The Last Quarter

At first it was challenging--the constant movement, disrupted sleep, the unfamiliar yet familiar sights and sounds. The vast distances between point A and point B. The unanticipated caution, kind attention, and eventually comfort. I became accustomed to all these things and grew to enjoy them to the point I didn't want to leave, not quite yet anyway. Hindsight or perhaps intuitive foresight is something else isn't it. 

Week 1: Conduit

Maria and I drove south from the valley to the coast and stood silent on the cliff edge. The ocean violently slammed into the rocks, then receded. The silent stories from my past slammed into me, then receded. I no longer need these stories to remind me of my strength and resilience. Why do I keep coming back to this town, these cliffs, and these memories to be reminded of what I survived and left? Like the four leaf clovers and daisies that grow through the cracks of hardened cement, the good memories and accomplishments from this era of my life find their way through the bad and settle like a cool mist, gently obscuring the harsh edges of everything. 

I flew further into my past, to Ohio, where the remoteness and the distance from everything familiar created a vacuum that sucked me into a vortex I nearly couldn't pull away from. A stark, cold late October chill hung in the air. I was at the mercy of everyone and everything. The unbreathable environments, the hospital and graveside visits, faulty cars, and long distance phone calls in the frigid rain gave way to long overdue catch-ups, a cozy hotel room, astrology readings, and surprise birthday parties. 

I've only been back to Ohio a handful of times since my college graduation. And each time I return, I find significant pieces of my past erased from existence--people, schools, businesses, homes. I stood on the edge of the property and gazed over the flattened landscape. An absence hung heavy over the emptiness. But like a conduit standing on nothing but memories, they bubble up from the ground and move through me, then finally to somewhere beyond. 

On my last night, the night before my birthday, I came back to my friend's house in Columbus--her kids had made me a birthday cake, Halloween themed and all. A send off to my next destination. I closed my eyes, made a wish, and blew out all the candles.

Week 2: Distance

Vast and distant and desolate, on a Gulf island where the desert meets the sea, waves crashed halfway under the stilted, front row houses. In other spots old piers dead ended over sand dunes stretched over swaths of desolate beach, the ocean roared in the far distance. A delicate dreaminess permeated everything, and I took it all in--the cocktail parties and wine tastings, community yoga classes and events, talk of the the town hall and island meetings. Gilmore Girls vibe was strong, another world completely removed from everything in my normal life, and I embraced it.

I rode a beach cruiser bicycle from one end of the island to the other. And on Halloween night, I dressed up and gave candy to trick-or-treaters in the public park. A family of farmers sat across from me with a small petting zoo of goats dressed as unicorns. This world, so surreal, yet so tragic, so beautiful, yet so painful.

Week 3: Suture

The disjointed details fell over each other, and in my mind, stitched together like a quilt wrapped around me, filling me with patchwork of memories. The taste of the soup at the Tibetan restaurant in Kensington Square, the warmth of the hot cocoa at the Soma chocolate shop after running through the freezing rain at dusk as our umbrellas flipped inside out, the crunch of brown and yellow fallen leaves on the winding pathways of High Park and the way the sunlight bent through the branches of the strange ritualistic structures we stumbled across, the click of chess pieces moving around the board, moody wine bars, and finding calm in a cup of chai amongst the chaos of Diwali. Evening chats around the fireplace and moka coffee mornings. 

The endless bus and train rides where all the characters of some Toronto story came and went. On one particular trip, I sat across from a college girl wrapped in so many scarfs she nearly vanished beneath them. She wrote pages and pages in a journal, perhaps taking notes, collecting stories, reimagining lives in other worlds.

Week 4: Enfold

Old libraries, academia, warm, buzzing cafes, organized protests, college lawns full of students lounging in the grass chatting, and autumn giving way to winter--Providence emanated the ambience of a Donna Tartt novel, a world I could too easily lose myself in. We wandered the university pathways and in and out of the old, drafty New England houses turned offices, found the literature and creative writing departments, and met up with students in the philosophy department--where one guy gave us a run down on Providence's shady past and another girl lamented on her novel writing process. 

At dinner on the evening of our last night, I took the opportunity to ask all the classics and philosopher professors if they'd read The Secret History. Most had not, but eagerly took note. Blurring the lines between the real and unreal--the edge where I live and create and never stray too far. 

