This is a beautiful, insightful evocation of desert versus city experience. Deserts have always appealed to me. Decades ago on a visit to Aswan, Egypt, I decided to experience the desert just for a few minutes. I wanted to walk into the sands far enough to sense what it is to be separate from anything but desert. It only took a few paces to lose all distant horizons and only inhabit waves of sand. I realised very quickly, "It's so clean. Even the scraps of trash are clean. You need water for cans to rust or organic matter to rot. I am a bag of water walking along." It's no surprise mummification developed there. And no surprise pure awareness can reveal itself there. The spaciousness is easier to notice than the items that busily fill space, including our mental space. In cities, the buildings create the spacial context, so space is itself sculpted by fascinating constructs created by human minds. Then this is filled in with the endless, fascinating details of human life which catch our attention and stimulate our drives. A desert reveals our original, spacious awareness much more easily. The mind can relax its need to focus, focus, focus! And then beauty naturally reveals itself in the expanded space offered to awareness.
I love this. Currently living out in the middle of the desert near the salton sea. Time doesn't exist here (is tomorrow thursday or june?), and the people you bump into are either weathered and eccentric locals called Spider, or LA tourists who all say they're artists. Thanks for writing about this; it's beautiful to hear someone else describe the magic weirdness of this place.
This is a beautiful, insightful evocation of desert versus city experience. Deserts have always appealed to me. Decades ago on a visit to Aswan, Egypt, I decided to experience the desert just for a few minutes. I wanted to walk into the sands far enough to sense what it is to be separate from anything but desert. It only took a few paces to lose all distant horizons and only inhabit waves of sand. I realised very quickly, "It's so clean. Even the scraps of trash are clean. You need water for cans to rust or organic matter to rot. I am a bag of water walking along." It's no surprise mummification developed there. And no surprise pure awareness can reveal itself there. The spaciousness is easier to notice than the items that busily fill space, including our mental space. In cities, the buildings create the spacial context, so space is itself sculpted by fascinating constructs created by human minds. Then this is filled in with the endless, fascinating details of human life which catch our attention and stimulate our drives. A desert reveals our original, spacious awareness much more easily. The mind can relax its need to focus, focus, focus! And then beauty naturally reveals itself in the expanded space offered to awareness.
I love this. Currently living out in the middle of the desert near the salton sea. Time doesn't exist here (is tomorrow thursday or june?), and the people you bump into are either weathered and eccentric locals called Spider, or LA tourists who all say they're artists. Thanks for writing about this; it's beautiful to hear someone else describe the magic weirdness of this place.
I really enjoy your writing!
This is such a lovely, wise piece of writing