There is a way that places haunt me, calling in dreams and day visions before I visit them. I went to the mountains of North Carolina because they were a very loud ghost which I did not heed for most of my life. I went to where the earth is new and growing in the volcanic north of Iceland, because its gods spoke to me, loud like thunder, when I walked in the wild winter mountains here in New Mexico. When I got there, I went into a little museum (of Icelandic magical and witchcraft traditions, no less) and among all of the Icelandic books there was one that stood out, a book on New Mexico. They must like it here. The Pacific Northwest fed me dreams of walking up spiraling towers of totems, the secrets found in evergreen shadows, and the long silence of walking on a certain beach, so I went there to listen.
Arizona did not do those things. It waited, I suppose, invisible until I was ready to see it while standing right before me, the way wise things do. It did not step out and make itself known. It watched, perhaps with a smile, as I blindly drove through on journeys from east to west and back again. After I decided to go see this land who seemed so quiet, she began her whirling story, spinning tales to me while awake and asleep until I got into my car and drove to her.
My first time there lasted a little more than two day's time. Two. Two two. Two two two. Four four four. Eleven eleven. Twelve twelve. Somehow she speaks in numbers, and I don't even feel crazy saying that because it's repeatedly observable until it's near predictable, and certainly no longer surprising, happening it seems more than words. And in the time since my return, the haunting has grown as the days go by. My mind twists like the juniper trees, knowing no way to channel what I'm thinking, so it melts into paintings, nonstop paintings in my head. The colors intertwine, bend, knot and braid—in some alien way, they transmit what I have learned in this life and then spin it all along cosmic whirlpools into ideas entirely new.
I am going to go lay on the ground there for however long I need to, soaking in the sun and slow dancing the stars. I'm going to walk in the places with enormous rocks that feel like my dreams where giants and angels visit. I'm going to watch more numbers happen and delight as that mystery washes over me like spring rivers.
I'm going to take the blue of my heart and sink into red.
