these are letters from the road (desert road trip #3)

12/25/2013 -- C.C.

I wish you were here with me, Caroline! I have learned so much this year. I have accelerated and then slowed down. I have failed and I have been made aware of my imperfections--I am not always reliable or kind or compassionate or selfless--and yet--all is well here, and right now--I have seen and known God more than I ever have, and that has given me the capacity to love better, despite all of my flaws. Everything seems to be more delightful, while mattering less, if that makes sense at all. There is more of a levity to living, even though I can also feel the gravity of each moment. I can’t recount to you all that has happened since we last saw each other, but I can tell you where I am right now.


12/25/2013 -- A.B.
We've been listening to Bob Dylan quite a bit on the road (actually, we asked friends to make playlists for us and each has been remarkable, but no one has put Dylan on their playlists!) -- such great traveling music, with a sense of awareness of everything around him and in the air, and yet he remains somewhat detached from it all. There's a wandering feeling to his music that you and I both know well, and then there's the storytelling, and the poetry, and the muttering, and the harmonica! It's been awhile since I listened to Bob, but every time Bob is something new! 

How are you? How is the city? I love living in cities--but I'm not sure if it's good for my soul--it feeds the worst parts of me, so I need to get away often--to make sure I'm caring about the things and people and matters I want to care about--and not get carried away with the material surfaces of the urban simulacrum--if I'm allowed to call it that.


12/26/2013 -- K.O.
When we entered the chapel, the service was solemn and small--and it all seemed really formal--and then the priest, Father William, blew his nose, and I almost burst out laughing. I think the funniest moments are flukes--when something almost too ordinary disturbs the peace or flow of things--little awkward charms, situational humor, you know. I think you would have laughed too! Because everything at the abbey is so much simpler--quieter and emptier--the funny, awkward moments are so much more pronounced. 


12/24/2013 -- J.R.
The desert is not so alluring or attractive at first glance--or comfortable, for that matter--but it is open and expansive, stark naked, so different from the city lives we're used to, where people scurry around, in close confines but so unaware of each other, unaware of so many sounds and places and faces that just fade into the background, become distracting noise--distraction from some other, seemingly more important focus, because we're always going somewhere and what's ahead seems so much more important than what's here right now. In the desert, your job is to notice, to be attentive. It is easier to listen to God, and when all else fades away, it's clear that we're here to love and be loved by God--it's so easy to lose sight of that sometimes.


12/24/2013 -- S.S.
Amidst this quiet, this empty space, this wide and free landscape, it seems that loving is all we were meant to do. The rest feels trivial you know? How we go about our ordinary lives as if we had to make them into something extraordinary, hurrying here and there but to what end?
...
Leaving most things behind, even for awhile, has given my head and my heart space to breathe. I feel relieved to feel, if even for a moment, unattached. And yet--here, this letter, a token of my attachments, a token of my love...our hearts and souls want freedom and also some kind of tethering. Blaise Pascal described men in three words: dependence, desire for independence, needs. Merry Christmas! I love you!

this is a new year

Dear friends,

Happy 2014.

If you've known me for a long time, then you know that for the past decade or so, I've written an annual Christmas letter for my family, which my parents send out (before Christmas) every year to friends and relatives. This year, I shirked that duty, going to the desert on a road trip instead, skipping out on a traditional Christmas entirely. To make up for that, I promised my parents that I would write a New Years letter, so I did. It used to be an update of the family, but since I don't live with my parents, it's become more of a rambling digest.

There's some of you whom I talk to every day, others of you whom I haven't seen in years; and still others with whom I've had only a brief but meaningful encounter. But like I've written before, I believe that once a kinship comes into being, it will never cease to exist, even if it is silent, or latent, for awhile. So for the one time per year when I can flip through the rolodex of my mind, remember the heartstrings each of you have plucked, think fondly of every meeting I've had with you, I do so joyously. I write this letter to all of you, knowing--hoping--that in some way, we're all still connected to one another.

So I hope you enjoy the letter that I've written to you this year--about my trip to the desert, about 2013 and beyond. And if you have a minute or two, please write back and tell me how you are. I'd love to hear from you.

With candor and affection,

Natalie

----

On Friday night, after 2000 miles on the road over the span of a week, I arrived at a warehouse in a desolate neighborhood in Oakland. It was quiet and dark—just parking lots and brick-lined warehouses. My stomach was knotted and tight. For the past six days, I had been out in the desert, on the road, and in a convent; beneath a flowering garden of stars in empty stretches of black sky; in a graveyard of fish bones by a salty, white sea. I had watched the red sun descend spilling warm waves of color over the mountains, black smoke billowing like an ominous cloud behind; floated through fields of dusty blonde cat tails and curlicued reeds of dried desert grass; sailed down a straight and breathless road snaking endlessly through the chiaroscuro contours of purple-hued mountains; freely reeled, rambled, rollicked, never in one place for too long. I breathed in the silence of a monastery, steeped in a wilderness away from everywhere; walked a yellow brick road on a rainbow hill; wrote letters to loved ones on a plain wooden desk; napped; stoked a fire in the still stands of a desert homestead.

