The external
I can hardly believe I’ve been in Scottsdale for five weeks now. I craved standing still more than I’d realized. Maybe I just craved anything but the chaos.
There was a point around the four-week mark when I felt as if I’d woken up from the haze of a dream. What just happened? Coming back to life, waking up.
Now I am finding my rhythm and rituals here, even if temporary: garbage out on Mondays, recycling on Wednesdays, flush all the toilets on Saturdays because otherwise the water will evaporate, feed the hummingbirds their sugar water, break from the screen to go swimming, break from the heat to read Kerouac and Didion in the AC while temperatures soar above 110 outside.
By the fifth week, I finally had the energy to get out and explore more of the area—though honestly, a big part of me wanted to stay cocooned in the casita and continue reading and working on my book, especially after a naive attempt to hike a nearby trail at 4:30 one afternoon that left me blacking out, I’m assuming from heat and dehydration. I didn’t get very far before I’d drank my entire water bottle’s worth of water and left.
This time, I drove up to Prescott in scorching heat, which only receded a bit once in Prescott Valley, down to 98 degrees. I set up camp at Prescott National Forest, surrounded by Ponderosa pine, the scent of which was an aphrodisiac. My soul immediately responded to being in the natural world, being with the sky as it slowly faded from dusk to night, hearing a coyote howling closer than I’ve ever heard a coyote howl, followed by what sounded like hundreds of coyotes yipping in the distance, staring up at the stars, all of it.
![Camping in Prescott National Forest among Ponderosa pines](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F713897be-5971-4047-b202-e0df8a5cd131_2268x4032.jpeg)
![Camping in Prescott National Forest among Ponderosa pines](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F59f92b8c-fefe-4a59-9513-9f5ab650be68_2742x3650.jpeg)
![Camping in Prescott National Forest among Ponderosa pines](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F88a96f75-6625-432c-8da0-dabc2118f4d0_2268x4032.jpeg)
I was less moved by downtown Prescott, which in my mind immediately fell into the category of places that were probably once cool but then sold out on commercialized versions of what once made them interesting.
As scribbled in my notebook:
Prescott downtown — Show me a SCENE somewhere. Something real. It’s like towns that were once radically unique are now commercially driven to profit off that thing that once made them unique … only to essentially end up like every other town doing this. The saloons and whore houses of Whiskey Row are now a line of boutiques and gift shops and galleries full of art that makes me feel nothing. Souvenir shops with tacky, gimmicky things. Where did its soul go, and when did it leave? “Revitalization”
*BUT* [dramatic pause] …
I wrote nothing about The Dells and Watson Lake simply because it rendered me speechless when I first caught glimpse of it. I was awestruck. I said “wow” eight or 10 times to myself as I took it in. Note to self: Must experience it by boat next time.
As I dropped back down below 3,000 feet elevation on the way back to Scottsdale, the saguaros began to reappear, the Sonoran Desert. I think the desert will always feel like home.
The internal
I have been thinking a lot about my writing, what it used to be and what years of journalism have taken from it.
I’ve always had the compulsion to write, since I was old enough to form words. I just do it—habitually, therapeutically, without thinking or questioning anything, just writing it all down, notes on everything. I’ve amassed, as you can imagine, troves (and by troves, I mean several bins and boxes) of notebooks and journals over the years … because how can you part with them? They form your whole life story and, frankly, a priceless personal reference library.
I remember many times as a teenager, I’d be in a room full of people while scribbling down passing thoughts in a notebook, sometimes sketching, too, in those days. And later in crowded bars, just observing and reflecting, writing everything down on a little pad of paper while drinking and carrying on at the same time. I wanted to record it all, every experience, every scene, every human emotion, every phrase that struck me.
I had the luxury to study the craft of writing in college and sit in on MFA writing residencies, which was helpful. It further shaped and developed my writing. It challenged me to go wider and deeper and play with words and ideas and test my limits. I was constantly experimenting, trying new genres, exposed to new writers, all while living new life experiences, which of course served as inspiration, too.
And all that creative energy—that still lives in me—got snuffed out very quickly when I landed in a journalism career in a sideways sort of way. Suddenly I found myself writing for the audience. Explaining things. Over-explaining. Leaving nothing unsaid. Nothing to intuition. Nothing experimental. There was a structure to this. One structure. You deliver information about some external person, place, or thing, in a way that’s understandable and cohesive. That’s your job, and you’re paid to do it. Yes, you digest, you synthesize, you process these things, but ultimately you are providing a service of sharing information to a wide, “general public” audience.
But my circle of friends, the people who know and understand me, even the artists and writers who I know would understand me if they were 1) alive and 2) we’d met, aren’t exactly regulars at the “general public” spaces, including me. We tend to live on the outskirts of all that and make much more sense to one another than we do to any mainstream outlet.1 That’s why we found each other, connected, and remained connected year after year.
The conundrum is this: I’ve gotten so accustomed to stepping into this “voice” in order to do my day job that I’ve all but lost touch with my voice, which isn’t even so much mine but some sort of channeling of whatever is passing through at the time.
It’s not so much that this thing is lost, because it resides in the core of me. I don’t think it could ever be lost. Where would it go?
But what I’ve realized is the thought of sharing that, I’ll call it “purer creative expression” publicly is honestly scary to me now. I’m not totally out of practice of writing in that way, a way that is honest to me, a way that is more real sometimes than the reality we’re seeing in front of us, but I’m completely out of practice with being vulnerable enough to share it.
But I might start doing that here.
Who knows. Maybe no one will even notice the difference!
✦ “Nightswimming” might be the most perfect song ever written
✦ 105 without humidity is heaven, 113 without humidity feels like being cooked alive
✦ adrenal fatigue is very real … and always sneaks up on me! (and for anyone who ever finds themselves getting slammed by it, please reach out—I have found some answers over the years that might be helpful)
✦ The century plant (Agave americana) blooms only once in its lifetime, then dies. It forms a remarkable shoot straight up some 20-30 feet with little flowering pods on top that bloom, then dry, then drop their seeds on the ground below. The cycle of life never looked so cool. They grow here.
✦ you don’t have the space to tend to your heart when you are in crisis … coming back to your heart should be step one when recovering from any crisis situation
✦ one of my favorite (old school now) meditations/visualizations to do at night, Universal Mind by Kelly Howell (use headphones, if possible!)
✦ if you deal with any sort of dire need to ground, whether from EMF or empathing, I highly recommend carrying shungite, black obsidian, and black tourmaline on you, even if they are tiny (they have helped me immensely over the years and I swear by it)
writing
ebooks + zines
astrology readings
get postcards and snail mail
send snail mail: 9701 Montgomery N.E. #1057, Albuquerque, NM 87111
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Just to be clear, I’m not snubbing my nose at mainstream anything. I am going to the “Barbie” movie this weekend. I am fascinated by pop culture. I am fascinated by what and why anything goes mainstream. But also, I’ve always sort of naturally found myself gravitating toward the outcasts, going with a different, smaller current. Maybe it’s … the undercurrent? ;)