These rocks are gods, I can feel them. I am not one prone to speak of ‘energy’, I like things concrete- but these rocks are more than they appear. Or perhaps they are exactly what they appear and we are blind. On the plane coming in to the desert the woman beside me seemed to refer to the desert disdainfully; warning me…. It is true looking at the desert at times it appears as a wasteland, an ugly unfinished construction site… especially when we attach our industry to it.
It looks deceptively from a distance like something to avoid.
A magnificent disguise.
These rocks are God’s naked bones
Some big arrogant ones propped up precariously high
Miraculously staying there
Supported by the invisible, humble, oppressed community below
And some are Miro clowns
Some elegant rotund Matisse ladies
Some as severe as Noguchi
Most as calm as Moore.
Walking into the desert for me is like walking into some mystical hypnotic trance.
Today was supposed to be just the- get oriented to the park day.
Thanks to the time change I bounded out of bed at 6 and was walking by 6:30
Cool out, and no one there yet. Just a short hike and get the maps, that’s it.
My luggage did not arrive with me, so I walk in long black pants, no hat, no camel,
no water, the wrong shoes… but the morning is coo-l so its fine! so I think… I’ll just go for a short walk/but that is never quite possible for me in the desert!
I keep walking and walking and walking and every now and then I wake up and ‘Oh I should try to remember where I am!’ and I take a look around, looking for markers, hand holds so that I can pull myself up out of this trance and find my way back to reality. Reality?
This temptress the desert pulls me further and further into her bowels.
75 minutes into the walk I realize I have no water with me, it’s starting to get warm and I am doing everything they tell you not to do in the desert; walking with the wrong clothes, not knowing where I am, with no water on my first day! But turning around is like sitting down really hungry in front of the best nachos and not eating.
no that’s not even close
its not physical its mystical
turning around is like… absolute faith that if you keep walking, the answer to all the mystical longing in your heart, that pit at the base of your soul will be, is being filled, walking towards an eternity that is tangible and then… stop to turn around and get water? Are you kidding me?
Clowns, gods, magicians, sorcerers, temptresses, healers, I can feel them, I can feel this place. I am not an ‘energy’ person I tell myself again, I will not become one of those…. You know…. but I can feel this.
I walk up to some of them (ys the rocks) and I hug them… wondering if they can heal me somehow (and wondering if anyone is looking)… I can’t say that in touching a rock, no matter how lovely… feels like anything. It doesn’t. It is the whole gestalt of the thing…
Hugging a rock is cool in the heat at times, relaxing, but mystical for me? No.
There are rooms in the saunas in Korea, fully doomed with crystal or amethyst, it is exquisite, lying down and looking up at the doomed ceiling surrounding you with jeweled rocks- I couldn’t feel that.
But this!
It makes me believe that all those healers with those rocks that they say somehow are healing you just sitting on the windowsill while you are having a massage (and I really just think- well, yea, they are pretty and beauty is comforting…. But come on!) Likely
they are, it’s just too subtle for me to feel through the armor and the mess I am in!
But this I can feel! I need a massive desert to feel what those healers can feel from one chunk of rock.
These rocks can heal me- I do not know how, but how could they not? They have been here for so long!
Sometimes I think that when we are not here they dance
No….
Really they are trying really hard not to laugh… because we cannot be allowed to see them move… when they are alone, they slide out of their sullenness and laugh at us! Or maybe they are angry, angry at our folly, our hubris, our idiocy and arrogance.
They are not dancing, they are angry when they move! And they are laughing!
No
It couldn’t feel like this here if they were angry.
No, these are gods, they would not laugh, they do not move with anger, they ache for us; they absorb the pain we carry and create, they take the job of footstool for us and with grace- yes! that is a word I can associate with what I feel here. But at the same time I feel… chaos and confusion but not a chaos or confusion that is wrong, it feels like the swirling beginning of things ancient, even more ancient that the word ancient can hold.
It is a chaos of peace and infinitely slow germination. These naked gods are absorbing our pain. They are absorbing my pain
That is why there is so much of this vast desert!
It is the place where our folly is purified…
It cannot be easy to absorb all of this aching and be at peace…
These are gods
Nothing is too much, too dark for these rocks to absorb, nothing. There is nothing these naked gods have not seen, nothing they have not endured and yet they see us, hold us, each of us as we walk amongst them, ON them, they see us as individual as they are, and they continue to suck the poison from each of our wounds whether we know it or not. They drink us, as thirsty as they must be, calling on our blood to move towards them, calling on every fluid, ever part of us married to water, they call this part of us out to them… and as they do this we lose the edges of ourselves and if we are willing we can enter them, with our wetness and they receive us like the rain.
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