Nothing Happens Again

So I'm sitting on the porch talking to Pete who just closed on his house and Leon is inside packing his stuff in a kind of a panic because he isn't going to be done before his ride shows up with the truck and I'm telling Pete that I feel a little bit sad but mostly just anxious and then suddenly a hummingbird flies up and I say oh my god there's a hummingbird.

It's a female, I think, because she has a very soft brown color with no iridescence.  For a moment, she hovers by the morning glories, and then, suddenly, she shoots directly toward me, stopping, midair, about four inches from my face. She lingers there.  In her eyes I see what it's like to own yourself completely, without apology or distress, to have dominion of the space around you.  Her gaze confers a blessing, an affirmation ofsome kind.  And then she zips away, not in an erratic hummingbird dart but in a purposeful, elegant exit that says, "get on with it."  

So, I look up in my animal totems book and it say that hummingbirds are about bringing joy back into your life and could be about creating joyful design and Pete say "that's a good omen" and I am spellbound by the idea that a hummingbird could exist in the alley behind Kalorama Road and immediately I want to go buy a hummingbird feeder so I can have that thing happen again. So I can have more.  But nothing happens again.  The present moment does not return.

Whitmanesque Outburst

I am the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow,

therefore I shall be voluminous, overflowing,

elusive and difficult to attain

I radiate promises and comfort

enrich the ground with nourishing metals

offer my wealth to all others

nothing is moving me except my seeking them.

Unofficial Sneak Preview: Relampago: City of Lightning

Loyal Readers:

Tom threatened to "unfollow" me if I didn't post something to this blog soon, so,  to avoid the pain of rejection, I offer what might be Chapter 1 of  Relampago: City of Lightning.  If you picked this up in the bookstore, would you keep reading?

Relampago: City of Lightning

When Burt Leclair arrived at Relampago the fire was extinguished, but for a thin line of flame smoldering along the road, contained by a trench the BLM fire crew had just finished digging.  Smoke rose from a patch of scorched brush that appeared to have ignited near the Garden of 100 Demons and spread in an alarming vee shape along the hillside.  Sheriff Joaquin Tafoya stood at the point of origin with his arms resolutely folded across his barrel chest and Burt’s brother Rudy, stooped and wiry, mirrored the posture like a shadow in weak sun.

Burt approached cautiously.  “How do, Joaquin.  Looks like you saved the day again.”  It was the third fire in as many months and Burt searched Tafoya’s face and posture for clues about his mood.

Tafoya responded curtly, “I was just explaining to Rudy that I’m getting calls from the County about this place.  So many fires, it’s hard to blame it all on nature.”

“Well, it is the City of Lightning,” Burt said.

Rudy Leclair had built Relampago, the City of Lightning, at the mouth of an abandoned mine in the Majuba Mountains of northern Nevada.  He had conceived it as a kind of spiritual refuge, a retreat center for those who were not interested in casinos or outlet malls or simulated Wild West towns.  Starting with a small butte that covered about half an acre of rocky land, he constructed a few small buildings, gardens, and a picnic area and excavated the mine’s collapsed tunnels with just a shovel and whatever building material he could scavenge to create a labyrinth of shrines and grottos where one could make wishes or pray for cures.

At the mouth of the mine he built a Welcome Center and Museum from homemade adobe bricks and discarded lumber.  He lined the roof with old tires, each one bearing an inscription painstakingly calligraphed on the tread.  Prayers, toys, bits of furniture, and glass adorned each surface, inside and out.  Mirrors and shiny fenders sent communications into space, inviting spirits to the spot.

From inside the museum one could view elaborate assemblages of ordinary objects arranged to convey messages received by Rudy from the desert.   Some had environmental themes with apocalyptic overtones, but the majority were cheerful, if difficult to comprehend.  Beneath the museum, Rudy had transformed the mine into a network of grottos, each one celebrating the emotional life of the land with dioramas and displays inlaid in the walls.   One could wander through The Alley of Thirst or linger in the Grotto of Unexpected Visitations or puzzle over big questions in the Vast Palace of No Doubt.

On the butte behind the museum, lawn dwarves and statues of St. Francis raged a bloody battle.  A herd of cows constructed of saw horses and worn planks oozed red foamy wounds.  Half a silver dinghy lay buried in the sand, which was painted a Mediterranean teal, and the outstretched plastic arms and legs of the drowned reached from beneath the blue ground for rescue.  Relampago, the City of Lightening, was an apocalyptic earth ship; headquarters for an army of angels that could arrive at any time.

Burt slapped the sheriff on the back and said, “Let’s take a look at where that fire started.”

“It started with the match your brother lit to burn that pile of trash over there,” Tafoya snapped.  “I’m telling you Burt, he’s a menace.”

Burt nudged him forward and began walking toward the hillside.  “Let’s see before everybody gets all worked up.”

“You gotta do something,” Tafoya said, softly.  “He’s getting, you know, different.”

“He’s always been different.”

