This is not a well-crafted post. It’s 3:30 am and I can’t sleep. I’ve had three nosebleeds in the past few days. My lips and throat are dry. My eyes feel filled with sand. See, in the midst of the hurricane, I decided to up and abscond to the wilderness. To the home of the ancestors… I just mistyped that as answers, which is equally appropriate. Of course, you bring the wind with you when you try most to dodge it.
Or to be less cryptic, I’m visiting my family in the desert. A visit planned before I knew that all psudo-mundane craziness was going to hit back home.
I hate the desert where I grew up. The water tastes like death. The food lacks nourishment. The land will attempt to suck you dry. Plus it’s weighed down with all baggage that comes from growing up weird in a small town. The lack of options were like a lack of oxygen. It’s takes a lot of nurturing for plants to grow here… children too I suppose.
Of course I am also fully aware of its unique elements. The desert hones your imagination because the landscape leaves no place to hide. It’s a kind of empty that people in most parts of the world can’t fathom. A vacant lot where I live now will quickly be overrun with greenery. There may be garbage, an old car, a hobo camp under the cover of vines and brambles, but you would never know it. This is why the wilderness where I live now is the mythic home of a large-footed furry race of primates. It’s easier to see fairies in the hedgerow than in the fields.
But in the desert, the vacant lot will continue to lay itself bare for decades, showing every crumpled wad, every glittering shard. The land will stretch away from you for bare visible miles before rising up to bare visible crags. Seeing things here means you are truly altering your consciousness (full disclosure, heatstroke and dehydration may play a role). And the sky is HUGE. It draws your gaze up and (away from the grimy, never washed by rain, cities) it’s DEEP. Probably why people here gaze up so frequently, and why they see things in the sky more frequently as well.
It’s a perfect training ground for young witches. It’s also a shitty place to grow up.
Long Thorn
To walk alone in that bright country
blue sky piercing like the long thorn
brittle wind : probing sun
dry – this knife-edged land
What sorcery is this that I have learned
to live in this place?
revealed secrets +hidden mysteries+
concealed in plain sight
I have been scoured by wind and sun
touched by that magic – corrupted
this place tainted hate with love
For I have been seduced : that lover of stones
his bright eyes secured me as his creature
+trapped+
I could not escape – even if I willed it
Of course I did escape. But every so often you have to go back. For the people you love of course, but also for the perspective.
This week has been exhausting. And next week I’ll need to catch up on all the stuff I missed while I was gone this week. So if things are a little thin on the ground, my apologies.
