The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--16. In the Eternal Now

Garden Chair, Steve Brown 2023

I sit at my drafting table and look out my open sliding glass door into my garden.  It's late afternoon. Up front, the rose bush and peach tree up are heavy with shadow.  There is an old wooden chair with chipped red paint.  Yellow black-eyed Susans and violet cosmos beyond sway gently.  All of this is muted softly by the shade.  Then, just as the garden beds meet the gravel pathway, a cluster of sunflowers catches the evening light, isolated again by heavy shadow thrown behind.  Distant dogs bark.  Outside, the fountain gurgles.  Inside, the fridge hums.  Two worlds mingle.

I have lived my entire life in moments like this.   I've existed during a lot of other times as well.  But I have only truly lived in these jeweled vignettes.  When I look back on my life, these are the images and sounds I remember.  From the time I was five, I have known light and shadow is all I really needed.  This is my purpose.  Of that, I had no doubt.  I couldn't have expressed it.  But I knew it.  Being is its own reason to exist.  Moments are everything.  

I lost my way though.  Oh, how I lost it.  Because I listened to other voices.  Voices that were pragmatic and well-intended.  Cowardly voices from those who feared for my well-being because what they really feared for was their own well-being.  Fear ruled their lives, so it had to rule mine as well--because that's all they knew.  That's alright.  I get it.  I have my own fears that I probably push off on others as well.  However, the fear that there is a limited supply of happiness, that only a few can obtain it, and that life is a scramble to get your position and secure that income while you can--for me, that fear was not inborn.  It had to be taught.  Like so many I was taught to dream big as a child, and by the time I was eighteen, trade all that in for practicality.  Everything inside me resisted that there is anything more important in this life than just being, so I didn't negotiate the two worlds well.

I still don't.  I've learned there is a time to feed Mammon.  If you don't, like those who worried about me when I was younger feared, it can indeed devour you.  

But I already knew what was real for me when I was five.  It was out my backdoor, out my window, in my yard.  It didn't matter what door, what window, or what yard.  As long as there was light and shadow and reasonably clean air, I was in a moment, and I was born to spend an eternity there.  

I knew it on the Avenues of Salt Lake City, when on a way to my friend's house, I crouched down near the sidewalk to watch an ant move across a section of chipped concrete.  It must have been early morning.   The sun was low, and the ant moved across pebbles that were like boulders to him, and what drew me, what made me crouch down, were the great shadows thrown by these little bitty pebbles and this little bitty ant.  Amazing.  

I knew it on a cold winter's day on a ranch in Cache Valley when a hard slant of light ignited the rust on the hood of a dark green cattle truck otherwise buried in eighteen inches of crusty snow.  Glowing icicles dangled from mirrors, fenders and running board.  Damn, I knew it.  

I knew it in college, hiking high in Rocky Mountain National Park with a friend, when I saw two college girls sitting on a big boulder, squinting at the sun, golden light playing with thin strands of their hair and warming the front of their bare legs, honey skin dipping into these very rugged boots just above their ankles.  I was so shy then, even more than now.  Yet, I knew a moment when I saw it.  With a giant camcorder over my shoulder, I worked up the courage, walked up to them and said, "If you don't mind, can I film you sitting in the light like that?"  They were beautiful.  No doubt about it.  But what caught my attention was the squinting into the sun--that human desire to see the light touch an object and render it into something more, which in this case, was the ridge of a snowcapped peak.  Through their squinted eyes I could see their amazement, and I knew they were feeling that same awe looking at the ridge as I was feeling looking at them.  To be.  There is no question there.  To not be only arises when we lose focus of the fact we exist to be blown away.  When we are solid in our primary purpose, we are solid.  It's when we start worrying about what others think--how to make an impression, whether we're good enough, whether we have enough and are making our mark, fulfilling some notion of legacy--that we become lost.