“He’s gonna hurt somebody.  It’s wet now but he sets a fire this summer and the whole canyon will go up.  You gotta bring him to town.  Get him some supervision.”

Burt faced Tafoya.  “Get him locked up, you mean.”

“He don’t have to be locked up.  Get him in a group home.  In Lovelock or Winnemucca.”

“Rudy don’t do so well with groups.”

Tafoya approached a pile of smoldering rubble -- a few charred objects nestled in a wreath of braided sage.  Some of the contents had incinerated while others remained intact.  A stuffed Snoopy, three eggs, and a copy of the Bobsey Twins at the Seashore had survived the conflagration.  Clearly, a portion of Snoopy’s plaid scarf had blown off into a patch of rabbit brush to set the hill ablaze.

“This is where the lightning struck,” Tafoya said.  “Convenient that it hit this little offering.”  He kicked at the objects, scattering the soaked debris around the hill. “Next time, I’m gonna arrest him.  And then he won’t go to no home.”

“There won’t be a next time,” Burt said. “I promise.”

On the porch, Rudy performed deep plies and waved his arms in front of his face as if gently shooing away gnats.  This dance, part of a system of movements, had come to him during meditation when he realized his body was aching to pray without ceasing.  From then on, he rarely walked more than a few steps without inserting a spin or little Celtic hop and it wasn’t long before people began to yell, “hey Baryshnikov!” when they saw him on the street.  He accepted the nickname without rancor.

“Rudy,” Burt had snapped, “don’t you know they’re making fun of you.”

“Baryshnikov is a fine dancer,” Rudy had replied.

On the porch, Burt interrupted Rudy in an extended sun salute.  “Stop dancing, and tell me what’s going on.”

 “Something’s out of balance.  I have to make offerings.”  Rudy struck an archer-like pose and then balanced on one foot while holding an imaginary bowl above his head.

“Well stop it. Make water offerings or something.”

Rudy came back to a standing position and considered the proposal.  Finally, he nodded, “Fire out of balance needs water.  Perfect.  One day you’ll take over Relampago.”

“Relampago is all yours, brother,” Burt said. “I don’t have nothing to do with it.”

Following Messages

This morning my mind said, you should take a shower.  A shower will wake you up, but my heart said, let’s take a hot bath.  So, I took a hot bath, sinking deep into the lavender-scented water, feeling the release in my knees and shoulders, and my heart said let’s go for a walk. My mind interjected, we can walk to the bank and then buy some groceries.  No, said my heart, lets look for flowers.  So I followed my heart down
Kalorama Road
toward the fancy houses and embassies, seeking blossoms and daffodils, and forsythia in professionally-cultivated gardens, and then my heart said, go over there.  It pointed me toward the Chinese embassy, a big ugly box with darkened windows and a straightforward rejection of all thing frivolous and soft.  I walked past the front door toward the

Connecticut Avenue

bridge with its fierce stone lions and expansive view, but my heart forced me to turn toward a dumpster at the back of the embassy. Heart, I said, you're mad, but I kept walking until I came to a crumbling cement slab that merged with a path into a wooded area.  I wandered along a stern  fence until the path curved and wound down a  muddy slope.  You already have a bum leg, said my mind, and my heart said, one more step will be fine, and they argued all the way down the hill until I came to the edge of the creek and startled a few deer from a clearing.  An official-looking sign said something about flooding and sewage and my mind responded with sarcasm but I could see the bridge on

Connecticut Avenue

above me and hear the percussive rattle of leaves in the wind.  Small hints of broken glass and discarded water bottles peeked out amid the snowdrops and the wet leaves and then a colossal bird with yellow plumage burst through the sycamore branches and transformed before my eyes into a moving van on the bridge above and I felt a quiet descend, a silencing of judgment and desire and the fear of things ending badly, of deep bone pain, of loneliness and doubt.  I sat down by the sign that said something about flooding and sewage and thought deep and meaningful thoughts in the space just below my conscious mind, thoughts so subtle and profound that even I couldn’t hear them, thoughts so effortless and light that they fell through the gap at the end of my breath like seed pods spinning in a spring wind and they planted an intention deep inside that will bloom one day like antlers on a fawn, like a stalagmite slowly pushing up from a cavern floor.  Spring is the time of pushing up and planting seeds and sprouting and loam, whatever loam is, and I found myself yearning, yearning for an invisible homeland of loam, in which to plant myself and grow.  And then my mind said, how are we going to get out of here? And what’s over there? And aren’t you a little bit chilly?  My mind suggested a path which led to the parkway where cars hurtled by like debris from a catastrophic blast and we retreated, following a brown and yellow moth back up the hill, hoping for an encounter of some kind. A voice from inside said, “without expectation” and I let the moth be a moth and not an oracle.  Finally, I threw my mind a bone and we went to the bank and then bought groceries and I treated my heart to a salteña.  My heart said your home is not on

Kalorama Road

or not only on

Kalorama Road

your home is in the slippery places that lead to water, in the prickly dry desert, in the moment when the defrocked and rejected become holy.  Behind the Chinese embassy I found a way that called to me in a language I must be prepared to learn. Wandering, listening, among all the city voices clamoring for attention, for that one that knows a the way for me to go.

