After the Storm 9.0 — — Sculptors Haven, Darwin, California, USA
“Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and rogues
We’re on the road to nowhere, lets find out where it goes
It might be a ladder to the stars, who knows?
Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and rogues”
It has taken some time to settle back into Darwin. It’s cold here in the mornings and I have been struggling to get out of bed. I’ve been staying at the home of an artist friend who is a very creative sculptor, musician, and carpenter. Mostly he spends winters with his family in the Dominican Republic. His investment in the dwelling here is, of course, more artistic than practical, and when he told me that the winter winds howl through the single-wide where I’m living, I brushed it off with a casual “no worries, I’ll be fine”.
In fact I’m mostly frozen to the bone. I wrap in blankets, huddle next to the propane heater, somehow I can’t quite get warm enough.
I came back to Darwin in February because I left too much of myself here in January. It wasn’t just the physical stuff, my carpentry tools, my clothes, some books, a computer, a pair of shoes: it was also (and maybe mostly) that a left a sizable piece of my heart.
Yes, well leaving your heart in a ghost town is probably not a very good idea, but since when have I ever listened to my inner voice? Usually I am not one to speak publicly about my personal relationships, and I don’t want to change that, (there is little that I find more boring than listening to another heartbroken writer) but at some point I became emotionally attached to this town and a unique woman who lives here. At first it didn’t quite work out. But I needed to come back to see if I could retrieve her friendship and at least a little bit of my dignity. Mining for self respect in a near ghost town? Does that sound like another great idea?
Which is probably why I’m feeling so frozen. It is an inner coldness that I’m experiencing. A refrigerator of the psyche. My bruised and hypothermic ego clenched in the bit of my stomach. I think I’ll leave the rest of that metaphor alone for awhile. Let me just say that I’m having trouble getting warm.
Of course I always know the solution (my personal solution anyway) to this sort of thing. Get moving. First get out of bed, then get off the couch, from there get out of your chair, keep going until you are out the door. When you are finally on your bicycle pedaling as far out into the high desert as you water bottle will allow, you will at least have the illusion of progress. Reaching some goodly elevation catching your breath, feeling the burn in your leg muscles, thin air, long snowy views, it is at least a beginning to recognizing your own insignificance.
Yes I take solace in the miniaturization of my own importance. There is some relief in the suggestion that your life is meaningless. At least in the context of the universe at large. And the landscape here lends itself to disappearance.
There aren’t really any secret places in the mountains and deserts around Darwin. It has all been explored and prospected for at least 175 years. The landscape is riddled with holes in the ground where ore prospectors dug for silver and zinc. Mine shafts sunk 60 feet straight down, with rickety wooden ladders strapped to the sides so the men could climb down into the darkness. Mounds of tailings surround these mines, along with thick beams and timbers that are splintery from decades of being out in the sun. Discarded pieces of machines, cranks and gears and steel rails, whole fields of tin cans rusting where they were discarded after a meal of beans, or canned beef, or chicken soup. I don’t know what they ate, most of it seems to have come in cans, but the men sure had a lot of energy. Hoisting the ore up out of those mine shafts, sorting it, loading it onto mules, packing it out to some assayer many miles away.
That sort of work had to break a man down. Few men got rich. Many of them died early.
Again, in my current state of mind, it all adds up to futility and insignificance. Abandoned mines and forgotten canyons, endless piles of rubble, surrounded by the vast long view of the mountain ranges. Cosos, Inyos, Whites, Eastern Sierras, and then east to the Panamints, Amargosas, Owlsheads, Nopahs. and Yucca where they once hollowed out the mountain with nuclear bombs.
It is a vast landscape that forces you to expand your mind. Clear air, strong wind, and the coldness of being alone. No one is around to demonstrate how difficult you are to get along with. The stars are brilliant and they don’t care about you. Not even a little.
Out here you only have yourself to blame. Which, in an odd way, is both refreshing, liberating, and the seed of new optimism.
Strangely enough, I find myself happy. And THAT has got to be worth SOMETHING. Smile.
