Desert Hot Springs, California
All the crazy weather brings to mind one of my favorite Joan Didion quotes, “Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full-blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud, and everything gets dark and goes completely wild.”
Donna and I are in the desert, experiencing the storms and celebrating my latest spin around the globe. We’re staying in our favorite’40s-era motel, Miracle Manor, eight rooms and no TV. The place seems half-empty most of the time. They have a natural hot spring with mineral water the texture of silk that pours into the pools, water from the earth, and when it rains, water from the sky. It only rains ten days a year here, and we’re experiencing three.
How does sixty-eight feel? I find more and more I’m letting go. It’s been happening for quite a while, but now I’m actively participating, releasing the past and anything that doesn’t add to my life, like the blow-by-blow news stories or the thoughts in my head that seem to go nowhere. I prefer to let what’s happening right now occupy my mind. Yesterday, I thought I saw a ship in the desert, and it disappeared in a blink. The image froze in my mind, and I couldn’t shake its symbolism of life’s journey, the merging of two worlds, and the mystery behind it all.