and so on; and then back to one – the Guitar Circle.
This is the Circle speaking to us.
Until c. 11.00.
Beginners with guitars and Robert at 11.15-ish.
Passing notes in 5/8, and 5/8 and 7/8.
Addressing the Right Hand. The Principle Of Graduating Extension applied to picking, and the picking-direction reversed.
Adding the Left Hand.
The difference from yesterday to today, in positioning of guitars on the body, is remarkable.
14.41 Meeting at 12.30 with a quorum of the original Special Study Group: Sandra and Elisa. The present aim of the group: Contact At A Distance. The primary external form of this is the online Journal.
Discussing various arisings within the course.
Lunch at 13.00.
Plentiful conversations. Beginners were invited to speak. Women were also invited to speak, and several did so.
Work for the afternoon called.
20.03 Curt and the Buddies with the Beginners for 5 and 7 at 15.00.
Tea 16.00.
Meeting with a quorum of the North American Federation Of Guitar Circles at 16.35.
Kitchen Team with guitars 17.15: The Guitarist Inside.
Circulating in small groups.
Extended picking.
T’ai Chi 18.30 on the football field.
Dinner at 19.00 with a solo performance, undertaken as a redemptive act.
Suggestions to greet our soloist:
all hide;
be very quiet until he arrived, then talk loudly throughout the performance until he left, then fall quiet again;
lock the door: if he knocks three times, then unlock it.
Our soloist came in an unlocked door. Loud conversations erupted, the performer rapped loudly on a pot and introduced the solo piece as their first composition. The audience around the tables joined in, singing. Ending to loud applause.
The pot was a hard act to follow.
When returning, the performer declared that they were not good with chords. No one had noticed this. Perhaps they were too busy singing.
Several suggestions for this evening, including working in small groups.
22.15 At 20.15: meeting with the Endangered Species Affirmative Action Group.
Beginning with the Left Hand.
To the Right Hand: the story so far.
Alternate picking on one string, then to every string.
Two, three, four, five and six string picking.
Then to the tremolo exercise in G minor.
House Of Guitars at 21.15.
Two concentric standing Circles with women on the inside.
No instruction was given.
The Circles began, and kept going for c. 30 minutes.
Beginning-again and maneuvering: men moving around and about, women moving within their Circle. The men returned to the Outer Circle and whizzing emerged, in both Inner and Outer Circles.
This came to a stop, and Vicious Ferocious Julia led the women out, the men following. This was the completion, c. 22.10.
Quite an event and for the second evening of this course, any course. Remarkable.
22.32 As I was sitting at the computer in my room, a loud crack! as something fell from the ceiling and bounced off the desk or Mac. Looking down to see what this might be – a black scorpion on my left trouser leg just below the knee. It walked around to the back of my leg, where I couldn’t see it. Standing and slowly walking backwards out of the door, picking up a shoe as I went, fortunately finding Aileen sitting on the bench outside. I gave her the shoe, and with loud and expressive shouts Aileen rapidly despatched the scorpion it by knocking it from my leg, then giving it a hefty hammering with the shoe.
This a first, in almost twenty-nine years of courses.
