Dear Reader
I could hear the sounds of crickets in the dessert air, a cool breeze was blowing and the sun was melting behind the mountains. I felt a since of solitude, a paradox from the city living that has enveloped me, distracting me from my inner peace. My thoughts were deluded like water added to an expensive bottle of French wine. I had to find myself in this oasis or be vanished in the valley of lost souls. The perfect escape into this hideous contemptuous fire; burden only by the knowledge to seek the truth.
Like most souls, living in today’s world, my days are engulfed in bad news, bill collectors and a shrinking wallet. A tunnel that has no light; light without a reason; a lake without water; water without a lake, an oxymoron to the pretentious. And so I sit on this bench in this town called Shoshone, just east of one of one the hottest places in the United States, Death Valley. I am bemused to hear such silence, in my world silence is something only the rich can afford, escaping to their Islands in the Pacific or the Caribbean. The wretched poor like me must seek the solitude in places like the Mojave dessert to escape their demons and find ones soul.
My eyes close for what seems to be an eternity, when I awaken I am at my Aunts and Uncles home in Los Angeles. Something is amiss; the dead have risen, alive in my hallucination or is this real, am I the one who is dead? My uncle speaks to me, dressed in his pajamas, void of the oxygen bottle that keeps him alive. I am perturbed, but I so want this moment to last forever. My uncle was the one who encouraged me, who forced me to be a man, to forsake my Mothers skirt, when I was a boy of 29. His words resonate like bullets penetrating a soldier’s heart. He looks at me and says, “it’s OK, be strong, be the man who resides within your soul, don’t let your demons destroy you”. A coyote in the distance brings me back to reality.
As I ponder his words, my thoughts take a detour to the night sky; the darkness has immersed me in a sea of galaxies, stars of every size surround me, the only unnatural light comes from the south/east, Las Vegas. Though I am sixty-five miles from Vegas, the light glows like a beacon, seducing visitors into its web, like a moth to a flame.
My uncle was a hard workingman, well liked, with a heart of gold. I admired him, yet at the same time, I miss understood him. I took his sternness in a perplexing perspective, his unending criticism of me, was to assist me in my growth into a man, not some contemptuous soul lacking in the ways of the world, a marshmallow easily swayed. It was not until the last years of his life, did I finally understand him. It was difficult saying goodbye to him when God led him to the angels, but for a brief moment he was there like a beacon in the night. I miss him a lot. Maybe dreams are a way for the dead to communicate with the living.
This is why, we as the Homosapien species, need to take our souls to task, to question and explore the very depth of our being. A testament to our moral fiber and mentor the next generation, to help them to grow and succeed in a manner that best exemplifies the best of human kind. Short cuts are only for those who are easily mislead like a herd of cattle to an escarpment.
Sleep is upon me; I must relegate my thoughts to my dreams and so I say good night to my readers.
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