No one knew why we were leaving, not even my wife, who wanted to stay. There was no reason to stay for me except that the stars had moved and the sky was more distant than I had thought. How could one leave meditation paradise for a small apartment in the Arizona’s Sun Valley? No reason, no purpose, just the stripping away of years of thinking compromised by things I couldn’t see. Too much heat and not enough water. But inside, the sky rained stars of thought, galaxies of astonishments, cosmoses turning in on themselves. It was all in the words. Tapping away at the keyboard. Straining to put things together. To make pictures in my mind. To take in the surges of energy. To make it work while pretending I knew why I was there. No friends. Just the burning sun and my trans-galactic classroom. My computer at 5 am. Childish stuff at first. Just preparing the way. Things in my multi-storied mind being arranged to sound like it was real stuff. A baby may see a book and think it’s a glass. The storytellers from inside were coming out now that the big story of the Midwest town was fading, burning in the desert sun, transforming into what I was given to see as my eyes began to open.
