There is something about the desert that speaks to my soul.
It’s been a year since I visited Tucson, but it left a permanent impression in my imagination. All of my visions for what I want to make, from the space I live in to the art I’m dreaming of creating, feel like they stem from the magical land of the saguaros.
It’s an impossible place, from the wonky cactus shapes, haphazard and asymmetrical, to the harshness of the sun and sparseness of water. The desert is a land that has learned to thrive in spite of stress and deprivation, and refuses to dim its warmth, humor, and weirdness.
And that is the energy I want to harness from my time there. Deprivation is a place I know all too well. Living on as little as possible, I’m realizing, is the place I feel most comfortable because it is familiar. It shows up in how I treat my basic needs, like food and water, to how I feel about money, to how much pleasure I allow myself on a daily basis. The parts of religion that ask for giving up the self and all of the body’s needs were always the ones that I heard the loudest. There have been times in my life where I felt proud of starving, proud of being able to scrape by on dollars a day, and proud of needing so little. And while I no longer feel a sense of pride by forgoing my basic needs, I do find myself in a strange space between unlearning deprivation but not having yet replaced it or losing the shame around pleasure or excess.
Maybe that was why I felt drawn to Tucson as the first place I went after the pandemic. With some time and distance, I think the isolation and fear of the pandemic sent me back to some of my deprivation patterns. That felt like a period that was devoid of anything that wasn’t essential – no eating out, no traveling, limiting who we could be around. Having fun and engaging with the world felt unsafe. Everyone else had a greater need. And while being in it was manageable day-to-day, the long stretch of pleasure drought left me parched.
But something about being in the actual desert was a balm to my senses. There were burn scars and charred brush, but the land found a way to replenish itself. And being there felt like refilling my creative well. The smell of the fresh air, scented with chaparral and dust, that warmed my skin during the day and chilled it at night. The coral and peach colored rocks that watched over everything, that felt like summer mountains instead of winter mountains. The coyotes that roamed freely at sunset and howled at the moon. The insanity and ingenuity of the plant life, the way it adapted to survive, but also bloomed where it was planted. I’m awed by the way everything in the desert takes whatever is abundant in the moment and finds ways to hold on to what is only available for a season. Spending that time with a dear friend and marveling at it all together was absolutely part of the magic.
The next few weeks of this year, I’m carving out time for visioning. And there is no doubt that whatever comes out of this period of imagining will have been inspired by the way the desert transforms desolation into vibrant life.