Deep Links

Welcome to Deep Links

For much of my blogging time, I have blended personal and professional content on the same blog. For the past couple years, my main blog, heathervescent, has covered most of my Academic, Research and Professional ponderings, with sporadic Introspection posts. I miss being able to write about my introspections and how I parse the world. It's not appropriate to blend my professional and introspective perspectives anymore. So this blog has been born. 

If you like the content I wrote under the Introspection category, you'll want to check in here from time to time. 

The Day Before

This day is the day before. Los Angeles is overcast with fog and marine layer. The Hollywood Hills barely in silhouette. I read quietly in the morning, drinking my coffee. Finish an emotional story, feeling very emotional. I think of you. You, on the other side of the continent, three hours farther into the sun. And also here with me, in my heart, my thoughts, our dreams. 

I can feel my fear creeping in. It wants to pull me back, to make me think logical, to apply the anti-decisions that led to past mistakes. I force my fear to remember the glorious moments that defined my life, when I stepped off into the abyss in spite of my fear - using that fear as energy to further propel me. My return to California. My return to Los Angeles. The house on future street and various other "crazy" things.

This feels more important though, more powerful, more ... impactful and tender than all previous. A line etched in the sand, that I have spent my whole life in order to stand in front of.  As Danger Ranger says of a different situation from which I have borrowed this analogy, after you cross over, everything will be different. Just like one can not imagine how Burning Man will change their life, I can not imagine our lives beyond tomorrow's moment. And unusually, I don't care.

Writing this now, I chuckle at the location. It should be no surprise to me. La Dona winks. It's one of the most magical, iconic places in my own LA mythology. Scorned by travelers, LAX is the place I left on decades of adventures, and returned to my most beloved queen, welcomed into her labyrinthine pastel tiled corridors, the exhaust filled air, the smell of adventure, the smell of home. It is there, tomorrow, I welcome you. We step across that line together, and away we go.

This is my life

It's day 25 of the quarantine, self-isolation. It's a rainy night in the Mojave. It snowed at Key's View a few days ago. Have I mentioned it's April. This time last year I was running the swamp cooler. We've barely cracked 80 degrees for more than a few days so far this year. 

I'm sitting here on my couch, my two dogs on either side, snoring, farting. I've got some downtempo hotel techno, reminiscent of the Blue Bar days back at the Future. It's 2020. We've got climate change, a global pandemic that's shut down the economy. Through my own decisions, that were sometimes not mine, I've found my home in the Mojave desert, a remote location in California. This is where I am weathering this storm. This is where I write my story. Live my life.

Today feels like some kind of milestone. Maybe it's the dogs getting along better and better. Maybe it's that I finally took some time to do my own writing today. Maybe it's the third day of rainy weather. Maybe it's the Covid-19 numbers, rising, rising. Maybe it's the disconnect I feel, sitting here, alone, in my dome. 

I've lost sight of the future. All the possibility I saw, just a month ago, evaporated. I know the world, my life, will never be the same. But exactly how, that is what everyone wants to know. This certainty we all grasp for.

I sit here in my home. I feel the world spinning all around me, like the desert wind around my home, like the tornado power I have aligned myself with. I have to remind myself that I don't have to get caught up in it. That all I have to do, all I can do, is sit here, in the eye of the storm, and wait. Put out my hand.

And maybe that's where the disconnect comes from, knowing here in the safety of my home is the calm eye of the storm, and that at any moment, I could be in the tornado. 

But for now, I am at a safe distance, watching the storm from my vantage point. 

Chariot

There was a moment, I was walking my dog, in a new neighborhood, thinking before I made a big decision. I had this vision, of a big car stopping, the back door opened. I could choose to get in and the car would take me somewhere. That was the decision that day, and so I metaphorically got into the car.

A lot has changed since that day. I haven't thought back to that moment in a year or so. But today, as I am wrapping up the biggest client project of my career, I realized, I was getting out of that car.

I've had a lot of realizations about my work and career this year. And I must change the way I conduct myself and do my work. I've come a long way from that moment in mid-city of LA, where I was in my career, my dreams, aspirations to where I am now, running my business from the Mojave. Doing some of the best work of my career. I'm in a place I've always struggle to be. And I've worked so hard to be here - standing now - in a new place. 