Now, in Oakland, at our friend’s dinner party, we were about to join the bustling throngs of civilization again, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to encounter, swallow, and sift through all the noise. Or smile and make small talk, try to yell louder than the music in the background. Wasn’t ready to return to the patterned routines of my ordinary life with dulled senses and a twittering heart.

Of course I knew I’d come back, like every other time I’ve left home, which always begins with a feeling of wanting to leave, wanting unfamiliarity and novelty and a different breath of air. I am, by instinct, a hoarder and archivist, always hungry, always trying to fill up, which has often left me more restless than satisfied, feeling like a wanderer. I read somewhere about the “capitalism of the heart,” in which happiness and experience are currencies to be gathered and seized. Maybe I’ve been wanting to get rich, thinking I could fatten up my spirit by moving from place to place, always looking for the next place to go, anticipating a deadline to usher me into a different geography, awaiting some future joy, as if somewhere else is something better. If you’re lucky or wise, sometimes you won’t desire anything at all.

Sometimes it’s easier to displace yourself and surround yourself with strangers you don’t know, people you’re not attached to. That’s why the first time you leave home, you feel liberated, uninhibited. You’re not responsible for much more than observing lives in which you have no stake. You can construct barriers around yourself. You don’t have to care. You may be living a messy, scrappy life, but you’ve tucked your heart away, falsely manicured, or festering.

When I first left for college on the east coast—a little more than five years ago now—I was hopeful for the revelation of a wild and unhindered life. I was under the impression that the farther I flung myself, the more people I met and the more things I saw, the more worldly wisdom I’d gain. I associated this experience consumption with happiness—with the ultimate pursuit of truth, too—and I constructed my own hierarchy of experiences, which was based on the way I wanted to be viewed, lauded, glorified.

At school, I experienced major culture shock. People talked and dressed differently. Social hierarchies seemed more important, as did your lineage and blood. The details of your résumé and birth certificate carried much more weight, and your taste—in books, music, art, and clothing—reflected how cultured and intelligent you were. Your taste was a boon or a shame; either way, it was judged. As a result, I always felt like I fell short of what I was supposed to be: my taste was never refined enough, the depth of my knowledge too shallow. I didn’t try hard enough, even though I felt like I was always trying and wanting more than what I had. I also felt burdened by the expectation that I should be grateful—and thus unconditionally happy—for admission into a school that the world branded as ultimate, the apex of all college experiences.

Even beyond school, I searched for a place where I could be more than an observer and outsider. I lived amidst constant noise, hoping that the voices of each place I sojourned would light my way through a labyrinthine maze of discovery. There were stretches of time when I lost sight of God, who isn’t forceful, but is easily forced out, if you’re constantly searching for a home in this weighted world. In this relentless pursuit of gratification, of what you think is self-enlightenment, you begin to collect every shard of tragedy that breaks open along the way, while little joys fall through your fingers like pixie dust. You’re the perambulating ruffian pushing a shopping cart full of useless artifacts. Your cart is brimming, but you’re still looking for more.

******

The desert is empty and sparse, a thinly veiled landscape that is purposefully uninviting. Everything protects itself. The physiology of its fauna and flora are telltale signs: spiny, prickly, precarious and beautiful, guarded by needles that stab lest you try to steal its treasure.

But the emptiness of the desert calls you to pay attention and fully inhabit your consciousness. You see the desert quail scurry across the road; notice the detritus laying haphazardly on the open plain; watch the trails of steam rise up from the hot sands. Like a monastery in which lack strengthens presence, silence focuses your attention; sometimes it sharpens sadnesses and amplifies joys. A fermata is held over every feeling. Solitude beckons. You have everything you need in this moment. Nothing is urgent. The future does not require your attention. Your heart is filled because you are no longer in want. The horizon, a bottomless basin that cleanses you with its smooth wash of colors, filters out all the thorny noise that was pricking you just days ago in the city. Now you have space and time to listen to God, and the first principles by which you want to live your life float to the surface, a buoy so achingly clear in an infinite blue: love God first, and love others. By that principle all else will fall into place.

Another year of moments is passing: moments of indefatigable ecstasy, moments of grief-worn insanity, moments of wondering why and how I ended up here, and whether I’m okay. This year I began to invest deeply in one place, in a real community in San Francisco—and how delightful that has been, to have a family of friends in this ever-changing city, while living so close to the family who raised me—both are gifts. Since I left home, I’ve never felt more anchored to a place than I do here—but I think it’s more than the place: I’ve begun to anchor myself to a way of living that gives up everything that school taught me to cling onto: productivity, success, being good enough, worrying that I don’t have enough or am not enough, stressing out.

