As the plane lowered her gear, the clouds broke beneath the wings and I could almost hear the voices of the deserted desert plains calling out my name.
I didn’t drive the first leg; I was fortunate to look around in silence and peace, soaking in legendary visions of cactus, sandy jagged mountain ranges, and Joshua trees from across the barren land scape east and west, north and south.
There is a large part of me that feels as at home in the desert, as I do in the mountains or sitting on a rocky shore watching the wave’s crash in at my feet. I know it is the vast expanse of space stretching into nothingness which at first glance attracts the eye, but in a few moments my mind is no longer my own and I am but a part of the great void and collective.
There is no fear, no excitement by definition of the word, and there is no more searching because whatever it is that I am searching for on a daily basis is found instantly therein. A warm smile crosses my entire being and I am home at last in the womb, that silent loving tomb.
As I stared into the desert proper, I sought out some reference point but found nothing specific beyond the whole and I am left again… smiling. I stood outside the car, sand and rocks crumbling beneath my feet, watching the nearby hills and cliffs, waiting for the sign; yet again, I am reminded, the entire landscape is the sign.
A poem lashes through my sleep deprived mind, but the words do not flow like a song; I am snake bitten by the beauty and the magnitude of her warm sun beating across my pale, ready skin. The poem sticks and slams itself into limbo…
The wind like a lover’s tongue flickers deep warmth into my bones and she whispers, “It will always be good, just the way it is… there is nothing to fear…”
My mind reels in this oft forgotten truth.
Although my resistance to the voice is hollow while gazing fully, with access to every eye, across the desert floor; the walls build up quickly once vision is returned to the place I call home. The sight of streets lined with decay, tower after tower of a down town landscape quickly filling what once was a beautiful sight, and the people convinced that the only importance lived only in those who held the switch on the hang man’s noose.
The thought means my entire body is wracked with spasm and cold shudders until I give to God and the soft voice of a desert Goddess, my few days near the source, asking only to be free for whatever time I am allowed.
Focused again on the steady truth maintained through the years of trying to forget these places which speak to me in even my worst moments of pain and drudgery; she wakens in a start and blows a steady soft, warm wind across my face.
I smile and look to the sky; my travelling partner wonders what I am thinking. I was able to say, “I am giving prayer…” In a subtle daze, the rest leaves my mind like a mathematical equation I was never meant to repeat.
I smile at her and get back into the car. The poem feels lost but at the least I am here.
I drove, madly dodging and weaving through traffic heading south on Interstate 15 from L.A. down to San Diego trying vainly to miss rush hour. As the car slips through the final mountain range between Riverside and Los Angeles, it feels like I am returning to the scene of a crime, but I cannot for the life of me remember which crime might be nagging at the back of my brain; perhaps it was all of them.
The ones I was punished for and those that never saw the light of day; either way, I could not see pictures of anything specific, only felt the heavy burden of guilt dangling around my neck until we passed Ontario, the beautiful rolling hills near Corona and saw the signs for Miramar, Marine Corps Air Base.
I want to say that the ocean loomed ahead of us after winding down 8 and hitting Interstate 5, but it did not loom; instead it sat waiting beyond the shore line, patient and expectant like a well behaved child of the sun. The ocean whispered sleep, and once I consumed a wonderful Mexican dinner of beef and beans I clamored into bed with a smile across my heart and slumber rustling between my ears and before my eyes.
The next day, I was able to witness someone touching the ocean, in all her glory, for the first time in her life. It was magical; like a small fire was stoked with gasoline and the excitement shone through in her smile, laugh, and walk from that moment forward.
I had not taken for granted the majesty of the open sea beyond the breakers slamming the sandy shoreline, but it is a sight to behold watching someone feel what you or I might have felt thirty years before. Only now, we see with new, aging eyes like a mother or father might when a child experiences pure joy for the first time and they know exactly what it is they are a part of… without a word of explanation from us… without colored nerves and sensors, disfigured by time and experiences telling them otherwise.
My heart was warm being part and parcel to this moment, but of course I was quickly lost in the long time love affair I have been wrapped up in from the moment, as a small child, when my little bitty toe first touched the frigid water of the Pacific. I was hooked; never the same I am sure despite the lack of knowledge as to what might have been had I never touched that water, that which courses still through my veins today!
There were beautiful people all around us and I failed to notice even the most stunning of the groupings, as my eyes simply searched the sea; watching wave after wave pound the sand, sending children scattering towards towels and parents in torrent cries of laughter and screams of pure pleasure.
My heart skipped several beats repeatedly and I was all alone staring out into the vast nothingness once more. Jarred to another sense of reality when Janice mentioned all of the beautiful people; I struggled to find some response, “It’s the beach and we are definitely in California…” and I smiled only to drift off again, to the water tumbling in and being sucked back out by an unseen force called the current. I wish I was able to share the voice I heard so often with her, but for some reason, I am incapable until I put it on paper. For some reason the words just did not form behind my lips.
It seemed to short a visit for the beautiful shore lines of Southern California and the magical desert of Death Valley; and now that I sit staring out a window across the desert plains towards Las Vegas proper trying to find the right words to express, the correct picture to paint, I know that at the least there are no lies here.
I can tell you all quite honestly, that the most romantic things I have ever experienced are; I have danced with the mountains, made love to the ocean, and held the warm desert in a lasting embrace; for that I am eternally grateful. For the words they have strung across my heart through time and age, there are no expressions but my return to them from time to time.
I also know that my words can never express the deep sigh at the thought that in twenty four hours I will be strapped back into the bitter spring of Calgary, Alberta fighting with all of my might to put in just one more day.
I suppose that is why they call it an affair; it was never meant to last and those weekends locked in a hotel room doing all of the things her husband won’t, always come to an end… only to begin again at some other far off time in some other far off space.
