Empty
It’s a desert. Hot, dry – empty.
The horizon is flat, a smear smudged with heat haze and drifts of imagination. Swirls of dust rise and fall, sing and dance, sway and swat. It’s the desert. Hot, dry – empty of people.
The ground is full of ants, red and brown and black and green; of lizards, frill-necked and spikey and long and short; of snakes – keep still and let them go their way; of crickets and beetles and bugs and grubs; of things that leave their mark, but are never seen. It’s the desert. Hot, dry – empty of expectations.
The air is hot and still, hot and swirling, hot and slashing. Wind comes and goes, nothing to break it but the shrubby salt-bush and spiky clumps of windmill grass and spinifex. It’s the desert. Hot, dry – empty of nothing.
The soul sings with the blessing of clarity, of the needs that come first – water, sustenance, shelter. Water hides under the roots of the desert-oak, sustenance comes from the small things and patience, shelter comes from the hole dug in between the spinifex spines or from the rocks that are swept clean and dry and give respite from the scorch of the sun. It is the desert. It is full. It is my home.
The only empty place comes from the fight – but the desert does not fight; it does not care. It only is what it is. Live within the means of the setting, absorb the peace and the life and the joy of the moment. Be alive. Soar on the wind, tickle the sand with your steps, slide your hot flesh over the cool rocks – be alive! Live! The desert is alive, full of life – but only if the soul of the desert is free. Do not try to contain the heat, or to bring water to grow your food, or to take more than you need. If you do that, you will feel the fullness of the desert, and you will not survive.
Be still, be empty – let yourself be filled with the life of the desert.
* * *
I love the desert. The above is a real feel I have when I see it, whether I’m there in it, or from the air, or from the window of a car, or a photo – or even a memory. I am home, at peace. I can smell it, taste it, hear it, feel it. Home. Not empty.
