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birds fly backward
climbing into descent
calamity, cataclysm, and contrary
jumbled, confused, so proud of its ignorance
making no sense
wind-driven and dark
searching for the day without a yesterday
in the hollow of time
the null

Garund sat on a stone sneering at Garamond. “Go through the door, Garamond,” Garund taunted. Before Garamond could respond, Garund was eaten by many insects. However, Garamond had already gone through the door and did not hear Garund’s muffled screaming and screaming and screaming for help. Even if Garamond could have heard this racket, he would not have been able to go back through because it was a one-way doorway and he had already chosen which way he wanted to go through. It would not have made sense for Garamond to go through the other way.

Now, the next thing not to make any sense was that Garamond was holding a small ceramic box. He removed the lid and inside the was a little man playing a little piano. His name, in fact, was Don Piano. There was a little piano, a miniature candelabra, and Senor Piano was wearing tiny little cufflinks. Don Piano leaned close as to smile and show his exceptionally white teeth. They, his teeth, were impressive. Don Piano played on while the gorgeous Yolo Wednesday sang simple sweet soft swaying songs with her beautiful whispering lisp. . . “Do you realize you were just hypnotized?” asked Don Piano.

As Don Piano played on bluebirds and blue butterflies emerged from the ceramic box of which it has been purposely unmentioned that the box was also blue. There are reasons for everything under the sun, including the shade.

Garamond closed the box.

Slip quietly through every woodland.

There is the wind which may swirl through saplings and their parents
and the tall grasses and dried flowers.

Bird wings flutter, mostly away.
Scratchings and rustling beneath the lowest branches and in the thick brier.
Delicate colors as in a painter’s palette, aside, muted and subdued in a landscape held back.

The memory flutters.
The words choke well before reaching the tongue.
So say nothing.

~ Walter

The shape of the Mojave is formed by everything that is not Mojave.

Ocean Woman rose naked from the sea.  She became the mountains and valleys and glistened as she slept under the moon. She became awake as the sun rose and warmed her. That is what I heard.

Clouds pass by here, everything passes by; shadows, people. It is just desert.  discord, strife, conflict, contention, Jangled trees in discord, sticks, twigs, gray plants that are most likely dead, not that they ever had a chance, or did they?

Patience, Brother. Listen to the raging and eroding wind–with its grit and dust–it will help you to know peace–that anger has no use for ascent.

We come to the desert by different paths at different times for various reasons, this is how the weaving begins. The weaving. The constant weaving and braiding and twisting and tying of stories and realities and things in between. 

This is the land, too. One place becomes another gradually or immediately or maybe something or somehow in between. Everything is the same and everything is different and sometimes that is just by a little bit–little by little–until everything is different. The geology, the plants, and animals–the rare raindrops scattered about on the playa surface attacking the bare earth in numbers so large the washes do not understand the burden they are about to hide beneath.  This is the desert. 

Coyotes laughing. Rats that are cannibals. Lizards that spit venom. Carnivorous insects — I wish!

This is transformation upon transformation.  Metamorphosis.

Painful youth with poignant memories newly scarred, not forgotten, but pushed aside. Here, however, one may clear themselves of the entanglements others twist around us, to distract us, to hamper us. We grow within our chosen realities here.

Time is multidimensional and multidirectional. We have our own time and we are within our time and be inside and outside at the same time. Our time is our time and others try to take that time from you for themselves. Each falls into and overlaps with the others.

We learn to leave it all behind. Luckily enough, alone. 

There is the final question, I calculate–Really?

It seems to be a thousand years, now. 

Laughing coyotes, brotherhood.

Observe the puzzle pieces we are assembled of, each moment of us can be examined from each particle separate or in context within the pieces that are made up of groups of pieces in a gradient fabric made in context within those around us and without. The bighorn sheep are also gregarious beasts.

All the while, the desert is art.

Break it all into pieces and look at the pieces.

Possibly unnoticed, we change and become a different creature, a different being.

You have to grow. There is no choice if you indeed exist.  There will be two paths and you will take one, however, even if you took the other path you would end up where the first would go; over there. 

At least you know that if not directly, there will be some kind of connection between this way and that way over there. There is nothing that says you will end up better if you go one way or the other–one way is neither right nor wrong–possibly–you will, however, end up where you are meant to be. That can be a horrible shame.

And over there, either way, will be the same thing repeated, only in a slightly different light