Welcome to Albuquerque

The night before we were to leave our house in Oregon for New Mexico, Jenn and I decided to do a letting go ritual, which  involved offering-up anything we wished to free ourselves from into the flames of a small fire. We were going to perform the ceremony on wet, rain-saturated plot of soil in our garden, but decided instead to contain the flames in a stainless steel water dish that we kept on our back porch for the cats.It was dusk, and a gentle sprinkle had started to fall as we said our prayers of release, and asked spirit to bless our new life and provide safe travel for our entire family--human and feline.  After we finished the ceremony, the fire -- built of dry kindling, cardboard and cloth --continued to burn. We watched in silence as pearls of rain gathered on Jenn's auburn hair. That's when we caught the smell of something foul. We forgot bowl had a ring of rubber on its bottom to prevent it from sliding.

"We should put it out," Jenn said.

I nodded in agreement and took a step toward the fire. Jenn beat me to it, and used the toe of her shoe to turn the water dish over. Instead of  flipping all the way over, however, the bowl landed on its side, and just then, a gentle wind kicked-up and started to strew the flaming ash and embers around the garden toward the wooden wall of a nearby garage. Instinct kicked in (or what seemed like instinct at the time), and I grabbed the first thing I saw to cover the swirling embers--the water dish itself.

"Fuck! Motherfucker!"

I dropped the bowl and began jumping about, shaking my hand in a manly, graceful sort of way while a voice inside my head was already condemning me for being that stupid to pick up a completely heated piece of stainless steel. (On my own behalf, there should be a rule that things that are that hot should actually glow.) Jenn went into healer-mode and soothed both my battered ego and burnt knuckles with salves and bandages, which was followed by a brief metaphysical discussion on "What It Meant" that our ceremony ended the way it did. At last, I declared that I had no earthly idea and didn't fucking care. 

Years ago, I used to try to assign meaning to events in my life. "Maybe Scenario A means that the universe is saying ...," or "Scenario B is trying to teach me ..."

If only finding meaning were that easy. Too often, my interpretations would feel hollow, as if I were trying to explain the ineffable. To attempt to gift wrap occurrences in my life with a tidy interpretive bow is the ego's way of creating the illusion that it is indeed in control. In reality, control is pretty much the last thing I've been feeling of late. I am amazed -- repeat Ah-mazed -- at how little Albuquerque feels like home right now.  Since my return to the Southwest, I have fluctuated between bouts of intense anxiety and fear, and a pleasant, floaty, dream-like state where everything feels sort of familiar ... but not quite. I am walking and driving around the city I lived in (and loved) for nine years, and I feel raw and vulnerable. Occasionally, I give my head a metaphoric scratch, and--like the David Byrne song--I ask myself, "My God, what have I done?"

In these moments of doubt, I take shelter in my intellect and go over all the reasons that Jenn and I decided to move to New Mexico. I remind myself that I have done this  moving-to-a-new-city thing enough times to know that dream time and waking life will reverse itself soon enough, and though I feel rattled now, Oregon will begin to recede, and I will once again continue my love affair with the desert. 

And speaking of rattles, two days ago I pulled into the parking lot of an established counseling agency in town for a job interview. The building itself was half-built into the gentle slope of a scrubby hill. As I turned off my ignition, I looked up to see a sign posted about five five feet up the incline. It had been planted there for the maximum viewing pleasure of all the poor souls coming to the agency to seek emotional support and succor. It read in caps: "WATCH FOR RATTLESNAKES."

Welcome to Albuquerque.