I’ve been dreaming about the desert a lot lately.
I’m not sure where these dreams are coming from, exactly. Maybe it’s a reaction to the incessant cold and snow and dreary, grey Northeastern skies that I’ve been laboring under these past few months. Maybe the dreams are trying to tell me something. I could probably try to decipher hidden messages contained in the sprawling vistas of my subconscious, but I feel like that would somehow cheapen the dreams themselves. Sometimes it’s better to just let the message wash over you than it is to pick it apart looking for something that might not be there.
In one of these dreams, I sat on top of a flat outcrop of rock high above a canyon of red rock and scattered mesquite. The sun was rising, its rays illuminating the landscape in an unearthly glow of reds and purples. I watched this sunrise advance across the desert floor in a wave, seeming to bring the landscape to life as it crept along. When it reached me I was awash in light and heat, and it was so vivid that it was like I was there. Who knows…maybe I was. At some point in the dream I looked to my left, and sitting beside me was the old Indian man that I’ve dreamed about regularly over the years. (I’ll maybe get into him in more detail later, in a different post all his own.) He was drinking from a steaming mug of coffee, and as I looked at him he smiled and gestured to the canyon with his coffee mug. I woke up after that.
In another dream, I was hiking in a slot canyon. The walls were smooth, red sandstone dappled with sunlight. It was hot and dry, and I was struck by the almost crushing silence. I know I was subconsciously referencing the silence I experienced while hiking into Havasu Canyon many years ago. One of the things that struck me the most from that experience was the deafening silence I felt while sitting on a rock and sipping water. I had never experienced a quiet that total before, and I haven’t since. There have been many times since then that I’ve yearned to bask in that total silence again, if only for a few minutes. Maybe my brain was desperately trying to drag me back into that place of pure peace and tranquility, if only in my own head. Again, it’s best to not try and read too much into it.
Sometimes I ponder my own internal extremes. My two favorite places seem to be New England and the Southwestern desert. Could there be two places that are more different? More at odds with each other? What does that say about the inner workings of my psyche? That I’m well rounded? That I’m an extreme personality, not content to sit comfortably on the soft, safe middle ground? Does it maybe mean nothing at all? Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe it’s best that I don’t. What I do know is that I will often feel the gentle tug of the desert, calling to me across the miles. When I feel that pull, I’m overwhelmed with the desire to get in my car and just drive until the land flattens out, and I’m once again in the clutches of that desolate and beautiful place.
Whatever it all means, it’s good to go there to a land of warmth and sun while outside the snow falls and the cold wind howls and pierces me like tiny knives. It’s good to go there – even if it is only in dreams.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Welcome to 2011
2011 is here. Huzzah. Fire your pistols into the air and launch the fireworks. 2010 is dead, and its death was well deserved. Good riddance. May our paths never cross again.
It’s easy, and frankly quite tempting, to spend a good chunk of time and page space roasting the past 12 months until it’s burnt and charred and rendered an almost unrecognizable hunk of charcoal. Sweet Jebus, is it ever tempting.
Poison politics. Natural disasters. The disintegration of the American news media. The continuing plague of reality television. Justin Bieber. Justin Fucking Bieber! I could go on and on and on.
But I’m not going to.
I’m not going to ceaselessly belabor the passing of the past year. Instead, I’m going to turn around and look 2011 in the wide, innocent eyes and embrace it in a big bear-hug while it still has that clean, untainted new-year smell. I’m going to breathe deep and in six months, when 2011 is already fraying around the edges and stained and haggard and looking oh-so-much like 2010, I’ll be able to close my eyes and remember just what 2011 smelled like when it was fresh off the line.
New Years resolutions are a dime a dozen. I say this from both observation and experience. I’ve seen resolutions made and broken – and made and broken them myself – more times than I can count. I’ve already seen a litany of Facebook posts cursing the legion of newbies that flock to the gym after the door slams shut on yet another year of over-indulgence. I’ve seen Facebook posts from people resolving to be more tolerant of said newbies in the coming year. So many resolutions. So much desire to be leaner and stronger and kinder and sleeker and holier and less likely to listen to any albums released by Justin Bieber. So many promises to oneself that end up on the scrap heap by the time the groundhog sticks his fat head out of his hole in early February.
