RFD - Radical Faerie Digest — a queer reader-written journal since 1974

Visiting my mother, in Palm Desert, I find I have (inadvertently) brought pictures of a forgotten (other man's) age. Night three of my visit, and again I am awake and blowing with the dusty wind, no flesh (but plenty of souls) stirring on this moonless night. I need to suck these memories to the bone, suck the life out of them, into them— out from the pictures, and the memories they dredge, out and down onto the page.

Memories, not stories. These are memories and they are mine, like it or not. Forget their names, forget the time it took to forget— to bury it all under flotsam and wreckage of sheer piled-upon years. Love is not debris. Love is the marrow, deep down into the bones of these contended things. Dead, alive, reconstituted and recalled. Love waits, requiring fresh graves and fresher living. Love waits, and does not spoil.

That medium said there'd be times I'd come awake like this, deep in the night. Not for sleeplessness, but wakefulness. Deep awake, desert awake, and blowing open shallow graves of the heart. Awake and Awakened, the way only a desert wakes you, and for this one simple reason: that there is living to do.

Time to write down these bones....

Days ago, when that box got opened— almost by mistake— another move, time to sort out, at last (me, sort? / sort me out? -- as if!) and make some headway in my life (let go, let go— oh jeez; here we go again...master of loss, I've even lost loss...). And may I have the avalanche, please. Out they come. No, please, not this box. Not yet. Ah, well, actually— yes.

So, the wine was a good idea. I should have drunk more good ideas, first.

Steeled for this I think, "Remember, keep it breezy and don't get involved— make your time count; don't get involved!" Yeah, right. Good luck on that. It's a huge box for a reason. This box's got some doozies...big, big doozies. When your dead friends out-vote your living ones, that's just gonna suck. Especially if you're not even half the age of your mom's fellow retirees. Especially if your young, boxed away friends mostly croaked half your life ago.

Dust. I bring dust to the desert, and it flies away first to clean the view. Now I must wait. Coachella's a rainshadow desert— farther north than a desert should be, but for the shadow of the mountains. I know the shadow of tears, of waiting decades for rain that can't quite come....

"Give it time," goes the saying. Given time, even the desert knows rain. Rainshadow tears. Blurred vision to sharpen the focus.

Now, where did I put that picture?

Another desert, another time. A New Year's men's gathering of sacred Sacred Intimates, midwives to the dying, celebrants of the Body Electric (and so, so much more). I was singing, then, and mourning. Dancing— and loving. Holding so many (legends) in awe— and being held in so much love— and feeling that love, too. And Jim. But like a Hungry Ghost, there was so little I could believe in, let in, trust. ("Hello, you are...? And when will you die?" makes a crappy introduction for the heart.)

I can, now. Let it in, I mean.