Sick on the Desert

Cherry red, mixed with rust and lemon on the horizon at the end of dusk. Hills of old volcanoes walking the desert like felines, backs raised, spinal spikes like pyramids ready to lift off again. It has to be known. It has to be felt. Dirt roads somehow still choked with snow despite the relentless sun, houses floating, Noah's ideas waiting for the next flood. Castles made of cans shimmering into the oceanic blue green surface of sky. Places to live that speak to and listen to the sun, self-sustained, simple, with space melting from internal to external. Little separation between being and it. Mountains to the east and north, dark greens leading to the inviting whiteness above treeline, my old home. People up there after a sunny ski day looking darker than Peruvian hill pipers, white teeth blaring while my friends play their Caribbean rhythms in the ocean liner of a bar stuck in a Swiss-German mountain village in New Mexico which used to be part of pueblo lands, part of Mexico. I am sick, head and chest filled and swollen, a rare occurrence and tearing me down day after day, but the end of dusk drew me to my writing room, Venus sparking to the east. I don't know what I think today, it is gone, wasted, recycled, swirling and slightly tense like a rope being pulled gently. Writers speck the starry distance, filling my shelves, and the worries of everything start to feel ridiculous. In the outside is organization, slow movement, the fear of physical and spiritual destruction, but the inside is wild, reflects what's really out there, freaking abundance. There has been a lot to write about the past few days, and my notes scatter across legal pads, envelopes, post-its, and last year's day planner pages. I'm too wavy to be specific, all I want is to feel. There was a too skinny woman I know who I saw in Smith's. Too skinny, pale, no ass, sunken cheeks. 30 years old. She said she's playing the cello and singing, really making it happen. She married a much older man. I've met him, he's a softened tough musician, haggardly easygoing now, gray mustache and two day ghost shadow. He's bought me a drink or two over the last years. And I think he has some kind of garage wisdom and kindness and has placed his poncho over her. And at the same time I think he is leading her to the valley of the shadow of death. He's 60 or more, double her. After talking about the cello and singing, she asks me if she has any blow on her nostril. She doesn't, but it's red-embered and pricked with capillaries. We used to do some together so she's comfortable asking me this. It's a code, a courtesy like offering a fellow smoker a cigarette. I tell her I've been sober for 4 months and she says she's happy for me, always liked me, wishes me well. All the time she's looking away and when I do catch her eyes, I realize the once gambling table green with coffee edges has dulled to the wrong paint mix, pink thrown in where it shouldn't be. She has three kids, all beautiful, smart, talented, but she lost custody a long time ago. Got it back once when she cleaned up for a year and her cherry tomato butt returned, her cheeks filled, her hair became golden-edged, and the eyes were a wonder of swimming mermaids. I walk away with my own sniffling and I think she hasn't seen the kids lately, not even for Christmas, and I don't know whether she is walking slowly in the rain toward her end under that poncho, or whether she is incubating in some church. I hope she really is playing that cello.