Me? I stopped making resolutions years ago. To me, if you only decide to do something to coincide with a new year, then it’s most probably a half-assed endeavor. I realized what I saw as a futile exercise, and I scrapped it in favor of making decisions based on what I knew were correct/necessary/preferable choices without regard to a calendar. It’s easier that way, and so much less pressure.
So it’s four days into 2011 and I’m eating pineapple for lunch and listening to John Doe and the Sadies and the sun is shining through the window. Not a bad start to the new year. Instead of harboring resentment for the litany of crap that 2010 dumped on us all, I’m going to instead remember it as the year my daughter graduated high school. The year I finally went to Maine. The year I finally, after over 20 years of being a fan, saw a Red Sox game in Fenway Park. The year I stopped letting politics under my skin. The year I watched countless sunsets and heard countless good songs and spent countless hours talking and laughing and drinking cold beers and being happy.
I’m going to try my hardest to make 2011 count. Is that a resolution? Hardly. It should be something we all try to do when faced with a brand new calendar hanging on the wall. Hopefully I can be better in 2011 than I was in 2010. Hopefully I learned something over the past 12 months that I can apply to the next 12 months. I’m just going to give it my best shot, and go into it with my eyes and mind open. I’m going to take the good with the bad and the known with the unknown. The year will deal the hand it deals. All we can do is know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em. Did I just start the year with a Kenny Rogers reference? Your goddamn right I did. It’s going to be that kind of a year, my friends.
It’s easy, and frankly quite tempting, to spend a good chunk of time and page space roasting the past 12 months until it’s burnt and charred and rendered an almost unrecognizable hunk of charcoal. Sweet Jebus, is it ever tempting.
Poison politics. Natural disasters. The disintegration of the American news media. The continuing plague of reality television. Justin Bieber. Justin Fucking Bieber! I could go on and on and on.
But I’m not going to.
I’m not going to ceaselessly belabor the passing of the past year. Instead, I’m going to turn around and look 2011 in the wide, innocent eyes and embrace it in a big bear-hug while it still has that clean, untainted new-year smell. I’m going to breathe deep and in six months, when 2011 is already fraying around the edges and stained and haggard and looking oh-so-much like 2010, I’ll be able to close my eyes and remember just what 2011 smelled like when it was fresh off the line.
New Years resolutions are a dime a dozen. I say this from both observation and experience. I’ve seen resolutions made and broken – and made and broken them myself – more times than I can count. I’ve already seen a litany of Facebook posts cursing the legion of newbies that flock to the gym after the door slams shut on yet another year of over-indulgence. I’ve seen Facebook posts from people resolving to be more tolerant of said newbies in the coming year. So many resolutions. So much desire to be leaner and stronger and kinder and sleeker and holier and less likely to listen to any albums released by Justin Bieber. So many promises to oneself that end up on the scrap heap by the time the groundhog sticks his fat head out of his hole in early February.
Me? I stopped making resolutions years ago. To me, if you only decide to do something to coincide with a new year, then it’s most probably a half-assed endeavor. I realized what I saw as a futile exercise, and I scrapped it in favor of making decisions based on what I knew were correct/necessary/preferable choices without regard to a calendar. It’s easier that way, and so much less pressure.
So it’s four days into 2011 and I’m eating pineapple for lunch and listening to John Doe and the Sadies and the sun is shining through the window. Not a bad start to the new year. Instead of harboring resentment for the litany of crap that 2010 dumped on us all, I’m going to instead remember it as the year my daughter graduated high school. The year I finally went to Maine. The year I finally, after over 20 years of being a fan, saw a Red Sox game in Fenway Park. The year I stopped letting politics under my skin. The year I watched countless sunsets and heard countless good songs and spent countless hours talking and laughing and drinking cold beers and being happy.
I’m going to try my hardest to make 2011 count. Is that a resolution? Hardly. It should be something we all try to do when faced with a brand new calendar hanging on the wall. Hopefully I can be better in 2011 than I was in 2010. Hopefully I learned something over the past 12 months that I can apply to the next 12 months. I’m just going to give it my best shot, and go into it with my eyes and mind open. I’m going to take the good with the bad and the known with the unknown. The year will deal the hand it deals. All we can do is know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em. Did I just start the year with a Kenny Rogers reference? Your goddamn right I did. It’s going to be that kind of a year, my friends.
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