Desert Time

Why do we worry about the mundane? What is this interest in some starlet’s revealing gown or the fact that a more than beautiful actor and far too gorgeous actress are splitting up after 3 months? I certainly will never know any of these people so why care? As you might guess, I spent too much time last night surfing the web. All the news that should not find its way to print.

The rest of the evening was spent meditating. Not the religious experience all folded up into the lotus position, but contemplation. I sit in my “man” chair in my office, steeple my fingers and let my mind drift. My twilight vigil brewed up reminiscences of the desert. My desert, actually. I have gone back many times to where I first appeared. Looking for clues only to find brush and heat.

My friend once suggested I do a Vision Quest. Skepticism must have radiated from me because he just laughed.

“Man, I’m not a Shaman or any crap like that. You’re so intense looking for your answers. Might help just sitting out there all night.”

And so I did. Drove out in the afternoon as the sun cooled. Took a tarp and two large jugs of water and sat. The sand crunched under my butt every time I moved. Buzzards circled in the distance as the sun fell below the far mountains. Cold. You don’t know cold till you’ve felt the chill of a desert’s night. Stars. What we can’t see in the northeast is astounding. Millions and millions of pin spots yet with all that light, the darkness descends like a blanket of dry oil.

I waited there with my tarp strung from car to ground. Waiting for what, I had no idea. The heavens to open up and Morgan Freeman announcing who I was with full instructions on how to get my old life back.

That didn’t happen. Time … that is what happened. A couple of hours would pass. Then I’d look at my watch to see it had only been 5 minutes not hours. You have to give in to time to completely experience it. I took my watch off and threw it as hard as I could. It landed in some bush with a rustle and a thump. Then I was swallowed up by the intense quiet again. I didn’t sleep but entered a state of meditative slumber. Thoughts were like liquid turned to gas, sieving through my brain. And finally, that too ceased.

For a brief moment, I existed without thought just the up and down motion of breath as the sun crested the mountains behind me. And then without noticing, ten hours had passed. I had no idea what happened during that time. It was like anesthesia. The doctor makes the injection. You say something you think is funny and brave and the next moment you wake up in recovery. I had thrown my watch into the bushes and then, a nighttime later, it was time to leave.

Answers, I did not receive. Clarity, in concept maybe. Time moves in curious circles we refuse to notice and hardly comprehend. It is easier, I suppose, to care about how high a skirt slit is rather than the turning of the universal clock that marches to the orders of Morgan Freeman’s voice.

M. Haygood