Form of meditation: Led Zeppelin

Self Revelation: I would like to take time to point out that I enjoy writing. These blogs are not only to keep my family and friends in the USA updated about my Peace Corps Peru experience, but for my sanity as well…a form of expression. Sometimes I just like to express random feelings/thoughts and sometimes this feels like the place to do it other than in my personal journal.

For my first weekend at site, I actually left site. There was much to get done and it was a successful trip other than the fact I bought my bus ticket too late. Whoopsy. I have to leave a day later than I anticipated. I guess that means I will have one more night of hot showers, tv, internet and a good clean hotel. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Somewhere along the line of this vacation feeling trip I have become the dinner of chicken sized mosquitoes. I don’t know where they came from or when they attacked, but they have left their mark.

My days in Piura were spent shopping, eating and listening to Led Zeppelin. I have always been a Led Zeppelin fan, but for some reason their music really speaks to me in Peru. It makes me feel calm and relaxed. Sometimes I feel like I need to climb aboard my peace sign shaped multi-colored time machine and head back to the early 1970’s to one of their concerts. I want to hold hands with the hippies and just lose myself in their music.

It may sound weird to those who don’t get such feelings from music, but music is my form of meditation and sometimes that’s where I go. I have compiled a list of my favorite quotes from Led Zeppelin songs and maybe they will interest you enough to where you will YouTube them and just maybe you will have that far out, out-of-mind experience too.

"When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll" - Stairway to Heaven

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face
With stars to fill my dream.
I am a traveler of both time and space
To be where I have been. ---Kashmir

Spend my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind, make a new start
Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart
Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair ----- Going To California

Find a queen without a king
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings, la-la-la-la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born
Standin' on a hill in the mountain of dreams
Tellin' myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems - Going to California

Let the music be your master. Will you heed the master's call? - Houses of the Holy

"Oh, whatever that your days may bring, no use hiding in a corner, cause that won't change a thing."-In the Evening

"Don't it make you feel bad when you're tryin' to find you way home, you don't know which way to go?" -When the Levee Breaks

"Upon us all a little rain must fall." -The Rain Song

"Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on." –Stairway to Heaven

"Everybody I know thinks they know me well, but they're never gonna know, cause I move like hell." -What is and What Should Never Be

Maybe you won’t have the same out of mind experience like me, but I can say that you are missing out. Now don’t worry, I don’t freak all Peruvians out about my love of Led Zeppelin. Rigel is a fan as well and understands all this completely. (He even has a dog named Zeppelin). For my mini going away gift he gave me his favorite Led Zeppelin shirt that I can sport around. Anyway, to top off this post with one more quote, here is a paragraph from the book I am reading that I really like:

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit and that's what everyone wants, but a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you will ever meet because they tear down your walls and smack you awake, but to live with a soul mate forever? Nah, too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you and then they leave.”