Weeks Beyond

For the first time since I've lived in Chiang Mai, my return didn't feel like a welcoming one. The soft energy and gentleness I usually find was replaced by an abrasive one--one of over crowded streets and recklessness, perpetual misunderstandings and glitches, and an overwhelming sense of no longer belonging--not in the way I once felt anyway. Hot, dry days lingered well into a winter that would not come. The unbearable stress of unfocused work grated on my soul, and finally enduring an injury that has prevented me from driving anywhere--a blessing in the end, I suppose. An injury that has kept me focused on what is important, kept me from not going too far from home, one that has rattled me awake to make a change. A warning, perhaps, to make something happen soon, or I could lose everything I've spent my life working toward. 

The combination of these events (including my trip back to the west) has forced me to reevaluate my relationship with this city and the life I've created for myself here. Place does not always have to do with how well a person thrives, but sometimes it does--it has to do with community and opportunities and how well that place aligns with the goals of those who live there. 

Places have a way of communicating with you--to let you know they are there to hold you or teach you or guide you in new directions. A drop of clarity in the fog. And right now, it is still fog. But it's time to make a plan, a time to open myself to guidance that lies beyond the horizon of what I can currently see.

As we turn over into 2024, are you open to being guided to new heights and directions? If so, what is helping to guide you there? 

Path of the Sacred

From the corner of my eye, I saw her raise her hand apprehensively. Can I...? I'm sorry. Her voice trailed off, and she lowered her head. Go on. He nodded in her direction. Can I ask about your religion? A silence spread over the Taos Pueblo. We all held our breath and leaned in.

He smiled and shook his head. I absolutely cannot. It's the one thing I can't talk about. He paused. You see, when something is shared freely and then in turn is freely shared again, it becomes diluted. It becomes...something else. Hold what is sacred close to your heart so it stays potent. He pointed up, piercing the crisp, cool air. It keeps the stars moving across the sky. 

Out beyond Socorro and Magdalena on the plains of San Agustin, I waited along the eastern edge of the VLA property and watched the night slowly devour the day until I could see nothing but the Milky Way arched over my head. I'd once written in an old story that you can't really comprehend how many stars there really are until you see a Wyoming sky on a clear, moonless night. I could say the same about the sky here in the high desert of New Mexico. The light of the stars engulfing the darkness.

In these wide open spaces I can feel my soul expand and touch the stars. So far, yet so close. So vast, yet so sacred. Perhaps the most sacred things can never be shared because they are inexplicable. So we weave words and make art and music, but how close does it get to the raw experience?

I stood in the backyard of my grandfather's house and closed my eyes. In an instant, all the images and sensations transported me in time--the taste of concord grapes directly off the grapevine, chasing fireflies around the yard on warm, sticky evenings, the brilliant yellow of the giant sunflowers lining the garden, the cool spray from the water sprinkler, the gentle sway of the tree swing. When I opened my eyes again, the yard was barren--no grapevine, no fireflies, no sunflowers, no water sprinkler, no tree swing. Just me on a frigid winter day in Ohio.

Jen and I walked the Wilder Trail along the surreal, cliff-edged coast that separates Santa Cruz proper from Davenport. We talked about the manifestation meetups we use to hold. Four of us would meet every 3 weeks and meditate and share our insights about the world unseen and how to work with it and play with it. The knowledge shared between us was kept sacred and potent. It was one of my last lessons before I left for India.

The inexplicable seems to slip into stories, the ones I read and write and watch--once removed because the sacred always finds a way to stay protected. And in this way, it's safely shared and received by those who it is meant for. I'd like to think it's something akin to telepathy.

With knowledge and information overload at our finger tips, it's easy to question if anything is sacred anymore. Yet everything is if you shift your perspective. What you are meant to know and understand in this life will find you. It will find you in dreams and books and conversations with friends and strangers. It will find you through social media and meditation. The Universe is far more mysterious than we realize. Out there is never as far as it seems. Ask questions often. Someone, somewhere will receive the answer.

What is your relationship with the sacred and the inexplicable? Do you hold it close to your heart? Or freely share knowledge? Do you believe the sacred protects itself and finds its way to those it's meant for regardless? I'd love to hear your thoughts! 

