Last winter I spent a few days in the California desert. I instantly wanted more, was loathe to leave, and I get the impression many people feel that way. So, nothing new. Nothing new under the sun. A heated sun in January on Northern flesh; there is nothing better. Vegetation: dry twisted growths, sky: an endlessly blue arced slide off this planet, more sky: black and brilliant with stars. I loved it.
If one believes in past lives, what a cross we have to bear in the soul’s memory of every place we have lived, and of everyone. Just: everyone. I’ve met you before, and I will meet you again. It can be so clear. Yet if I had once called a desert home, and now it’s a green and humid, sometimes very cold place, the ties criss-cross, catch or get caught, locked down with rolling hitch knots, or bowlines. One can (must) love and hate two, or more, places.
In January I sat in a sunny courtyard to write, coffee and the aroma of strange plants and dust on tires; last night in bed as a windy October rain found my skin through the skylight, cracked open. Last summer in oddly apocalyptic Greece, breathing in time’s heavy scent. A scent that compels you to read between lines, to pick yourself back up, unaided, whenever you find the strength. And nestled inside are all the ties we have and will cross in this life.
Places that were once remote are accessible now. A desert might have been intended to be an exclusively solitary place, or one that supports only the creatures that survive its particular trials. Now people tour the deserts, bringing with them a city spirit of congregation and exchange. Does this city spirit greet the desert, apologize, explain it was brought here unannounced? Uninvited? Ghost town cities haunted by the millions that have passed through, their empty rows of houses faces with shattered eyes. Do they mourn a lost purpose, favor their previous identities? Are they lonely.
I showed my daughter, now 6, a photo of myself in the Yucca Valley and she thought it was the Gobi desert. I said the Gobi is very far away, this desert is in the United States. She just looked at me from under thick dark lashes and said ‘Oh well next time we go somewhere I want to stay on Earth. Earth is just as nice as the desert.’
Photo of me in the desert was taken by Kiriaki Vassilakis.
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