The chariot has taken me from where I was in the past to the place I am today. It leaves me here, to give someone else their ride, to the place they need to be.

On the conjuring of identity

We are only I, here in this reality. A few nights ago I was reading this book on emptiness that I like. I was rereading a section that was pretty nuanced and profound and I only halfway understood the first time I read it. I read this paragraph over and over, understanding, not understanding, ok in the not understanding. The understanding like a cat, quietly walking away, flickering tail, till you wonder if you really even saw it. Just soaking the words over and over into my distracted brain. 

But then I understood it. (Or at least the next step to understanding.) And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. And cross-checking, comparing, and triangulating this understanding to everything about me. 

Identity, even our meat-based, human identity, is always in context. And for the Heather Vescent, this identity arises in the context of this world, these variables, these aspects of my meat sack. Like a flickering flame (or multi-colored LED lightbulb) that is ephemeral, ever changing, with no ability to exist on its own, but only as magical conjuring between perfectly aligned crystals. This is easy to understand in the context of technology websites, where they give you an identity on their system for you to use. Your identity is in specific context to what that site (the context of the environment) allows you to do - hey, for this it's just features and functionality, business models and your acceptance to the terms of service.

But here with this identity that western thought says my identity is something I anchor to. That I am always I, the same I, even if faceted.

I step back. I put that western idea on the shelf, and I think about this conjuring pad, surrounded by variables, projections into this void space, from which, the me, that is I arises.

A most magical and awe-inspiring moment. And yet, so mundane. We all have this identities. That's "who" "we" "are." And we don't think much about how amazing it is that we have done this perfect aligning of all the variables and contexts, to be here on this planet, with a meat sack, and a brain and human society and voila - you.

Do the disco lights have any meaning? Do they go to another reality when the party is over and they are switched off?

You can't take it with you - not even your identity. Because there is nothing to take. 

Box of Letters

I'm sitting here thinking about a box of letters. I'm thinking about men. Those that wrote them, and others. I'm thinking about a house on Future street. It was my house. I'm thinking about midwest fields and forests, a New Yorker in the Caribbean, a poem I naively wrote decades ago. 

I'm wondering. Do I wish I had this box of letters? Letters from men, professing their love in prose and poetry. The passion I evoked returned in this emotional expression. Triggered by feelings, they put pen to paper and wrote to their beloved. Do I regret burning them? That act of power as payment?

I'm thinking about that box of letters. It's wrong to say men don't have emotions. They do. I wish I had that box of letter to remind me of that. But I don't regret burning those letters. I had to release them, their possibility and failures - their bliss and emptiness - sentiments on the wind, timeless in your heart.

 

 

Casting off the Bowlines

It's late afternoon. I'm bathing in the golden light of my mind. Ever so slightly, I feel a strange sensation. It's almost unnoticeable but unmistakable. The dome has undocked and is moving. I feel as if my home is no longer secured to the earth; instead it has transformed into a vessel, and it's headed out.

The moment I returned home, everything in tow, we cast off. I set the course for another reality. I am tired of this one. If I have anything to say about this adventure, I want it out of the world. Why not dream of the seemingly impossible? 

I quieten myself. I pay attention. Where is this movement coming from? It's Scorpion of the Dome. Haven't had a visit from you in a while. I chuckle to myself, thinking of this world moving through space on the back of a scorpion. But this is not Discworld? Logical brain says certainly the dome can not move out to "space" on the back of a scorpion?

But I'm dreaming the impossible. When one wants to shift realities, a scorpion steed will do just fine. For a brief moment, I worry, might I get stung. But how can a scorpion sting the wind? I have nothing to fear. We move farther into the golden light. 

Let's just say that meditation can show you some pretty "crazy" things if you let it. Can I describe the golden light to you? My ongoing relationship with the Golden Goddess of Death, whom I met on the eve of Mr. Dog's definitive journey? I dare not. You will have to visit her yourself. As for my visit, I bring her a momentary taste of time.

The dome is moving in time.

