Here’s a bottle of water for you.
Thanks. I’ll leave it in the car for later.
That snippet of conversation says it all. I am a desert hiking imbecile.
My host is not: take the water. It’s the desert.
Later:
What’s a watsu?
I ask this after I agree to subject myself to it.
I walk into a garden in the Catalina mountains. Rosemary bushes are in bloom. Humming birds descend for a swig of the sweet stuff. In front of me – a pool.
She tells me to go in. The sun is piercing there over the water. Outside, it is 75. In the pool it is 96.
Floatation devices are wrapped around my shins. She leads me into the middle and forces me into a reclining position. She holds my head above water and moves me around, this way and that. For an hour she prods, pulls and kneads my limbs, my back, my neck. I go limp in the water as she moves me, snake like, across the pool.
It feels like sea weed, doesn’t it?
I want to be sea weed from now on. Forget law school, forget gray drizzly days. Leave me in this pool so that I can watch the humming birds circle the cacti. Hi birds, I’m here, I am the sea weed.
Living hereabouts isn't as transcendent as coming here on vacation can be, but it's close. The mountains and the desert compensate for the lack of ocean (as opposed to Ocean, which I am loathe to go without.)
ReplyDeleteI love this: I want to be sea weed from now on. Me, too.