What Are You Looking At?

It's Sunday morning and the sun is coming up over the Rincons. Cactus reflect the rays and there's a wind, cool and inviting. I'm finally able to see outside here at the Cactus Compound and write with a view instead of wall-locked in the small room where I broadcast.

I can see the back of a STOP sign on a street a couple hundred yards away. I can see brown ridges of plant-life and trees that dot the mountain a few miles away. Or I can focus on the gravel and sand in the back yard. The scrub oak. Cholla. A rabbit making its way through the brush into the wash.

It's really my choice. I can choose to focus on the ding in my Viewsonic monitor, the one put there by a friend who was helping me set up my office a few years ago, or I can look at the clouds. The sky is usually clear and blue and runs forever, but today there are rippling clouds that look like cotton.

I can focus on my empty coffee mug, the stack of credit card bills, or the black and white pup that has brought life to our beleaguered souls.

They say happiness is a choice. So is love. And if you fill your life with both, you'll find yourself looking. Seeing. Even in the desert.