I think of my Aborigine water dreaming painting that has returned to its mirrored pedestal. How I've used it to dream. To move from one position to another. To catch the flow. Is today the culmination of those dreams? I have untethered myself from the definitions of my life. The rope is cast off, I drift away from one timeline, the shore of my beloved Los Angeles fading behind me, while I look ahead, entering a realm outside of time.

Surrendering to bliss and emptiness

I'm driving the truck on the 91, it's taking me to Orange County. I haven't been to the OC in decades. I watch the rolling hillsides, merge on new freeway segments, pull up to the valet parking at the Vet's. I've come empty handed, my heart pounding. 

--

In December last year, I decided to focus my practice on the tantra. Specifically bliss and emptiness. Tantra is not all sex and orgasms. But rather, as I am practicing, the observation of something (bliss) from nothing (emptiness) and then the return to emptiness. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

Death gives so many opportunities to practice. My heart is raw again. Grief is so many complex emotions. I'm starved of love and touch and the need to be needed - but I'm too scared to venture out much. The journey to self pity and back is deep with the bliss and emptiness of free fall. I'll never have this opportunity again. I fall. Fall in bliss and emptiness. My runway has finished, the road has ended, I'm in free fall? or maybe it's flight?

--

Back on the 91, I'm suddenly hit with a choking sob. A glob of emotion is working its way up my chest. I can't even attempt to unravel the complex set of emotions. It sits there. I sit with it. It's like the shedding of a reddish wound, still fresh raw skin attached. I want to hang on to the memory of Mr Dog. Our time together. The importance of him to me. I don't want to forget. I cling. I hold on. To the memory. To the bliss. I cling to his emptiness. Se eu nao tenho meu amor, eu tenho meu dor. 

But here on the seat next to me is a new guy. He's been through some rough times. He doesn't know who I am. But he trusts me. He's surrendered. (He has no choice really.) What guts me is the movements he does that are just like D. Snuggling into the bed snoring. Banging his conehead around trying to get into my lap. When we get home, and I show him around. In the bedroom he goes straight to the mirror and looks into it. Then walks over to where I kept Mr. D in a box under my bed. I try to take these things with detachment. 

This kind of emotion situation, while challenging is easily addressed. Grief is a topic I have quite a bit of experience with. And while it's painful to walk through it again, I know it is strengthening and healing my heart. 

--

But this is not the only situation requiring/causing the expansion of my emotional capacity. Dog bliss and emptiness is just the easiest one to publicly talk about.

In work and human interactions there is the same practice... bliss and emptiness. Hope and fear. Perspective and misunderstanding. My own hopes and fears. The past, the future, the present unfolding Now-Here. 

All I can do is surrender. Surrender to me. Surrender to the situation. Surrender to this dog. Surrender to the bliss. Surrender to the emptiness. 

Avocado Despair

There are the little moments in the kitchen that hurt like a hundred tiny cuts. Sharing my avocado, giving you pieces of the chicken. Or the bits of broth. Those things now go in the trash. They don't give you happiness and delight, which in turn gave me happiness and delight. The loss of those moments, is a void. It's worse than a void, it's a loss.

I sit at my dining room table. I eat alone. I think about you on your journey. I'm eating for you. The chicken, the avocado, the cheese. Things you loved. Things I loved. Things I loved the more because they were things we shared loving. 

I think about another dog, who might not like avocado so much. I'll have to learn a whole new person trapped in fur. They won't be like you. I don't want to do that. 

I'm thinking about my heart. It's bruised. I touch it in my mind, but it's too fragile even for that. It's just there, suspending in Alex Grey space. I can see it's neon outline pulsing in no-space. 

All I can do is breathe. Stand here trapped in time, and all these emotions. Like looking at the departure board at a busy STL in the 90s. 

 

Skipping into the Dark

Like a rock skipping across the water, I touch the 5, then 15, before the black night of the Mojave. 

I'm driving the north edge of the San Gabriels. My beloved La Dona is just on the other side. I can see her lights, I can feel her energy, I'm brushing my fingers along her back, just a peck on the cheek when I dip into Los Angeles County near the 5. 