David Lewry
From Primm Nevada
I didn’t drive the first leg; I was fortunate to look around in silence and peace, soaking in legendary visions of cactus, sandy jagged mountain ranges, and Joshua trees from across the barren land scape east and west, north and south.
There is a large part of me that feels as at home in the desert, as I do in the mountains or sitting on a rocky shore watching the wave’s crash in at my feet. I know it is the vast expanse of space stretching into nothingness which at first glance attracts the eye, but in a few moments my mind is no longer my own and I am but a part of the great void and collective.
There is no fear, no excitement by definition of the word, and there is no more searching because whatever it is that I am searching for on a daily basis is found instantly therein. A warm smile crosses my entire being and I am home at last in the womb, that silent loving tomb.
As I stared into the desert proper, I sought out some reference point but found nothing specific beyond the whole and I am left again… smiling. I stood outside the car, sand and rocks crumbling beneath my feet, watching the nearby hills and cliffs, waiting for the sign; yet again, I am reminded, the entire landscape is the sign.
A poem lashes through my sleep deprived mind, but the words do not flow like a song; I am snake bitten by the beauty and the magnitude of her warm sun beating across my pale, ready skin. The poem sticks and slams itself into limbo…
The wind like a lover’s tongue flickers deep warmth into my bones and she whispers, “It will always be good, just the way it is… there is nothing to fear…”
My mind reels in this oft forgotten truth.
Although my resistance to the voice is hollow while gazing fully, with access to every eye, across the desert floor; the walls build up quickly once vision is returned to the place I call home. The sight of streets lined with decay, tower after tower of a down town landscape quickly filling what once was a beautiful sight, and the people convinced that the only importance lived only in those who held the switch on the hang man’s noose.
The thought means my entire body is wracked with spasm and cold shudders until I give to God and the soft voice of a desert Goddess, my few days near the source, asking only to be free for whatever time I am allowed.
Focused again on the steady truth maintained through the years of trying to forget these places which speak to me in even my worst moments of pain and drudgery; she wakens in a start and blows a steady soft, warm wind across my face.
I smile and look to the sky; my travelling partner wonders what I am thinking. I was able to say, “I am giving prayer…” In a subtle daze, the rest leaves my mind like a mathematical equation I was never meant to repeat.
I smile at her and get back into the car. The poem feels lost but at the least I am here.
I drove, madly dodging and weaving through traffic heading south on Interstate 15 from L.A. down to San Diego trying vainly to miss rush hour. As the car slips through the final mountain range between Riverside and Los Angeles, it feels like I am returning to the scene of a crime, but I cannot for the life of me remember which crime might be nagging at the back of my brain; perhaps it was all of them.
The ones I was punished for and those that never saw the light of day; either way, I could not see pictures of anything specific, only felt the heavy burden of guilt dangling around my neck until we passed Ontario, the beautiful rolling hills near Corona and saw the signs for Miramar, Marine Corps Air Base.
I want to say that the ocean loomed ahead of us after winding down 8 and hitting Interstate 5, but it did not loom; instead it sat waiting beyond the shore line, patient and expectant like a well behaved child of the sun. The ocean whispered sleep, and once I consumed a wonderful Mexican dinner of beef and beans I clamored into bed with a smile across my heart and slumber rustling between my ears and before my eyes.
The next day, I was able to witness someone touching the ocean, in all her glory, for the first time in her life. It was magical; like a small fire was stoked with gasoline and the excitement shone through in her smile, laugh, and walk from that moment forward.
I had not taken for granted the majesty of the open sea beyond the breakers slamming the sandy shoreline, but it is a sight to behold watching someone feel what you or I might have felt thirty years before. Only now, we see with new, aging eyes like a mother or father might when a child experiences pure joy for the first time and they know exactly what it is they are a part of… without a word of explanation from us… without colored nerves and sensors, disfigured by time and experiences telling them otherwise.
My heart was warm being part and parcel to this moment, but of course I was quickly lost in the long time love affair I have been wrapped up in from the moment, as a small child, when my little bitty toe first touched the frigid water of the Pacific. I was hooked; never the same I am sure despite the lack of knowledge as to what might have been had I never touched that water, that which courses still through my veins today!
There were beautiful people all around us and I failed to notice even the most stunning of the groupings, as my eyes simply searched the sea; watching wave after wave pound the sand, sending children scattering towards towels and parents in torrent cries of laughter and screams of pure pleasure.
My heart skipped several beats repeatedly and I was all alone staring out into the vast nothingness once more. Jarred to another sense of reality when Janice mentioned all of the beautiful people; I struggled to find some response, “It’s the beach and we are definitely in California…” and I smiled only to drift off again, to the water tumbling in and being sucked back out by an unseen force called the current. I wish I was able to share the voice I heard so often with her, but for some reason, I am incapable until I put it on paper. For some reason the words just did not form behind my lips.
It seemed to short a visit for the beautiful shore lines of Southern California and the magical desert of Death Valley; and now that I sit staring out a window across the desert plains towards Las Vegas proper trying to find the right words to express, the correct picture to paint, I know that at the least there are no lies here.
I can tell you all quite honestly, that the most romantic things I have ever experienced are; I have danced with the mountains, made love to the ocean, and held the warm desert in a lasting embrace; for that I am eternally grateful. For the words they have strung across my heart through time and age, there are no expressions but my return to them from time to time.
I also know that my words can never express the deep sigh at the thought that in twenty four hours I will be strapped back into the bitter spring of Calgary, Alberta fighting with all of my might to put in just one more day.
I suppose that is why they call it an affair; it was never meant to last and those weekends locked in a hotel room doing all of the things her husband won’t, always come to an end… only to begin again at some other far off time in some other far off space.
David Lewry
From Primm Nevada