When we stick to the moment--tune ourselves into whatever task is at hand, focus on the thing or person before us totally...  In those moments, everything is absolutely right--even if the person we're giving our attention to is sort of an ass.  Try it.  Next time someone is hassling you.  Step back.  Observe the scene.  What's happening outside the blinds.  The light on their face.  The way their lips are moving.  The expression in their eyes.  Don't react to it; just observe.  Your anger, your hate--at least for that moment--will be gone.  You will know better what they need.  

I seldom remember to do this, but when I do, it does work.  It has to.  You cannot observe something closely and not become part of it.  As a teenager, we often call that connection love.  I observe she has cute little freckles on the side of her nose and I'm in love.  What I really am is connected.  That that feels so powerful that I label it love is okay.  Connection is why we're here.  

Light is essential.  I have a pot of vincas hanging from a wrought-iron chandelier from Mexico that I turned into a planter.  Right now, those blossoms are on fire.  For me, the joy I see looking at that is what matters.  Why would I let so much in my life steal that away from me?  I do, but not as much as I used to.   I am slowly learning.  Long gone are the big addictions.  The alcohol, the pornography.  Now it is the smaller distractions.  Mostly laziness, numbness, and petty distractions that keep me from being me.

I write to remember what I knew so long ago:  I live in this moment only.  I exist elsewhere.  I have to.  We all have to.  The world nags at us.  It has to.  There are bills to pay.  Mouths to feed.  We must give that beast it's due.  It will not die.  But it doesn't need near as much of our lives as we willingly feed it.  It asks for a tiny bit of us, and we rush into its gaping mouth, yelling "Devour me!"  So, it does.

As a teacher, even at the high school level, I will occasionally have a student come up to tell someone stole their pencil.  I hand them a pencil and give the best advice I know:  "Do you really want to reduce your life to a pencil?"

I don't always follow my advice.  I often reduce my life to feeling I need to teach someone a lesson or express my sense of injustice at them cutting in line, but when I do, I'm not truly in the moment, and I may be existing, but I'm clearly not living because who wants to spend their life reacting to crap that doesn't matter when life is swirling gloriously all around you?

Yet, we do.  We give huge amounts of our lives away to the great nada, or in other words, our stupid egos trying to insulate us from the vitality of existence.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--16. The Shady Lady

The Shady Lady Bed & Breakfast 2022

The last light of day hung over the jagged western horizon as we climbed up the steep rock-rubble incline north of Beatty Junction on the hottest day I've ever experienced in April.  Topping out at 108 degrees in one place near Badwater Basin, it was the hottest I've ever felt even though I have been in 117-degree heat before.  There is just something uniquely dense about Death Valley heat.  It felt good to have the sun go down, but I kept the air conditioner going even while going up the great incline.  

Alluvial fans in Death Valley are truly profound--steep, wide and strewn with chunks of rock from the size of cows down to pebbles, but nothing too rounded.  No, not here.  This is a brutally beautiful landscape, and everything is hard-edged, even the pebbles.  This is the land of drums and cymbals and clanky bells that also can be oddly soft and pastel, the way Ravel's "Balero" begins soft and pastel from the beat of drums.

Our headlights ate up the rocks and very occasional weed or brush in the eerie lightless silence as the last green edge of day on the horizon was swallowed by night.  By the time we entered Daylight Pass, daylight was but a myth slinking off into the depths of subconsciousness before being snuffed out by the ever-present blackness of now.

And the wind picked up.  Oh, how it whipped up--as hard-edged as the landscape itself.  The road, before strait as an arrow up the incline, now bent one way, then the other, as our headlights scooped in the edges of mountains on one side and the edge of a wash-ravine on the other.

It was amazing, but we were tired.  Oh, so tired.

Eventually, we topped Daylight Pass and the small town of Beatty appeared suddenly below us.  I don't remember the drive down really, but from subsequent trips, I know it's not far.

