The Problem With Reinventing Yourself

I wanted to travel light. Instead I dragged a cathedral of sorrows into the desert.

I want to shout from the modernist rooftops: This is my year. My grand unveiling, my great and destined uncoiling. My chickens are about to hatch bewildered peeps—beady eyes, beaked mouths, hunger matching mine, pecking for purpose.

I have arrived in my new life, staring into the desiccated abyss I’m about to fill with meaning in capital letters.

I am here, having left so much behind.

The Danish modern dining set.
The bar cart I loved so much.
The Japanese coffee table, a brutal slab of tree that always bruised me—and still I stayed soft against it.
The couch. The lovely leather couch.
The tea kettle.
The Chihuly vases.
A failed marriage.
A shattered heart.

I wanted to travel light. Instead I dragged a cathedral of sorrows into the desert.

Maybe I can bury my woes by the Salton Sea—under an avalanche of acrid fish heads. At Salvation Mountain with its cross of promise. Under ancient metamorphic rock. Sacrifice them to something older than me and emerge new, yet unwritten.

I listen to the vicious winds squeezed through the San Gorgonio Pass for clues and signs.

But I worry.
Friends worry.
My parents worry.

I want to shout: I’m trying. Oh Lord, I’m trying. I live. I live for you.

I know better.

You learn not to hand people such things.

So you smile and say you are doing great.

You say you have arrived in your future where all will be well. Boxes unpacked. Paintings hung. The one M. made when he was five or six, now in a vintage frame.

My body is in Palm Springs—cautiously optimistic. Half my mind still lingers in LA: Griffith Park trails at my feet, jacaranda blossoms spilling onto sidewalks, my cats waiting for dinner.

What comes next? Who am I going to be?

Where do I fit in this overheated configuration under the shadow of the Jacintos? Streets named Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry. Streets named Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry. Women with posh homes in the plural closing their desert houses and opening others in Paris or Tahoe. The town holding its breath until October.

I can hold my breath for maybe a minute.
I hope the desert answers before then.

Fuel for bewildered peeps