Honoring Mother Earth

All right, class, let's get the titters out of the way. It's a drum circle. Not just a drum circle, but a women's drum circle (girls can't play the drums, silly! They're meant to make babies and be quiet and lovely! Ask Palmolive!). So, an all-female goddess drum circle celebrating the new lunar cycle and Earth Week? Great celestial mercy. These women and their cycles. Why won't they just STOP already? Well, class, because everything, simply everything, goes in cycles. Women, the moon, peace, war, hem lengths, sexual mores, economic ups, economic downs, heartache, heartbeats, birth, death. Letdowns and comeuppance. The moon is a circle, and a circle is a cycle, and everything is a cycle—that will come full circle. Get it?

Oh, come on, you cynic: I can see that smile on your face as you walk away. You think you're so hip? At a recent TV on the Radio show, during the encore, the band invited all the musicians and friends traveling with them onstage to join the band for a number in that great tradition, that tribal custom, of inviting your community to play around the beat, the center, the drummer. I watched with unhinged joy seeing them all connected in bliss and celebration. Even if it's a celebration of a great big eff-you to gas prices, wouldn't you like to feel that, just once? A celebration of the fact that no matter where you're at right now—and I'm talkin' to you, ladies—it's all gonna come full circle. Go pound it out until it does.

New Moon Drumming for Women Only at the Goddess Temple of Orange County, 17905 Sky Park Circle, Ste. A, Irvine, (877) 683-6753; www.goddesstempleoforangecounty.com. Sat., 7-9 p.m. Women only, please.