Having already this week accepted the bike theft, I do not feel that the universe is putting forward a reasonable expectation of me when I start hearing the gravel-in-a-can maraca sound under the hood of my already banged-out dangle-mirror car. (will post picture of said car tomorrow for you out of towners who haven’t cringed at the site of me scraping the ol’ 626 down Speedway lately. I assure you, you’ll be impressed.)
If the car dies, it was meant to be. I shall retire to my boudoir and blog all day, eating quesadillas and watching porn to pass the hours. I shall accept the clear decree from the universe that I am a woman not intended to physically maneuver around Tucson. I will live life as a nonpedal. You, dear readers, will either bask in the benefit of my endless wordsmithian blogaholicness, or you will all jump out of your respective windows. You will think to yourself, “My god, I had no idea that one human being could generate such an enormous pile of brainwaste, much less have the energy and insomnia to type it all out into those little grey boxes.”
The writing, I’ve decided, is pivotal for me right now. In addition to the fairly regular updates I’m posting on this oddball little website, I’ve also got other secret hidden caches of writing stored away that I’ve been scribbling upon all month, in some kind of frenzied game of catch-up for the last decade of virtual artlessness. I am exuberant. I am obsessed. I am beyond self-indulgent and careening towards self-implosion.
When I think about the writing, I think about dreams and ambitions, and the way I moved out here, to the desert, with a few duffel bags and a tattered pile of Joyce Carol Oates books and an old PC with a moniter as big as me and thought, “I have arrived.”
Ten years later, I think about leaving. I’ve still got the books. Everything else fell away, like chunks of bark that weather off with time until the tree is unrecognizable- but still standing. And suddenly, in the public reticence of this non-anonymous grey box, I am writing again, abruptly and compulsively, and I’m kind of wondering if maybe I unknowingly got off at the wrong stop those ten years ago, and it’s taken me this long to wander back to where I meant to be.
I never have had a strong sense of direction.
The thing about this desert, though, is it’s got this way I don’t quite understand of taking care of me. The heat is healing in a sear-the-bad-off kind of way. The spiky rawness of the desert blooms in spring like watercolors spilled across the sand. The sunsets hemmorhage out across the mountaintops and make my stomach lurch with comfort of our relative smallness.
This is the strangest place I’ve ever known, and it is a great moment when strangeness enters our lives. And what a lovely thing to stop and realize, as really, my only certainty, that I haven’t a single regret.
Tags: Bicycles