But I can't bear to go south of this range. I can't dip into her streets and freeways. I'm not on the final stretch to home. I have hours more across the black star filled Mojave. 

South of me is the valley and the 118, then La Cresenta, Pasadena and the north edge of the inland empire. I can't think of that last range, the Santa Monica's, because below them is my beloved Queen. Who has sent me away on an adventure I asked for.

I see the backside of Mt Baldy. I think of my friend up there in the lodge. I'm racing along Pearblossom highway. I'm thinking of Aldous Huxley and my brother and my dog. And another dog, that's at a shelter in a town I'll pass through - Apple Valley - but it's closed both times I pass and I take this as a sign this is not my dog. Or at least, not now.

I'm enjoying the quiet of my solo drive. I wanted to see how the desert I love so much, transforms into the Pacific. An ocean that feels unattainable due to high real estate prices and my inconsistent income. Desert landscape kept me company most of the way - Joshua Trees in bare landscape, but I watched the the grasses become thicker, the air cooler, and then a bursting fecund valley before a golden sun over the blue blue ocean. That ocean air, filled with moisture, a coolness. I missed it.

I've transitioned. From my desert Mojave hermitage, where I think and feel and experience from my singular self, to a fecund civilization. A lushness enabled by water; foods I've missed, friends and colleagues, even lush ideas. It's why I'm here in Santa Barbara - to see colleagues, work and have my brain stimulated (and fill my body with sushi that I miss so much). It works. I maintain my stamina of extroversion for three days until I crawl into my truck and find myself on the road back into the Mojave. And wake up in my Oasis.

My Heart in the Mojave

What is it about this place... the Mojave Desert? That calls me so. That feels like home. To where I can disappear into wild lands. See the beauty of Planet Earth, past eons in the side of a mountain. The effects of the duration of time, in the eroding of granite mountains. Scant water, sprinkled over an area, over millions of years, moving a grain of sand from a mountain top, into the wash of an effluvial plain. Dead volcanoes, their black memories crumbling into beige sand. 

My heart is broken. The only thing that soothes me is sleep and the vanishing point of the Mojave Desert landscape. I run away from the barest of civilization that I now call home. I'm trying to fill the hole in my heart, my life, with the space of this place. But it can not be filled. It can only be viewed, the years of memories visible across the geology. Great long trends through time - our many adventures - driving in so many cars, trucks. Across the west, into the great grasses of the midwest.

I can see your happy face as you jump and run in the deep grass of South East Iowa. I know your every movement... when you would snuggle down in the front seat and snooze, when you'd sit up and watch the landscape as I drove. When you'd perk up to be given some road trip snacks. When you drank water from the glasses in the cupholder, so long ago, during that first Mojave Road trip. Your crazy eyes, your wide smiling mouth. Beaming eyes. Waiting by the front door, so you could be the first to greet me, even after you started going deaf. How I know you would be patiently waiting, but not begging for the bread or cheese or cracker that I would inevitably give you during the road trip. Or how, on hunger strike, I'd give and feed you the chicken... it was easier to deal with than a bowl of dog food. 

--

In my mind, a million times a day, I think about you. You were my best friend. My partner. My companion. To have the responsibility to care for you, to accept you for who you were, loving you more despite your flaws and limitations of your physical form. To understand the secret wordless backchannel we shared. We spent more time together, than apart. I set up my life so we could be together as much as possible. And we were. You knew me better than most people... being my comfort and companion through the worst parts of my adult life.

And a big part of the best parts of my life. I can say, unequivocally, that the past 11 years have been the best. Our adventures were amazing. Through them all - you were happy to come along. You were constant on our journeys. We were a team, and I feel, now that you are gone, a part of me is also gone. But at the same time, you are still here. A strange loop that won't die, until I die. And so equally while my heart is breaking, I smile with the memories. I smile with all that we did. I do not need to be greedy and wish for more time. We did all that we could and the memories prove this.

--

The night before your definitive journey, and the morning, you were the same silly Mr. Dog self. I knew you were feel ill. You were ready to go. You had sent me messages along the back channel, but I wasn't ready to hear them. Yet. But that weekend, it was like a dawn unfolding, I realized it was your time. And I had to listen to your wishes, to let you know. Even if I did not want you to leave yet. 

