Javi and I didn’t try to kiss again, but we did settle into an easy camaraderie. By the end of the week, we began meeting after chores for hikes and stopping by the meditation tents to spend time with Kadence.She was fantastic. Although she giggled at our futile attempts to allow ourselves to experience the world through our opened chakras, she still seemed pleased by our meditation efforts. She was also assigned to be our official orientation leader, so we began meeting for lunch and listening to her Community lessons beside the Merced River.Our “lessons” were essentially a crash course on life outside the Centrist Movement. We learned about literature, politics, biology and the prevalence of hormones that were apparently running on overdrive through every teenager’s veins. We learned that love and passion and sex weren’t considered dangerous out here – were even encouraged somewhat – and Kadence giggled every now and then as she talked, saying things like, “And here you were, probably thinking there was something wrong with you!”We learned words for emotional subtleties we’d never experienced, and we talked about the differences between the ones we already knew: anxiety versus insecurity, jealousy versus envy, confusion versus bewilderment, sympathy versus empathy.The knowledge was enlightening – new, but not new, somehow.
