Someone Left The Heat On

hello, stranger –

New Mexico was on fire, so i drove back out to California. not that that was the main factor in my decision, but any hesitation i had in taking off to escape the heat of the desert for the weekend was killed off by the smoke screen high above and drifting west from the wildfires raging in the mountains around Ruidoso.  and besides having some people to see and a party in Venice Beach to attend, there was a little shop along the boardwalk that sells mushroom chocolate bars that i wanted to visit, and knew i wouldn’t have a better opportunity otherwise.

so i packed up late on a Thursday and got up before dawn for a lightning strike road trip through the desert to the coast.  i left at daybreak, and by late lunch i was sitting on the patio at my friend’s house, listening to the waves break on the nearby beach and soaking up the cool ocean breeze and completely reasonable Southern California sunshine.  after weeks of watching the meter rise on baking temperatures and a scorching sun it was like i’d been teleported to a different world.

i think that's part of what i've always loved about the Southwest: you can hop into a car, and within a few hours be in a whole different climate, a totally foreign environment and time period, it can feel like even sometimes - a different experience so separate from the one you've just left you can't help but feel it as the wake of the miles you just put behind you catches up once you stop, and almost feels like it's physically rocking you into motion, like having sea legs. it's not just the emptiness and meditative solitude of the highways, but the almost surreal nature of the things you can experience once you arrive at your destination, so long as you’re willing to drive fast enough and far enough to allow some little bit of yourself to be left behind for a while.

the desert had been in a haze, though, for most of the drive – a thin veil of smoke and heat and punishing sunshine and fatigue as an overlay across the landscape. not just for my weary eyes, but rising from large smoke plumes along the way, from the right in Yuma and on the left in Mexico, where large fires burned in the distance, unchecked and unheeded by the trucks and cars on the highway, a scene that seemed to say “don't worry, the Earth burns too – but the Earth can take it.”

which reportedly is completely in step with the rest of the country, according to the weather channel.  there’s another heat dome sitting on top of the majority of the US – hot, humid, and oppressive conditions.  record setting numbers are the new normal.  and summer’s just getting started, so it was nice to have a slight reprieve and be along the coast for a bit, soaking in some ocean air.  i ate well, i drank well, i met people i otherwise wouldn't, all in a landscape that is outside my normal day-to-day, but that i was severely beginning to wish wasn’t.

i can say that about a lot of places though - some of which don't cost five dollars a gallon to fill up your tank, or a million bucks to buy a garden shed of a home.  and then there’s the traffic.  to get up to LA and back again required at least a few hours of highway driving, and that's a whole different animal in SoCal.  five lanes of stop-and-go traffic, full of sharp, edgy drivers in expensive sedans setting the tempo, racing to get off that laborious strip of pavement to whatever paradise awaits them, while motorcycles do surprise lane-splitting runs like kamikaze dive bombers from behind.

it's so far removed from the type of driving i like to do that it cast a small shadow over the middle of both days.  but it was totally worth it, of course.  and i'm in LA i'm talking to people at a party by the beach, and i find something i didn’t expect - after the small talk gives way to deeper conversations, a lot of other shadows start to come out as well.  work is scarce.  AI is taking over.  the future looks uncertain at best, and nothing is secure.  a certain level of anxiety and fatigue seem baked into living in this place, and for a little while i take guilty pleasure in the morbid reassurance that even people in the movie industry are feeling the squeeze too.  it seems i'm not the only polar bear watching while the ice melts around me.

and then after a couple days of brief but deep dives with my California folk, i woke up early on a Monday, brushed my teeth and slipped back into the truck for the return trip eastward.  i wanted to make a pit-stop along the way where an out-of-work artist carved sculptures into the rock faces in the middle of nowhere, and a lookout tower stood watch over a sea of desert nothingness beyond the canyon below.  and when i drove back down through that desolate mountain pass and back into that desert, it was with that feeling in the heart that comes only after spending time with people who you love and who love you back, and the refilled spirit that comes with a refilled gas tank and seeing nothing but wide open territory ahead through the windshield.

the desert may not have much, but it’s got that at least - and in spades.

but the bill has got to be paid somehow, and if your problems are up a pile of molehills when you take off they can seem like mountains when you get back. hot, sticky, exhausting mountains in this case.  monsoon season had returned to the desert to my little corner of the desert in my absence, and added a blanket of humidity to everything that’s impossible to ignore.  add to that the grinding hum of a double cicada hatch in the background, and it reminded me of being in the deep south in summertime.  i felt like i might as well wear a wool suit and sit in a steam room while i was at it, and made me wonder if there’s any climate - besides the ones just came from - that mankind was actually intended to inhabit.

ha - who knows, it seems like we lost our credibility as a species a long time ago now.  i can’t say when, exactly, or how.  just a general sense that things definitely don’t seem to be moving in the right direction, like i'd once thought they were.  and not just with the climate either, but with everything, like we’re inventing new categories daily just to screw up in.  its hard not to wonder sometimes, how people individually can be so amazing, and yet taken as a generic mass seem inevitably predetermined to ruin whatever good thing it can.  and the further we go into whatever future that’s leading us, the more evident it becomes that the only thing we’re capable of as a whole is pushing harder on the gas.

progress, progress, progress - get it while its hot.  ha - oh well, never mind that kind of talk right now, i’ve just had a sleepless night and the whirring sound of the cicadas sounds like a plague of locusts out there right now.  it reminds me of the past for some reason that i don’t fully understand, and whenever i get homesick or stuck in my thoughts about times gone by or the assortment of futures that might have been but never came to pass, there’s a darkness that creeps in and colors my thoughts for a while.  it’s silly, i know, and generally i try to stay on track and keep looking forward.  it’s far more useful and a much more preferable experience, despite all the warning signs from the craziness of the world ahead.

but i’d be lying if i said there weren’t times when i wake up in the small hours of the night and catch myself looking back.  i think of green trees, and the soft sound of the ocean and a life behind a white picket fence that might have been, but never came to be.  there’s enough back there to really stir up some twinges of pain - physically sometimes even, and deep in the chest.  and when that happens the only thing to do is get up and shake it off with something to drink and an open notebook.

but now the sun is basically risen and my morning tea is all gone, and it’s time to start the day.  it should be an easy one, so thank God for Sundays.  i love my reset days.  it’s nice to take a deep breath and get prepped for the challenges ahead - i’ve got my fair share to tackle, but a trip like that always serves as a reminder that so does everyone, and none of it stacks up to much more than a hill of beans in the end anyways.  and there’s an odd sense of comfort in that.

so until next time, stay cool back there, be good and take care of yourself – i'll write again soon.