I do remember standing outside at a small gas station in a fierce wind, getting cold.  Oh, how quickly the weather changed.

Down the street, lit up by Casino lights, palm trees whipped wildly in the voodoo night.

* * * * *

The thirty-minute drive up U.S. 95 to the Shady Lady Bed and Breakfast seemed an eternity.  I wasn't sure how well-marked the former brothel was, and I was afraid I was going to miss it or had.  Because of a weak signal, GPS wasn't updating our location.  We floated around in the deep Nevada darkness, the wind whipping dust and debris across the path of our headlights, searching for our bed for the night.

At last, Marci saw it up ahead to the right.  I put on my blinker and worried about the car that was fast approaching behind us because our turn was not much more than a spill of gravel that led us on the rutted path to our destination.

The place had great reviews, but I was beginning to question my research.

At last, we pulled up, headlights shining on a picket fence.  The wind was cold and fierce.  The branches of the trees whipped around as big swooshes of wind swept in from the desert audibly significant.  I unpacked the backseat of our car, hoping the wind would not remove the doors.  We each had a suitcase.  I would have to come back for the cooler.

The wind swooped in again as I tried to open the gate, the trees swinging their leafy loads in big, black shadowy swooshes shattering the calm light cast on the stone pathway leading to a well-lit porch partially enclosed in exotic wrought iron.  I was afraid no one would be awake.  We were much later than we had anticipated.

I can't remember if I rang, nocked, or if the door behind the screen door was already open.  Once in, a light was on over the front desk that subtly lit a Victorian sitting room off to the left.  Here I was, standing in a house of prostitution on a wickedly wild night with my wife.  Nevada.

Sort of.  Gone were the prostitutes.  Gone were the lonely men trying fill giant holes in their souls or escape the unescapable bland pressure of ordinary life.  In short, gone were the men trying to escape themselves.

Instead, a pleasant lady in her early sixties wearing Bermuda shorts checked us in.  I apologized for us being so late.  She said it was no bother and that people often came in late after long, adventurous days in the park.  She apologized that the themed rooms where the ladies had once done their work were all taken.  All that were left were the private residential rooms.  I said we didn't care, and we didn't.

There was a time when I was mesmerized by Nevada's neon wild west outlaw culture.  I spent my summers as a youth in Reno.  I loved the lights igniting Virginia Street.  I loved the billboards of the showgirls at Harrah's all lined up in leotards kicking out powerful legs in unison, feathers high, sparky outfits hugging the edges of voluptuous thighs.  I liked the mystique of Mustang Ranch--the hushed tones my fellow Mormon friends whispered about the evil that went on there and the money the owner made by selling out his soul to the devil.  I loved the bells and whistles of the casinos--the sound of coins tumbling into metal trays.  I loved the smoky air and sound piano music coming out of the small lounges off to the side of the great expanses of slot machines on acres of gaudy red and black carpet.  I was a kid, so all of this I viewed from a distance, walking to the bowling alley at the MGM Grand, which only made it more intriguing, more intoxicating.

But somewhere along the line, I changed.  Marci and I stay in Vegas frequently, but it is not a destination of choice.  Usually, it is the halfway point to the coast.  Sometimes, in the dead of winter, we go there simply because it's warm.  I still love an evening of listening to free music in one of those little lounges off to the side of the casino, and I love the fountain of the Bellagio, especially when "Time to Say Goodbye" by Andre Bocelli and Sarah Brightman accompanies the thundering waters, but overall Vegas bores me.  And though I once was very drawn to the outlier culture of strip clubs and whorehouses, and in my mind, said things like, "A society that allows for that is actually far healthier than one where it occurs in secrecy, unregulated," I am now too aware of the misery sex industry causes to be drawn to the wild west nostalgia that in no way has ever matched reality.  I have deeply felt the void that draws people to the night, so there's no judgement there.  And in my college years, I spent enough time in topless bars to know the women who work there are real--just regular people trying to make a living.  But the thick, sticky dread that hangs in the air is just as real.  The dark side isn't exotic--just dank and miserable.  Dens of addiction destroy people's lives.