You went to make your bed in my suitcase - something you had never done before. I was, at first confused, but later I came to understand. You were ready to go on a trip. So embracing your wishes, I thought, what can we pack for your trip. And so I did. And you laid down in the suitcase to sleep. I laid down in my bed to mediation. To calm my mind. And I had a most amazing vision of a Golden Goddess of Death.

In my meditation, a Golden Goddess of Death, revealed herself to me. She was serene and calm. Her arms outstretched, radiant in golden light. She stood outside of time, and I faced her, from within time. You were next to me, looking fantastic in your black and white tuxedo suit. 

Her golden light started to bleed over to you. Your fur lifted and glinted golden and radiant in her light. I gave you to her, holding your collar, harness and leash - they looked black and white in the color of time, while your fur had turned into a radiant golden color with white paws. You ran and jumped in the golden light - free again. 

I awoke from this vision to you peacefully sleeping. I thought, what does one wear when they are to meet the Golden Goddess of Death? I like this vision much better than the traditional Grim Reaper. One must look their best to meet her. I knew you would have to wear your bowtie. And you had just had a bath, so your fur was soft and nice. I would miss burying my face in your neck, massaging your body, legs, face and ears. 

But I knew, without question, it was your time to go. So we did. 

--

One last roadtrip down to Palm Springs. You were so happy for it. No worries or challenges going into the vet. Once in our room, you went right over to the dog bed and snuggled in it. You didn't like the IV, but tolerated it. And afterwards, back in our room, you pranced around. It made me second guess myself. But this was the last burst of energy, as I had seen in my mom a day before she died. You trotted over to the mirror in the room and checked yourself out. Not a glimpse, but a long looking in the mirror. How many dogs know about mirrors and use them?

Satisfied, you came back over to me. Who were you meeting on the other side? You looked good for the Goddess of Death, that's for sure.

--

I couldn't bear to be home. I left to soothe myself in the Mojave Desert. But even this was bittersweet. Because I felt you, or rather, I felt not-you, not beside me in the passenger seat. I felt not-you as I worried about going into a place to get food while you did not wait in the car for me. I felt not-you as I closed the truck door while I collected rocks for your grave at the side of the road. I felt not-you sleep in the back seat as I drove the long stretches of pavement, and the not-you jump to the front as I explored the sandy roads to find remote camping spots, where we would never return to camp.

I softened into these feelings of not-you. How could I get away from them, not-you was a loss of part of me. I continue my journey alone now. And you, as I told you, you had to go ahead alone now. 

--

I was pulled over, studying my map, trying to find the dirt BLM road, when in the golden light of late afternoon I saw a dog come around the bend in the road. It looked exactly like my vision - a golden dog, with white paws. I got out of my truck. I remembered my dog bowl in the back seat. I poured you water. You came over. You were scared, but friendly. I didn't know what to think. I had never seen a dog that looked like you, and to exactly match my vision. Was this real? I pet your head. You were so skinny. A desert dog that had survived for months I could tell, by your long uncut front nails. You drank the water, you ate the cookies. 

I tried to coax you into the truck. I (mistakenly) thought you wouldn't survive in the desert. I convinced you to get in, thanks to snacks. But you were too scared and ran away when I tried to close the door. We continued to try to make friends. I gave you more water and snacks. You ate and drank. And let me pet you. Clean your eyes with cool water - like I always used to do for Mr. Dog.

But in the end, you were a free wild desert dog. You were not to come home with me. You just gave me a message from the beyond - that you are running free in the golden desert. How could I think to contain you? To disrupt your life of freedom? I know, myself, I would not choose to be contained, despite the difficulties of a free life in the desert. Besides, I do not want another dog (yet), I want *my* dog.

I miss you so much Mr. Dog. Thank you for the so many years of love and companionship, of laughter and adventure. Of learning so many things from you. Of being a better human because of you. My heart is bigger and my capacity for love is greater than before, because of you. I will never forget you. I love you DD, my Romeo dog.