I wrote this eight years ago:
…in the short run, we are responsible.
in the long run, we are all dead.
—Walt Richardson, Always Was, Silent Artist
Here we go—every one of us; every Ponderosa, Joshua Tree; lavender skink, fleeing jack-rabbit (your ears glowing in sunset); snow on Sacred Mountain and San Jacintos; you over there hunkered down with your obsession, me hunkered down over here with mine—here we go spinning inexorably into the dark.
The sun set last night at 4:15. I was walking across the desert, as I have been every sunset and twilight since April 14 when I moved from Flagstaff to the Mojave. A sliver of moon hung in the west. It was not alone. Two unwavering spheres of light lay below it. I guessed they were planets, but I wasn’t sure. Since not being sure is my only prayer these days, I stopped my brain and kept walking.
I carried a cell phone. For years I would not have done so. But, it is 2008 and I walk alone. Roxane called from Flagstaff. She told me she and her wonder dog, Sunny had just come in from their walk. She had seen the moon and its companions. We talked while I came to the camp chair in my yard and sat with her and the sky.
I hung up. The phone rang. “Hey, mom, you gotta go outside. You gotta see the moon.” My son was driving back from Los Angeles. “I’m sitting in the side-yard,” I said. “I’m looking at the moon.” Once the moon was well-risen, I went inside to write.
When I first landed in 29 Palms,I was wracked with ocular migraine episodes – blind spot/rainbow aura/hours of feeling disoriented. I’ve had them off and on all my life, but they began occurring almost daily, sometimes twice a day. I was terrified by them.
I lived in a 10’X16’ foot homestead shack. On May 11, it was 111-degrees; that night the 40 mph winds ripped away a window. My respites were recovery meetings in 29 and Yucca Valley, (though those did little but make me feel less alone) and the walks I took every evening when the sun was dropping, during which feeling alone seemed perfect.
I walked a desert filled with abandoned dwellings—not just tiny homestead cabins, but double-wide trailers, homes; ranches filled with intact trailers, houses and corrals. I went into some; others were too unsettling to enter. I found broken late-model refrigerators, stoves, televisions and computers. There were, of course, photographs and religious pamphlets and stained clothing. And there was the broad wash scarred by ORV tires, dirt roads running straight to the horizon—and desert lilies glowing softly at twilight.
I’d been in contact with a writer friend, edited a book for him, listened to his stories about his PTSD finally chasing him into imperfect healing. We talked about what gets left behind, what sticks around. I told him about my walks, later wrote him: “Not so much the broken shacks and trailers, but the very air within and outside them seems occupied by disappointment.”
This morning I googled Night sky, Dec. 1, 2008 I found not only that Jupiter and Venus were the moon’s companions, but dozens of comments from watchers all over the world. Without exception they were astonished and grateful for the sight. And there was this: The next time Venus, Jupiter, and the moon will be as close and visible as they were on December 1, 2008 will be November 18, 2052.
By then, in that not so long run, I will be dead. And, in the short run, I am grateful to know that some friendships cannot die and that under the winter moon, no shit, we ARE all One.
***In your long run, you know that you have work to do. Please begin a thirty minute writing session with the Walt Richardson quote – and send us the results.
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