Thinking about Eternity

I've been thinking about eternity lately, reading a book on the history of beliefs about the afterlife and approaching the anniversary of a dear friend's death. I feel like I should be seeing signs and having important dreams where she shares insights and tells me about her whereabouts. Instead, I dream about dancing.

"You begin too stiff," the dream teacher tells me. "but then you get better.  All in all, you're entirely too high strung."   I suppose I am, in some ways, though other parts of me feel saggy and dissonant or just plain snapped.  I come from a lineage of high-strung people.  My great-grandfather played violin in Johann Strauss' orchestra.  He was Czech and hated Germans, I'm told, and brought a tightly-wound sensibility to his family that lingers on, though none of us are musicians in the true sense--the true sense being people who make music, I suppose.  I'm not exactly sure what a true sense is, except a phrase that my mind grabbed out of the air and now wants to hang on to, a way of avoiding what is.

In the dream I am dancing, and dancing is nice, though dancing is one word I try never to use in writing. Everything is always 'dancing this' and 'dancing that', a smile dancing on her face, a snowflake dancing in the wind, and yet I have always found a certain amount of awkwardness in dancing--performance anxiety and muscle cramps, and the horror of partnership--choosing a partner, wondering if he is enjoying the dance or just politely enduring.  My boyfriends never would agree to dancing, though I often proposed it, because alone in the cocoon of my home I enjoy moving, flailing, swaying, and swooping bird-like to music.

Sometimes I hear music in the repetition of the fan blades in summer or in the percussive knockings of the radiator. If I knew how to score it I'd write a suite for oboe and clarinet, plaintive and lonesome.  Something that captures the last journey of a beech leaf to the ground or whitewashed sycamore bark exposed and naked. A piece that calls into the bardo and makes the dead prick up their ears.  Call me on the dream phone, dear friend, and tell me where you've gone and where I'm headed, like Jacob Marley rattling his chains,  "Beware."

It's a symptom of the season.  Things stripped bare, the ground covered with yesterday, the white bark rebuking, "why didn't you notice me before?" What's true demands that I look at it, and I do.  I wish that I could finish this sentence, but the end of things is always just around the corner, out of reach, where it's dark and full of ghosts.

Marks of Existence

We tried to trace it back to the year when she chose thanksgiving as her favorite holiday. No one could remember a time before she claimed it as her own.  And because she loved it so we chose this day to cast her over the bridge, each one tapping her last shards into the wind.  We paused to watch a sliver of glassy jade shatter into clouds of foam as it collided with a small cascade.  I looked for a sign.  Above, the buzzards silently coasted, waiting for us each to take our turn.

Alice-in-Wonderland Syndrome

Today, I am going to write about Alice-in-Wonderland Syndrome which is a genuine condition that I read about on Wikipedia.

Alice-in-Wonderland syndrome refers to a rare kind of migraine aura in which people experience themselves as very large or as very small and perceptions of time, space, sound, and color become distorted and untrustworthy.  It can happen several hours or even days before any headache pain occurs and could make the uninformed feel as if they had gone stark raving mad in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.  A sufferer might  feel as though the people next to them were speaking in tongues and hear their own speech  being broadcast through a faulty sound system at maximum volume. 

A sufferer of Alice-in-Wonderland syndrome might feel as though the table where they sat had begun to stretch into infinite space and that all of the dinner guests were moving far, far, away.  The wooly hair on Leo the poodle who was angling for a handout might reassure them for a moment, but even he would soon seem transparent and unreal.  They might really really want to lie down.

A brisk walk in the unnaturally warm Thanksgiving air would provide some respite, allowing the sufferer to peer into the enormous windows of this particular neighborhood,  windows that stretch so far into the heavens that no drapery could ever suffice.  The warm  light would pour out into the street inviting glimpses of sleek furniture and tasteful art.  The children would run howling  down the empty streets, beneath a waning moon concealed in black clouds, only to jump from behind bushes and cars screeching.  And the sufferer would humor them by being genuinely scared to death.  Meanwhile some unidentified strollers with their own Leo the poodle would join the outing and it would be awhile before the sufferer realized they were strangers.

Inside, the temperature of the house would be equal to that of Mars, if the temperature of Mars is equal to two times the amount of heat an Alice-in-Wonderland sufferer can bear, and the dessert offerings would radiate a hostility not usually attributed to pie.  The sufferer might really want plum pudding but would ask for pumpkin pie to satisfy some longing for normalcy and in the end would regret it because even pumpkin pie can not stop the nightmare that is Alice in Wonderland syndrome.

Charades would be out of the question.

Later, in the car, the migraine would start its familiar heartbeat throb and the panic would subside and the sufferer would feel some mixture of relief and regret and longing for sleep.