Flocking. It’s not an individual act, not the rugged, “Beat-it-I-play-my-own-tune” action, and it’s only rarely the Mickey’s Malt Liquor definition, “Flossing your wet toes with your socks.” Sheep, geese, something goes on with animals in a mass vector, sure, but the flocking in the Southwest is purely human—it’s what older white chicks do under the broiler rack of summer. I have a Corolla. A shiny, black scarab beetle of protection with tinted panes and soft bongo music. Half through June they come. I see them on shoulders and in cantinas, some dragging whelps, others blooming into lesbianism, others doing both concomitantly. Oceans of women, not the castaways from Oprah audiences, not even jilted ex-lovers and wives of university stuffed men, but women of the word-deed-song-painting, too sage for university themselves, shamelessly awakened ones. A little eyebrow pencil and gloss, no shadow, no blush, no foundation. Elastic sneakers. I peer through my anonymous Corolla and watch these women fill the voids in their compact, Jeep-like vehicles. Sure, some husbands remain, but they’re window dressing. Some men hide behind cameras, or they point their children’s eyes toward documented attractions. The streams of activity show unique ripples, but the FLOCK is all female. There would be no workshops, no paintings, no pottery, no lavender, no spirit journeys, no bite of Gaia’s womb out here without them. If it were a herd of men there would only be fuel stops, bodegas, and skeet shooting ranges. Santa Fe, Taos, Arroyo Seco, Durango, Tamarron, Telluride, Moab, Fremont Creek, Glen Canyon, Prescott, Sedona… Of course my Corolla slinked into Sedona this July and every July. I’d be a fool to miss the vibe. Tens of thousands in hundreds awaited my return, the greenbacks exfoliating from these queens—practically curling innocently on the saltillo tile floors. I first pulled into the sinewy trail to Golar Ecki’s cabin, just off the steep shelf above Telaquepaque and it’s transplanted eucalyptus and murmuring riverbanks. He greeted me in his trademark curry sarong and wifebeater top, pulling me into his teak bivouac against the jutting shelf. “My blessing, my doughy monkey, how have you brought so much magic from upon high?” he said. “I think I’m more of a horny catamount this summer, Master Ecki,” I admitted. My hunt this season was fleshy and transparent. “Good for us both, I imagine. Where are you living?” I massaged my jaw and closed my eyes. I took in a deep, nasal breath and held it for half a minute. Golar held the silence. In my mind’s eye the trees separated below. I saw an alabaster cottage at the end of a gravel lane some three miles to the southeast. It had dark, leaden blue shutters and a purple oil and varnish front door with an English knocker. “Looks like only a few miles from you,” I said. “Something like a stone’s hurl past the marketplace.” Golar ran his fingers over a blushing pomegranate. “Generous of the owner to feed you the direction so capriciously,” he said. He nodded in satisfaction to my use of his Desired Viewing practice, a discipline he mastered through breathing exercises and purging of inner language pollution. It came easily in his company. When I was a good distance away, and sooty with anxieties, the images—the direction—didn’t play through as easily. I pulled two dates away from a sticky platter on his tray and took in the sweet pulp. A blade of cool air, descending from the slickrock above, brushed my face. A bronze wind chime snuffed out the cries of circling hawks. I leaned back into his rattan chaise and rested my eyes from the fatigue of the highway. Golar picked up his flute and trailed away into his home, playing the motif to a Japanese folk song that once prayed for rain, centuries before. I felt the years of my recent solitude emanating from my aching bones and joints. His flute carried me into a burrowed memory of being on a lakeshore. It was a cold autumn walk with a girl I promised to marry. I remembered the lapping of the water, the smoke tainted wind, the reluctance of her frown and the desperation of her darting eyes. She was leaving me and felt best to share this revelation in a dell by the black, icy water. I remembered the sensation that I was witnessing her death, a spiritual one, albeit, her face appeared clammy and resolute with a thousand responsibilities I could only laugh at. I recalled how I groped for her forearms, then her shoulders, thinking my touch could assuage her resolve, or at least quiet my impending loneliness. She was leaving what we shared for the sake of community and family obligations. Church, children, Christmas cards, potpourri and professional graduate instruction. I meditated on the certainty that she didn’t possess a sense or appreciation for human intimacy. Our love was only my projection of peace and consummate comfort. This girl, a girl I found as tranquil as the feeling of any mother stroking a baby’s scalp, was dead to the core—she was only a vessel of my projected whole, not absorbing a droplet of our union the entire time we had been paired. The one wholesome thing I recalled during that ceremonious severing was the grove; it had either called her out of mercy to take me there, or it had remained—full and piercing—once she left for the road above. I remained in the wide matted circle of maple and birch for an hour longer, appreciating the gold earthen mat of leaves and the black water. The ice and smoke in the wind penetrated my skull and watered my eyes. I didn’t weep or wail. I stood still, in a sensory embrace with the clearing. That late afternoon I understood the ephemeral nature of another’s warm, loving, and hypocritical flesh. The wind, water, and leaves, however, offered the first of many lasting moments of companionship. My footfalls on the earth, the creasing of damp yellow leaves and the crackle of fallen twigs would never cease in their intimacy. The ripple of the cold lake distracted me from my despair and shook me into the realm of patience. A promise from a girl is a betrayal foretold, I had thought, but the earthen stage was unshakably mine. When I awoke from the patio chaise I found a note from Golar. He had gone to lead a drum circle by the water below. He packed the dates in a paper bag for me and left a canteen of papaya juice for my departure. I wrote on the bottom of his note that I would see him again once I was settled. In less than a half-hour I found the limestone yellow trail that led up to a lonely, white cottage. I parked the Corolla in what looked to be a guest spot and read the sign posted in the window. VACATION RENTAL AVAIL - $2,200/mo. The phone number attached was long distance. The knocker on the door was not English, and its color was rust, not purple. No matter, I thought. I would paint it. I called the owner and a woman from Massachusetts told me where the key was hidden as soon as I dropped Golar’s name into the conversation. She sounded a touch sterile over the cellular line, but most souls did on wireless devices. Any doubt evaporated at the sight of her blue shutters. This was my home.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 21:44:22 +0000
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