3 November, 2007 – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Miles from nowhere

If memory serves, I wrote a bit on our Northeast tour about how unnatural travel has come to feel to me. I am feeling that today. Air travel is the most extreme example, of course, but travel in general is striking me, more and more, as somehow wrong. It’s out of proportion, somehow. Out of human scale. Beyond the animal. To move so quickly over long distances requires a profound disconnection from place and land and air and life. We’re just so used to it now that we hardly notice.

Getting back to the animal has become a theme of mine recently. I want to get back to the animal. I want to be my animal self, in my animal body, sensing the Earth with my animal senses, attuned and aware and connected, in touch and touching, my feet on the ground. I want to step out of the hall of mirrors, the World, the machine, the civilized, the reflexive, the reflection. I want to walk the Earth in human time, on a human scale, in a human body, my human senses in full relationship with the living planet. I cannot do that in an airplane, or on a train, or a ferry, or in a car. I cannot do that at sixty miles per hour.

I want to come to rest. I want to be somewhere, not miles from nowhere. I want to live life at a scale that feels sane to my animal self. And I am not sure that I will get what I want. I just know that that’s what I want.

We live in a time when all our plans are suspect, when all our dreams come with a caveat, when the path before us is so dark, and so full of twists and turns, that we can rarely see beyond our next step, when all our attempts to predict the future fly from our fingers like dice on a table. The old rules no longer work in the world we have created. The perfect Sturm und Drang (of oil and climate and politics and religion and war and overshoot and extinction and economy and environmental meltdown) is blowing harder every day. Tossed about by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology and sociology and Murphy, we’ll be lucky to keep from capsizing, let alone steer the boat to safety. These days are not like any days we’ve ever known.

So I think about coming to rest. I think about life at a human scale. But I do not know if I will get it. It may be that the universe has other plans for me, and that miles from nowhere is where I will stay for some time. I feel like I’ve put myself at service to the Earth. I’m not really sure what that will entail. All I can do is make what moves I can to come to rest, and be open to the possibility that something else may have a say in the matter. What I can see now is to get back home, rest a long, long rest, and get our house on the market.

One more week on the road. And then, that long, long rest…

We woke the morning after the Silver City screening and met Carolyn and Jean for breakfast, as they had to get home. We hung out with Jill for a bit, then headed up to Boston Hill, for a nice walk in the high desert with Jill and John and Lydia and their two dog friends, Daisy and Dancer. From there we went to John and Lydia’s for a wonderful lunch of homemade chili and quesadillas and salad, right after which we did an hour-long video interview in their dining room with Kyle Johnson, for his public access program Radio Free Silver. That was actually quite fun, which is not something I would have expected I’d be saying about interviews.

At six we headed to a local gelato spot, where our Silver City organizers had put together a follow up event in the back room, a potluck and circle, which nineteen people attended. After a quick meal, we moved the tables, circled the chairs, pulled out the talking stick and got down to the business at hand, which was to come together for more connection and dialogue about the world situation and our response to it. After a round of self-introductions, we spent some time pondering the question: what is it we most deeply want that this culture is not giving us? We shared in the circle for a long time, the stick making its way around a few times. The sharing was concise and grounded, as we struggled, and succeeded, to speak from our hearts, and to reveal how it is for us, to live in this culture, and what it is we really, deeply want instead. When the circle broke, many of us ended the evening with a nice hit of gelato.

We woke the next morning to breakfast with Jill and a bit more conversation, then hit the road in our rental car and drove back across the mountains and up I-25 to Albuquerque, where we found a huge thrift store to bounce around in for a while. At five we met Maggie (our next host) and Marie for dinner at a Mexican restaurant for some great food and delightful conversation. Then we drove across town to the Unitarian church, at which the screening would take place. There we met Patty and Meghan and Marilyn, who had organized the event. The tech stuff and the chairs were already in place, so we set up our table and sat and talked with Patty and Marilyn and got cleaned up to meet the public. Soon enough they began to arrive, and there were about thirty-two souls in the audience when we started the film.

We caught up on a bit of email, then sat and watched along with the audience, getting in a bit of yoga on the carpeted floor. The end credits rolled and we got chairs into a circle and twenty-two of us sat together and spoke about how the film had impacted us. As there were so many of us, Sally asked for clear concise comments. The Albuquerque crowd was clear and concise and powerful in its sharing. Sally asked that we speak from our hearts. The Albuquerque crowd spoke from its heart. The dove right into it, sharing their hopes and dreams and fears, their anger and sadness and shame and joy and relief. They spoke of their work in the world, what they’ve been doing, what they want to do, what they now see that must do. It was sweet and real, and I was glad to be there.

We headed off into the night, Sally riding with Maggie to her place while I followed, listening to a great Hard Rock/Metal station I found on the radio. It was a long and winding road, East from the city and up through the canyon and up into the mountains. We got to her home, met her two dogs, Cisco and Lily, and her two bosses (cats) Nestor and Charlie (hope I got those names right!), got a tour of her funky and comfortable round home on the top of the hill, then hit the sack, where we were joined later by Nestor and Charlie who, comfortable in their own beauty and power, naturally assumed that we were there to serve their needs and desires. Nothing like a warm cat at your foot to make for a good night’s sleep.

Morning came and we could see the views from the hill top. Maggie made us breakfast burritos and coffee and we talked of her soon-to-be-published book and her work in the world, of the world situation, and of her life in New Mexico. We tried to help her catch an escaped chicken, but it proved more Road Runner than Rhode Island Red and we couldn’t even get close. Leaving that for another day, we said our goodbyes and headed back to ABQ, to turn in the rental car and catch the shuttle back to the Amtrak station for the next leg of our journey, up through New Mexico, across the Southeast corner of Colorado, and across Kansas to Lawrence.

Another eighteen hours of confined jostling and we would once again come to rest, this time in the heartland…

Our thanks to Jill and Carolyn and Jean, to John and Lydia and Kyle and the folks in Silver City, to Maggie and Marie and Patty and Meghan and Marilyn and the folks of Albuquerque, who came into our lives for a short while, who cared for us, and helped us along on our way, and who shared their lives and hearts so fully. Our best to you all.

Touching the ground…

Tim