So, unlike in the past, I hadn't been seeking out a place like The Shady Lady as a cool, unique Nevada experience--to get a taste of the underbelly without really entering it.  That would have been me twenty years ago.  What I had been searching for was somewhere affordable to stay.  The campgrounds in Death Valley were booked up and a Motel 6 in Las Vegas was $160 per night.  I could not wrap my head around paying that much money for lodging that reminded me of my life when I was poor and lived in apartments that weren't much different than budget motels.  So, I thought I might find a bed and breakfast.  And I did.  Great reviews.  Out in the desert.  Not too far from Death Valley.  Perfect.  The Shady Lady.

We were guided through the main kitchen by our host, and then down a long hallway that bent somewhere in the middle.  Eventually, it opened into another living room and kitchen.  We were told we could use the fridge and stove if we needed to and that there were grills out back.  This was the former dormitories for the girls.  We were taken to a small, clean room with a double bed, a couple of nightstands, a bathroom, and not much else.  We were tired and it was perfect.

I would make a couple more trips to the car, unload the coolers, and put the blue buddies in the freezer.  As I unpacked the cooler, I talked to a man who had a thick Australian accent.  He was the brother of the woman who owned the place.  He was pleasant and very interesting, but I was far too tired to collect, let alone, remember his name.

* * * * *  

I woke to the sound of peacocks.  Soft morning light poured through the curtains.  I remember seeing a white peacock sitting on a sunlit high, wooden fence.  I can't remember if that was from our room or some other window I looked out after I got out of the shower and began to wander about.

I do remember how the sunlight bathed the back of the pure white bird in yellow light.  I remember how much I wanted to get outside to see the grounds and desert beyond.  I pulled on my hoodie as I knew it would be cold.  

A warm yellow light poured through the glass on the kitchen door and onto the cupboards.  I decided that was the easiest way out without disturbing other guests.  Outside the sun rose over some very ordinary dry Nevada mountains--low, and even in the blue morning shadows, yellow with the hair of cheat grass, they slowly marched southward to Mexico, or northward to Canada, depending how you looked at it.  I decided it was all the same--those low mountains frozen mid-step in time.

Timeless.  Once you get out Vegas and Reno, that's what Nevada is.  And that's what I love about it.  It never changes.  Just over the border from the county I live in Utah sits a small casino.  I grew up passing it on the way back and forth to Reno.  Later, in college, I stopped there many times for dinner while out exploring that great emptiness called Nevada.  And I still stop there once or twice a year, and in all that time, from the mid 70's until now, that little casino and cafe have changed very little.  Although they did add on a bigger dining hall, the only real changes to the place are the silencing of the dropping coins with the newer slot machines and the replacement of long sedans and muscle cars with the various auto styles throughout the years.  Other than that, walking in there hasn't changed since I was ten.  

That is not unique in Nevada.  Austin, Eureka, Tonopah, Ely.  They pretty much stand still in time--just like the mountains.

Although the nights at The Shady Lady are now very different, outback, in the morning light, the view across the desert I'm sure hasn't changed.

That is why I seek Nevada.  That immortal time that stands tall with forever long mountain chains that seem to be marching to Canada or Mexico, but in fact, at least on the human scale of time, are marching nowhere at all.

I think most people want to get somewhere.  Perhaps that has been my biggest problem in life.  I just want to stand on a dry lakebed in Nevada and witness time not moving at all.  Maybe that isn't even a problem.  Are we here to do?  Or are we here to be?  Probably a little of both, but I stand with the trees that are simply satisfied standing in place absorbing the sunlight and growing inside.

I do want adventure.  But all the adventures I seek take me to a place where I can simply stand and absorb the sun.  The Shady Lady is now such a place.