Tumbleweed

...and then the covid apocalypse started to rage. What does one do in between times? Think, daydream, and think again. Or at least I did.

My mind wandered off, to the place I have come to love the most on this beautiful planet and where one day I will be buried. But not just yet. I want to tell you a story first. (and hopefully many more).

Let me ask you something first: What is a place? Does it hold a memory of our absence? Or is it a memory of our presence?

I was born a nomad. I don´t have a place. I remember paths in the pathless eternal sands of myriads of marvel. I´m made of it! The desert that is, and it´s made of me. The best part of me. The magical part of me.

Huge sandbanks that smell like buckwheat honey. The human desire, to see what we want instead of what is there, cannot be circumvented, for appearances are deceptive here. Layers of air of different densities distort. Yes, the desert is a trickster of fairy tales. All colors have to surrender to sound.

The desert is an eternal spell of silence and mystery. Many things come and go here, both living and inanimate, to be swallowed up in immensity, often disappearing from people's sight forever, blotted out into the outer darkness. In compensation for what it has taken, the desert produces miracles and wonders.

Though deadly silent, it has a voice that calls incessantly to human hearts attuned to its messages. It draws and it urges. It always keeps its own counsel. It is without equal in its solitude. It heaps its sands over secrets to hide them from the stars.

Symbols of mystery, rise briefly against the skyline, only to disappear just as quickly into the distance. Maybe someday it will come back. Only patient time may witness it.

The attempt to traverse the forbidden garden of silence implies an adventurous character. The desert is acquainted with the deeds of the brave and foolish in equal measure.

I feel called to write about those people who have turned their backs on the softness of the world and pushed forward into the naked embrace of that merciless landscape.

Silence, ruthlessness, and mystery are the qualities of the desert, along with veiled dawn and twilight, rainbows, stars, and the delicate blossom of a cactus, short and fleeting.

From a distance, Kira and I had nothing in common. Our friendship never was about safe distance; that seductive illusion where most of us live, while we pretend to live. She was more the uncomfortably close kind of friend. Beautifully close.

Distance is a liar! The best way to find light in the darkness is by plunging straight into it.

And that is exactly what she did. She packed up her things, left for a desert, and started a retreat.

You probably imagined a genuine oasis of peace and serenity, amidst a fragrant grove of fruit trees with hypnotic aromas of jasmine and lemon, opening up the senses and restoring the mind, body, and soul.

No, it was not the usual retreat where you need a platinum card before they let you in or a place where you learn to accept what is, escape daily routines, and find inner peace or balance.

She invited me once upon a time, to come to have a look for myself. And I jumped on the next plane…

"When I'm hungry, I stare at that boulder over there," she began to say, "and I see a Dino with a huge quarter-pounder between its teeth."

-"That makes you feel better?" I asked surprised.

-"When Jesus spent forty days in the desert, the devil tried to lure him from his track. All he had to do was turn stones into bread." she continued

-"Yes, I know that story." I answered dryly,

"Well? Doesn't that sound a bit stupid?" she asked irritated.

"I don't know," I shrugged, "I never analyzed that story," I answered innocently.

"If you ask me," she said earnestly, "this is much too lame or tame for the devil. Turning stones into bread. You should know what I'm fantasizing about here in my desert. Did I ever tell you that I used to volunteer in a mental hospital?" she went on, blinking her green eyes.

-"Did you ever leave?" I was kidding.

-"In a hospital, they like to cure you, but this land heals you."

I nodded. She was having a plate of something that looked like nettles and Montezuma’s revenge. She asked if I wanted some. My palms started to sweat, and I respectfully declined.

-"I have a few space gummy bears," she recalled, "Do you want one?"

-"Are you happy here?" I asked.

She began to nod enthusiastically, "I've always wanted to live in a cave."

I asked if she had brought things from her old life. She shook her head, then changed her mind, "I bought a really expensive solar panel, you know, from those guys with that hideous blue smile plastered on everything, to charge my phone, so I can call you now and then. " and after a short silence she continued: "And to charge my vibrator."

