where we exist

On the to-do list for this week, I wanted to include the intention of getting some seedlings in the ground at my new little homestead. This is easier said than done because, although we have the space to garden, we don't really have the soil. Or we do, but it's definitely not what I'd call "organic". My housemates recently uncovered a trash heap, just beneath the edges of their own new plantings, left by some former resident. And after they finished pulling bottles, cans, dishes, and even more toxic-looking items out of their excavation, the place looked more like an archeological site than a garden. And I was dramatically less interested in sharing in the planting effort. But, there's 2/3 of an acre altogether. There must be some clean corner of earth left on the place. So, on my list, I wrote, "Look for a plot". And then laughed at the tendency of mundane words to keep reaching for metaphorical implications.

What is the plot here? If my life right now got sent as a manuscript to an editor, it would promptly be returned with this notation: "Too many story lines, too many loose ends; this wanders all over the place. Clean it up and focus on just one plot!" Right now I successfully, if distractedly, live and work in two cities at once. I plant seeds and dream always of uprooting self, and travelling again. There are several places where I'm welcome to land, between migrations, and none of them as yet really feel like home. I have a companion whose company, whose way of being, brings me joy that is more than I know what to do with - and still I seek more solitude, and plan my days (from years of habit) like a solitary person. New Mexico is home, and it inspires such admiration for its grassroots efforts, and its stubborn righteous hold on its past, its poverty, its potential. But, all those other states still have their open frequency as well. Today it's Colorado tuning me in, thanks to the cobalt sky and green humidity, the gifts of last night's rain. I think of Portland a lot, too. Not least because of the dozen newslists that still send me their visions of life up there (I want to go hear music and spoken word under the Morrison Bridge, an open jam in the truest sense: in solidarity with the homeless! I wish I could camp out and plant gardens and flowers with the friendly demonstration/occupation at the old abandoned high school, that they're STILL not using for transitional housing!)

At work this week I was trying to joke with my coworker from El Salvador. He had just come back from a bothersome delivery in which the customer gave him the wrong address (this happens amazingly often). I meant to say, "The people don't know where they are!" but instead, confusing donde and cuando once again, as well as the right "be" verb, I said, "The people don't know when they exist!" Now there's a sentence reaching for a bigger meaning...

Although the desert supports a beautiful diversity of lives, they have this ability in common: they know when to exist. They conserve their precious energy in between the rains. They're as alive as the elements will support, not seeking for more. The plants hold back their growth, or their bloom; the animals go underground, or go dormant; and I'd like to think we people have learned a little from them in our years of home here. Rest during the day's strongest heat; let overabundant plantings die back during seasons of drought; draw solid urban boundaries based on available water levels (okay, we haven't learned it all yet). But to these I add the more personal: try not to focus on the joy of rain when it's not here. Perhaps this means to see it as a brilliant plot twist, rather than the main story line. Which means that when it does grace us, I think I know how those little brother and sister desert-dwellers feel: immediately, immanently, exponentially more alive. I know when I exist, in the fullest sense: when it rains, in the desert. And it would make life so much easier if I could find a way to conserve that joy, in the meantime, like the precious resource that it is. Cause there's way too much waiting for the luminous oxygen-creosote-lightning-bloom of days like yesterday, when mind and heart return with a start to full, intense awakeness and gratitude...

I love the desert. I might live out my life here (though the highway virus will assert itself again, and again). I just wish it was easier to find the level of gratitude and awakening that only the rains bring. For today, I guess I have last night's neighbor to thank, for sharing his own bit of present wakefulness. I camped out again in my new favorite Santa Fe spot. It's further out, intensely quiet, radiantly green. It's exactly the sort of liminal space I seek, and then some: I'm pretty sure it rests on a seam between dimensions. The Dreamtime takes it over, when night falls, and overlays its hillsides with lakes, cities, people, and portentious actions that seem to show its truer nature. But last night, I had company there before I made it into dreams. A man was camped by the river, just across the dirt road from my truck. I didn't see him until morning, but I heard him through the trees. He had nothing but a sleeping bag (caught a glimpse of him, or the bundle that was him, still sleeping). And he sang himself to sleep, at intervals until deep into the night. I couldn't understand any words, if there were any. But he sang loud, peaceful, and strong. Like somebody who, whatever in-between he occupied, knew when he existed.