“Hey, do you know… Why do people talk like the desert is all empty and worthless? Do people really think that?” I asked Ming. “Do they not know the life is just in a different way?” Ming was doing something in the kitchen. “They need to go back to nuance kindergarten!”
“They need to justify where they live,” he said.
“Why do they need to justify where they live?” I asked.
“They have to feel like they made the right choice. They say the jungle is full of diseases, the desert is empty…”
I imagined people living in forest areas, moderately green. “But it’s not accurate!” I said. “Right? The desert is valid, right?” I asked.
“Yeah!” he said. I thought of all the rabbits, lizards, cactus, yucca and Joshua trees, ephedra, creosote, sagebrush, rabbit brush, water in the ground, the desert varnish, old cryptobiotic crust.
Yeah, that’s hella valid! What could be better than that cryptobiotic crust?
An organism could be unicellular, or an unsubtle rhino. Maybe you like rhinos better–that’s fine. But it’s ok to like tiny stuff. When I said tardigrades are my favorite animal, I wasn’t kidding.
Lichen is amazing, fungus, tiny mysteries. Stuff that takes decades to grow back, if you crunch it.
“It feels disrespectful to Mother Earth,” I said to Ming, then wondered if I really meant what I’d just said. I thought of disrespect for deserts. Nevada is not a wasteland.
I pondered what a desert can be. It could be damaged, I guess–harmed by pollution. But that would be a different kind of desert. The deserts I know are gorgeous and feel like health.
Arizona
We’re at that cabin we like in Arizona.
I was sitting under this grape arbor, remembered some vaporware from last year, and wrote a poem about it, to make a poetry meme with.
The bitterness is funny. I hit the old painting jackpot on wiki commons yesterday. Love it. But I prefer the sky.
In case you wanna play with cars?
Or you could play with a dolly.
Take a seat!
I would sleep in an onion bed, have garlic dreams, wake up to take a leek. The garden would grow, shallot.
