one way or another

Reality gets complicated living in a slow place, where 85 miles can be driven in two days going back and forth across town, which is beside the point but still impressive. Like the song by America, living in the desert can distort your sense of distant, perspective and scale. What was once far, is now "only" 3 hours away. What seemed average and unappealing before now becomes the glorious apparel found at Kmart, right next to the imitation buffalo plaid jackets. 

This afternoon, I was driving on "Main Street" which runs exactly north and south like an airstrip, directing traffic into the desert like a double ended line segment with arrows pointing north to Canada and south to Mexico like a math problem.  The sunroof open on my "northern car," a 1989 Mazda which has a spot of rust above the driver's side wheel well, my bleached hair pulled back by white sunglasses, it occured to me how lonely it really can be to be so removed from your familiar, greener and startlingly real past. Listening to Madonna tell me "Nothing Really Matters", which has become my mantra against falling into delusion longing for possible connection with one-night stands and missed chances, I felt a sense of control. Something along the lines of not knowing where I am going, but sure that I am not intentionally driving people away from myself, but rather selectively forcing them out with the unintentional and unarguable reality of physical distance. When money and time, the factors needed for travel become readily available and the desire to be somebody's fantasy dominates my imagination, what stops me from getting on that plane. To be that blond guy with a 2 day beard slowly walking out of the crowd at an airport with a white duffel slung over his shoulder and a half-cocked grin staring right at you, coming towards you like a chinook wind smelling of ginger and leather. 

The honest truth of being somebody's fantasy and defining yourself by that vision that somebody else might have (and probably won't) doesn't make the rest of your life on a daily basis make any more sense, or give you anything to go by when you alone. 

Where it's at

Fast times in slow places could be a metaphor for doing things in a meditative state. The zen of the everyday, or the ritualized living supported by books like The Artist's Way or A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life. From observation, it seems that there is a genetic pattern to the way we slow down to do our rituals and passions. 

My grandmother still lives on the family farm on an island in the river. She reads articles, cards, and the newspaper like they were coded text telling us the secret of life. Birthday cards and advertisements for magnetic bracelets both take on a spiritual tone and she emphasizes their cryptic seriousness by underlining each important word separetely with lines like shaky elongated rainbow arcs. 

My mother reads emails, websites and poetry the same way, with out the underlines but with long pauses, ellipcised sentences and a far off look in her eye as she asks retorical or half-developed questions about the meaning. Do you think this is true? Does this poem convey the connection between the moon and the dying forest? 

Grandma sits by a window doing word find puzzles and playing songs from the 30's on her organ. Her voice with an alto vibrato as she sings "In the Mood" and the wild, big blue open sky out the window behind her. She does these things in almost a trancelike state, unaware that you are watching her and unconcerned with how she appears. 

My mother goes into this same trancelike state when she paints or drives across the desert, Carly Simon playing on the radio or maybe Steely Dan, colors drifting into jewel tones and sounds fuzzing into a.m. frequency while she drips paint over canvas or watches the mountains blur by her white speeding car. 

And of course, me. My idiosyncratic fast times in slow places, crossword puzzles and half read books at every chance. Little notes scribbled in the uppercase cursive to myself with song titles, people's names, web addresses, and deep thoughts and questions that sound more like Jack Handey on SNL than existentialist musings.

My own trance like state occuring in tracing figures in magazines with an exact-o knife, creating paper dolls in a way, painting little portraits of celebrities and friends, clipping recipes and pasting them in a journal. Talking to friends but usually only quoting movies, songs and book jackets like they hold all the answer. Like the therapist who told me, quoting Janis Joplin: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."