I nodded in agreement.

-"Ever sunbathed while having an orgasm.? I highly recommend it. Makes you feel like a new person afterward.” she giggled.

-"You don't say." I replied smiling.

"I used to dream that I would become a powerful witch and live in a cabin in the woods." I mused before me, enjoying the sun.

-"A witch?" she shrieked, "Not for me! I'm way too scared of spiders."

-"Well, you know what shamanic literature states about that, don't you?" I noticed. She looked at me questioningly.

-"Fear of the feminine, the dark, the hidden." I filled her in. "And you know what?" I continued, "I find hummingbirds pretty scary. With their needle beaks." We laughed out loud together.

-"I love it here." she said so sincerely, that it warmed my heart. 

-"The truth is the desert is a woman. And she´s both heaven and hell. And if you offend her, she can turn into your worst nightmare. But she´s forgiving. When I wake up in the morning, she bathes the world in the purest and clearest of light. In the summer she is a hot-blooded mistress, and, in the winter, she is a deranged attention seeker screaming with lunacy-inducing storms. In the space of her silence, spirits dwell." I sat and listened to her with pleasure.

-"And what about the spiders?" I asked.

-"What about them?" she asked back.

-"Aren't there any here." I inquired.

-"It took me a long time to see one." she said dryly as she finished her plate, "When I finally thought I'd discovered one, it looked like a crab or something."

"Maybe you should just learn to live with that fear and accept that you are afraid of spiders," I suggested.

She looked at me very dryly and said, "Some words can be powerful, but they can also be so very empty."

She left me in charge of her domain for a few days so she could go to the city and take care of paperwork. We said goodbye to each other with a hug and I watched her disappear on the horizon. 

The temperature dropped considerably as the sunset. And I am someone who is capable of anything, to get warm, including just walking aka trespassing into a cave where I have no business.

I don't remember much about my first night except the cold. Well, that's not quite the truth, because I also remember how the sky stretched out, and thousands of stars appeared, illuminating the inky darkness. Here and there a flash of light shot through the sky.

-"I think we would like to make love now." I heard a voice say out of nowhere, apparently to me. A cat walked all over me. The words were mumbled again. I didn't know where I was. The cold made me fear I wouldn't be able to keep myself within the contours of my skin,

I suddenly realized that I had been sleeping next to strangers and started to cry.

The woman who had spoken those words had pale skin and red hair. Beside her lay a man under a pile of blankets. At least I assumed it was a man.

-"You mean I should get out of here?" I asked as I opened my eyes. The night was lifting, and a blue scrim rose.

I looked at that woman, her shoulders and her collarbones caught my attention. I don't know why, but I was fascinated by those collarbones.

She nodded her head in the direction of the man under the covers:

-"That poor man suffers anxieties." she said. She told me that she used to be a teacher.

"You're some kind of teacher too, aren't you?" she chuckled.

-"Never before coffee." I replied. The man stuck his head above the covers. Something about him seemed animalically strange to me, but not in an unpleasant way.

-"We really would like to make love now." the woman repeated, with a little impatience this time.

I got up and stepped out into the dawn. When the sun rises in the desert, it clears the horizon.

The story he told me was not very clear, but I finally managed to unravel it. He told me that he didn't pay much to live at the retreat, that he never harassed anyone, and that he did any repairs that needed to be done. Would I like a cup of coffee? (From a pot that had been simmering on a low fire since early morning - no thank you.)

Ever since he got here, he woke up with visions of "her" in his head. She had given herself to him one night, which he hadn't declined, out of chivalry, of course, or at least a sense of it.

He wanted so badly to have a child with her. Did she want that too? He couldn't answer that honestly. And how would they raise that child? All he felt like was smoking in bed and developing ever more innovative ebullitions. Maybe he had a misconception about love? That must have been it!

He had shown her his heart, and all she was able to perceive was his vanity. (Which was hard to hide) But he had ambition, he was still a delicate writer, but that would change soon. And especially women would appreciate his literature. She had replied to him that he was unable to see beyond his delusions.