In a letter to my sister, Naomi, I recounted to her ten ways of living that were important to me in 2013. Here’s what I told her: Live in community. Live vulnerably. Live freely. Live with God. Keep searching for God. Prioritize your life so you have no regrets. Let things go. Leave room for serendipity. Rest. Call Mom and Dad. And in all those things, love deeply, unconditionally, and sacrificially.

******

On the night of Christmas Eve, we arrived at a Cistercian abbey after hours of silently winding through the dark dirt roads of the Sonoita Mountains. At midnight, we attended mass in a small chapel on the hill, with a few other guests scattered among the plain wooden pews. Faded paintings of saints lined the white brick walls, and potted poinsettias graced the aisles. Guests sat in one room; nuns in another. We could not see the sisters. We saw only Father William, a visiting priest, who sat behind a massive pulpit carved out of a gnarled tree trunk. Between scriptural readings, a sister sang unaccompanied, a single, shrill voice quivering, warbling, humbly following a melody line. Father William urged us to “enter more deeply into the mysteries of the son of God,” and retold the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, a children’s book by Margery Williams. He read these lines, in which the Rabbit asks the Skinned Horse what it means to be real:

“Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.”

So often we wait for the whisperings of the world to teach us how to exist, and we let the whistling winds blow us from one place to the next, with a vague vision of where we want to end up, but no idea of how we want to live out the moments that will get us there. So we continue to fill our lives with momentary pleasures, aesthetic pursuits, crafting and arranging a life that is fit for the person we imagine ourselves to be. In the process, we forget our souls; we forget the one true love that makes our hearts real.

In the coming year, let love guide your every action and thought. May you experience the joys and heartbreaks of intimacy, baring your soul shamelessly, fearlessly. May you welcome the discomfort of the change you cannot control, and patiently bear the little battles of a mundane existence. May you continue seeking God, a changeless face that never bores, never turns away. May you breathe in every moment, listen to the silence, fling doubt away, and let faith and prayer inhabit your being. May you remember God, even when you are weak and hurting. May you call a friend, ask for help. Thank God for every meal, blessing, and heart you touch. May you love God first, and love others accordingly.

                                                               

this is the desert playa

*The flatness of the desert plays a trick on the mind's eyes, and now I know that's how the concept of "mirage" came to be. If you look far enough across the plains of the desert, you'll see what looks like water in the distance. A body of water, it seems, will be found if you just keep walking towards it. But it must be the sun, or the sand, or both, because what it really is, for miles and miles and miles out, is just desert. Hot, untouched desert.





*At dusk everyday, as the sun begins to set, losing its strength, and people retreat back to their camps to prepare for the night, I leave our camp and ride out to the playa on my bike. Here, on the sparse field of nothing, on the cracked white canvas that will be trodden and touched and mowed down for a week, I am exhilarated by space and expanse and the mountains that surround me on all sides. I imagine I am in a large crater. This city we've built, the things that we carry out to the desert: both the tools that we'll need to survive and the stresses that make it difficult to survive, will soon be swept away by the dust and the wind. Here in the desert, there is freedom if you'll take it. I feel this freedom most palpably during these bike rides at dusk, when I'm by myself, pedaling as slowly as I want or as quickly as I can, just taking in it all, taking pleasure in the movement of gliding across the desert, without cars, without roads, without a sense of urgency. Only the sun tells time here in the desert, and minutes and seconds do not exist. Only moments.

this is the desert of my dreams

 

*The desert was the landscape of my dreams, the mirage I had only imagined but never seen. Did you know that everything that grows in the desert is meant to repel? The dry heat of the desert; it makes us desirous and thirsty. The dust and the wind; it blinds us and scrapes at our skin. In the desert we are our most barren and vulnerable selves, unprotected, naked. We come as we are, aware of life’s dangers and the promises we want to reach for. We come face to face with the dissatisfactions we can't admit and the hopes we are too scared to call our own. Like lizards basking in the sun we breathe the light to feed our souls, and once we are full, we recline in the shade. The rocks, they bear our marks; they are stacked to mark the trail. The glass debris in the dirt, the broken bottles we left behind; they cut our feet and make us bleed. Young tanned hide, tattered t-shirts, the smell of alcohol and cigarettes plastered all over their skin. The boys at the cliffs, drunk and yelling, flaunting the desperate machismo of adolescence; the lone girl, slurring her words and flopped onto a rock, one leg in the water, croaking at the boys, helpless. How did she get here? Why did she come? Why does her heart beat? Where did she go?

*I came to the desert to escape the city; the city with its whirring and whistling; the motion and the clicking, the techno-logic that has pervaded the minds of these urban denizens and the flash-mob ideals of fame and riches we’ve wired into the electric synapses of our brains. I came to find respite in a place with little water. I came to see myself more clearly, disentangled from the loves and lives from a place that will always be my love and life. I came to visit a friend. I came to untangle heartstrings, hers and mine both. I came to drink iced coffee outside in the shade. I came to rest. I came to be a lizard, an ectotherm truly. I came so the sun could balance my insides. I came for homeostasis. I came not to do but to be. I came not to find but to see.