Orion Rising

Out there, on the other side of the big, storm-twisted mesquite, some mangy critters are stirring. Dry desert till is shaking loose from its summer angle of repose; it tumbles down into the wash. Ironwood, so hard and dense it will sink, is curling back into its desiccated orneriness. 

If you listen closely enough, you can hear a shared "AAAHHH," as the nights drop back into the 60s and 50s and the distant mountains rise into fresh blue clarity. Gravel, dried wood, sky.

The desert rats are waking up. 

Fall is the beginning of their time. Time to get back out into the Big Silent, the Yawning Nothing,  the Elegant Empty. They are packing up, drying out food, cleaning mold and summer fungus out of old boots. God, it's been a muggy summer. But no time to waste on the past. It's now. It's here. Finally.

In spite of myself I can't help but feel good. People tend to disappoint me, but October in the desert never fails to exceed expectations.

October is the month of spider-webs, giant horse-lubber grasshoppers (complete with Halloween colors), migrating tarantulas, and busy skunks. The party that is August winds down; September is closing time for the summer orgies of feeding and mating. Male tarantulas go on a walk about in search of females. October, though, moves some of us bipeds into the rarified air of reflection. November brings clouds and the first taste of winter rain.

It is a lovely time of year, and as I open to it, I hear a voice on the wind. It is one that requires a lifetime of preparation to hear. One has to prepare by feeling the loss of things, really feeling the loss. One has to be humbled and a bit broken to understand.

"Your appetite for more has served you.... now you can let it go for a while," it says.

Of course, by appetite, the wind means hunger and grasping, all that drama that the gurus -- both false and true -- present to us from their soapboxes.

This hungry fiction called "me" does not want to hear this, especially if it comes on the form of cleaning out clutter, both physical and mental.

"What?" I say. "You want me to let go of everything I have been cultivating for 50 years!?"

Desert rats know that this time is golden. The airy walks in solitude have little room for noisy, shallow, vindictive pettiness. The world is big, exquisitely beautiful, and it doesn't enter or reveal itself if there is junk blocking the doors. I will never get what I thought I wanted, all that was withheld from me. Richard Shelton writes "I have learned to accept whatever men choose to give to me, and what they choose to withhold." I like that.

I have begun to accept that, to clean things out. I tossed (recycled) 30 years of accumulated teaching materials and research on Friday. They are gone. I am left with less encumberance.

As I toss more I will travel lighter. I still have a long way to go, but it has begun.

The reward is a clear sky, open ground, light load. But there is more. After the grief, there is tingling joy that comes from that which endures. The joy burns at the last remaining threads of attachment to the transient, to being right, to waiting for redemption.

This fall I feel old in many ways, but I feel free trying not to stay young. Rejoice, rejoice, fellow lunatics, malcontents who find the reward of the rockier path.

Lunacy

The fall moon had something to say

Last night.

Its light tapped me on the shoulder.

And I turned to see its

Beaming and benevolent

Face

Full and a bit proud

For having grown so bright

Again.

I listened and heard

A  low light

Whisper.

Stay awake with me

Tonight.

And shed the

Unnecessary weight

Of your life.

Pile it high by the road

For those who have too little
Or who need gilded

Spangles

To be happy.

Then wander the arroyos

Until your leanness

Sings to me

I who take your heart

Without mercy.

That is the way of beauty

She says

For those who turn to listen to

The moon.