He used to work as a dishwasher. He had hoped for the life of a writer, but instead, he worked odd jobs, to pay the rent. Rents were exorbitant, so mostly he shacked up in tents and drifted off again. Until he ended up at the retreat, where he no longer had to hustle for tips for a roof above his head.

I was invited to dinner by a woman in jeans and high-heeled sandals. She wore a sleeveless shirt and was stirring soup on a homemade stove. She was tall and lean with chiseled cheekbones and flirty eyes.

She offered me a bowl of soup. I didn´t know what it was, and I didn´t consider myself to be a rube, still, I felt embarrassed not to own the culinary knowledge to identify the stew she handed me. (And I was starving). She smiled at me with a hint of irony on her face.

Tracy was the cook´s name, and she was about a decade older than me. She dated a seventeen-year-old and lived with a man who had a beard and was an artist.

Tracy and I went for walks together in the afternoon. She told me she had rejected her given name, and that she was raised on a farm that inspired Louis Lamour, for one of his novels. The bearded artist drove a Mercedes and loved to listen to Beethoven - on his German automobile.

The rodeo came to town one day, she told me, and she ran away with the circus so to speak. She fell in love with a clown, she said as a desert breeze blew through her hair: he gave her an eight ball of coke and a black eye, so she took off again, and ended up at the retreat.

-"There's a lot to dislike about myself." she said. "People always ask me what´s wrong with me, or why I am so sad?"

The next day, Lucy arrived. She was welcomed by the other residents and moved into her own cave. She was raising a three-year-old son. The dad was... let us say: long gone.

One afternoon, as she was lounging on a mat at the entrance of her cave, she told me she would love to marry a woman. I do not know why, but I took a step back. I felt like a jerk.

She had a crush on Tracy.

-"Maybe she´s a bit old for you to marry her." I spoke. "Besides, Tracy likes older men with beards and clowns."

-"Maybe I'll make a list of women I want to marry." she said more to herself than to me. "I have never been in love," she added sadly.

-"I'm sure it will happen one day." I tried to cheer her up.

-"What?" she sighed, "Fall in love with some volatile sprite of a woman, who might make me want to feel more of who I want to be"

-"That's a fantasy, dear." I replied.

-"Well, maybe it won´t be love. As long as it´s not bad, that´s fine with me." she whispered. "The smartest thing a woman can ever learn is to never need a man."

-"Amen!" I replied.

She suddenly jumped up, kissed me on the cheek, and disappeared into the cave.

I felt like such a phony, and yet, those people´s stories felt so real. I guess that´s the second-best way to feel authentic... Be around those people and listen to what they have to say.

My lovesick, ex-dishwasher friend, happily walked up to me. He had found me a ceramic cup. (I am unable to drink out of plastic). As I enjoyed his special blend of cream and honey, I looked at the tumbleweeds. Just like romantic fantasies, they are pretty at first, but while they thrive, they never take root permanently. They grow brown and brittle and finally roll away to the horizon, just like in the movies.

For many, a week in Paris is the idea of ​​a break from everyday life. For me, it is the desert. I enjoyed my time on that retreat. I knew these people. They were in love with life and the desert in a damn the consequences kind of way, just like a Sam Shepperd character. I was jealous: I wanted to be able to write about smashed hearts from the stable view of relative sanity.

The love, those people sought, wasn´t something for which you waited to arrive. It was something you create when you make a promise. I loved all of them, and their mystical way of inhabiting the spirit world, the calm, and the wisdom with which they face peril, the joy they shared, and the comfort they gave each other in a place of sorrow. In the desert: where things die and come back as something else.

The desert comes with its own survival manual. You are responsible in every way for your survival, safety, and well-being.

I left my old self there, scorched by the blazing sun. I shook my old ways off and was reborn. A phoenix; a circle of stars, silver in the night sky, and gold at noon.

It is me! Myself, for whom I venture into the desert!