The Inventory of Changes

decent, even if it isn't what we're used to

In this third week of my total writer’s block, lost in a deep woods that is both absolutely real in the big world of politics and absolutely false in my small privileged corner of the big round earth, I’ve spent a phenomenal amount of time staring into space.

Last weekend we zipped down to Ojo Caliente - a hot springs stolen from people who used to share it and resort-i-fied to appeal to lost souls with privilege.

I hadn’t been in three years, despite making a more than annual trek for the previous ten, and so the changes were more noticeable. Upgrades! Renovations! And somehow a more than incremental loss of care and attention to noise and cobwebs and cracks in the stucco, akin to what I notice in my own sweet mortal self and her reflection. The realness of the big world reeling into the sanctuary, or my illusion thereof.

In visits past, words have poured out of my scrambled mind once ensconced in piñon scented incense and occasional wafts of eucalyptus from the steam room that’s too rich for my blood, but this time it was too loud. The first night we sat by the campfire in silence listening alternately to humans crunch the gravel and to two cats verbalize their discontent and all the ruckus. The next morning I spent two hours on the patio with a blanket and a cup of coffee, staring into space, disrupted only occasionally by tiptoeing workers in a visible slog of exhaustion and vape clouds. Keeping me company was the remnant of an orange slice which had been there the night before, a traveler from a far off place that had adorned someone’s adult beverage earlier in the weekend. I went to yoga in a yurt full of fellow seekers - a Monday morning gathering of lost souls willing to try something new, guided by someone in a halter top who did a fine job of keeping on by digging into her Mary Poppins bag of assorted tricks.

Somatic work?
Breath work?
Some shit with blocks?

The ache of familiarity and my incessant criticism swirled around my head, like the cloud of crap above Pigpen.

After class a woman from Texas chatted with the teacher about how decent the class was, even though it wasn’t what she was used to. The teacher smiled and nodded, and said something innocuous in sweet tones while rolling up straps and energetically shooing us out to make way for the next class.

We hiked through the desert at high noon, surrounded by pottery shards and juniper breeze, and found two lost souls from the resort who seemed to have never bothered to look for signs of home. The trails out here are not curated by Disney, but are well marked by both footprints and metal posts. Even without them, the snowcapped mountains remain to the east, along with the river and the road, and so it’s baffling to witness the lost in a place like this

.

Within an hour we all made it back to the sacrament of wifi, and I returned to my post on the porch. My emotional support orange rind was still there, baking in the afternoon sun, and I sat with a pen and paper and stared again until my person returned with chips and guac. We snacked and soaked, and then parted ways so he could tend to the fire and the people who gathered there while I squatted in the corner of the hotel room to learn about the nature of strokes in my online EMT class. In the end, we sat huddled on the porch in view of the waning fire, serenaded by a band of coyotes in the distance. And for those moments, and the omniscience of the new moon, the timeless beauty of Ojo returned.

I longed for years past, if I’m honest. The comfortable illusion of reprieve, the ego-boost of being the sweet voice in the yurt, guiding the people through yoga or similar self explorations in a place that was once barren of wifi, which allowed cell phones only in the parking lot.

Now that I’ve been home in my wordlessness for yet another week, I think we all need to go back to sacred places to keep them that way, even as they evolve and change in the outward ways.