A New Kind of Unknown

I. San Jose, California

Nimi sits on the yoga mat next to me cross legged, hands resting on her knees in Gyan Mudra, eyes squeezed closed, still. I peer at her out of the corner of my right eye in amazement. Sat Nam, she says at the end of class and bows forward. 

Nimi is 3-years-old. Her brother, not yet a year old, never cries. Does he ever cry? I ask. Very little, Maria says. That's incredible, I say. I sat in silent meditation for 10 days at a Vipassana retreat when I was 8 months pregnant with him, Maria tells me. Children absorb everything.

II. Kelseyville, California

I stand in the center of the small classroom as the kind, grey-haired astronomer unlocks the dome room. When I emailed the observatory, I hadn't expected a private tour. But here I am. I was last here 6 or maybe 7 years ago--sitting in this room, listening to a lecture on the Keplar Mission, anxiously awaiting for the sky viewing to begin. And it was here in this room that my four characters began to take a more defined shape. I saw them in this very room--all for different reasons, their lives revolving around each other, gravitating slowing toward a common center where all logic breaks down much like how a black hole slowly pulls everything into its gravitational field toward the inevitable.

I drive up Konocti Road and look down on Kelseyville nestled at the base of Mount Konocti, separating it from Clear Lake. Vineyards stretch out in the opposite direction beyond the town. The small dome of the observatory sits inconspicuously in a field--the elementary school on one edge, the high school on another.

Mount Konocti looms over Clear Lake--volcano, mostly inaccessible, full of secrets. I think of my characters and the secrets they carry. I couldn't have picked a more perfect setting for this story.

III. Santa Cruz, California 

Everything will fall into place as it is meant, I rationalize. Nothing about going back to Santa Cruz is rational.

I lie on the floor, my eyes transfixed on the watery colors dancing across the ceiling and the over-sized house plants. Sofia reaches down and picks up my ankles and pulls hard nearly dragging me. Voices float around the room. Conversations lost in the dark, swirling chaos.

I stand in the lobby of the rustic, candlelit room. The familiarity astounds me--the mesh of lavender, eucalyptus, and every tea made that day, the watercolor paintings, the old wooden benches, the soft music, the sound of water, the serenity, nothing has changed.

The stories these walls could tell--life altering and life shattering stories, stories told over and over until they become urban myths, stories only spoken in hushed whispers between certain people--the violence, the secrets, the betrayals, my lost trust in security, in friends, in most everything--unless you were there living them as each unfolded, you'd never believe any of them to be true.

Giant bubbles float through the air and all the kids go nuts chasing them. I stand in the backyard as cold rain begins to pelt down on us, and I think of all the things I would have never done or become or written if it weren't for my connection to these people, this family. Some of the bubbles escape the children and float up over the roof of the house and disappear. We laugh at what the neighbors and folks driving by must think--the giant bubbles, a mystery floating through the sky on a cold, rainy evening.

I don't see the girl enter the venue until it's too late. She approaches us without as much of a bit of apprehension. My two companions leave the table, the other two are on stage, and I'm all alone. I am so sorry, she says and takes my hands into hers. Of the five of us, I'm the last one she should be apologizing to, but I'm the only one there to accept it. I haven't spoken to her in over six years, and now she's in my present talking and talking. But it's in the past she stands--forever living in a distant memory, fictionalized in a short story I once read to her just after I finished writing it. She had listened to the story with fierce intensity then fell to pieces in giggles. 

The past will haunt you this month, I had read in a horoscope article just before I left Chiang Mai. Funny how it did in the most unexpected and fulfilling ways--seeing all this past sneak up on me through a distorted rear-view mirror.

IV. The Plains of San Agustin, New Mexico

I walk along the upper deck of the Very Large Array's control room and see one of those big, green inflatable aliens sitting in a window. A hand written sign around its neck reads: Who's yo daddy? I'm yo daddy. I lean in closer almost pressing my face into the window when I notice a guy sitting at the desk where the alien is perched. He is staring at me over a computer monitor with a bemused look. I smile and back away quickly. I live for moments like these.

An array of 27 massive radio telescopes stretch out across the desert plains of central New Mexico. Every few minutes the dishes all shift slightly in a synchronized movement that is both exciting and chilling--collecting invisible information about our universe and transforming it into the visible, uncovering pieces of a fragmented story of our past spread out across time and space.

How do you process your past that brushes up again your present? How have you been able to see your past as something unknown and new to you?