Biology of Change or Desert Birth

I came here to deliver. Like the mammal is seeking a quiet place in the jungle to labor, I chose the desert to give birth to myself. Environments differ though: I'm operating in full light, plain hot sun, with very little shade to hide from myself. I'll go alone, naked, risking my freckled skin to photosynthesize against this giant reflector. I have decided to (over)expose my birthing to the arid nature of the Coachella Valley. Why?!

Because desert is sacred nature, in the greatest sense of the word. In Joshua Tree or Anza-Borrego deserts, hundred miles of horizons make everything visible to the human eye. There, I stop the car, watch the vastness and start to believe that this wide open space is only a trick of Gods to bear more secrets within. The Hanyashingyo Buddhist Wisdom and Heart Sutra said: "That which can be seen has no form, and that which cannot be seen has form."

Life seems to always hang onto the last drop of rare waters here, whereas the desert has a very vivacious nature. Moon and sun can meet everyday in those skies, stars are bountiful, running across the firmament, bathing in the milky way and dying as they wish. What looks like rocks, sands, bushes and cacti, are in fact the richest biodiversity of enriched minerals, plants and animals. Shamans, medicine people, witches, aliens and totemic animals all meet here, usually at full moon, dancing for the rain around a bonfire.

The same way the bare land doesn't leave any corner for a physical body to sneak to, soul and spiritual bodies have nowhere to walk in but into the light. "Ouch, it's hot!", sometimes uncomfortable, but the game is worth the candle: "Here I am, Desert, bare bones under your blazing sun, you can see me all now!". The land gives enough rays of light and silver mirages to reflect every aspect of the self. There's no way one won't see something about oneself, if one dares to look out, and in.

My internal water, my soup of life, needs to lay against the cracked alkaline soil to fully understand its aquosity. By contrast, like everything else. Ha, let's sit down and revise our old Tao for a sec. The underground world is a magnet to my core and tail: natural springs, aquifer, tunnels, secret passages to the center of the earth. "Why not, gulp it baby, it's pure energy of life!"

Pinkola Estes said: "Life in the desert is small but brilliant and most of what occurs goes underground. [...] A woman psyche may have founds its way to the desert out of resonance, or because past cruelties or because she was not allowed a larger life above ground."

Like the rattle snake is shedding skin under a rock, my old tail is ready to dry and detach. My new tail is the story of this rebirth, scales for words. If you can listen to it closely, you might hear the flapping of the flying fish across the sky and the galloping of the great white deer Pemtemweha on the shores of waters' underworld.

Biology of Change or The “other” side of the mirror

At this time, I’ll turn my back on the surface of the lake and look straight at you, Life. Water is always there, here, when she gets my back, my front is clear, present. I have looked and looked, across, through, inside, attempting to pierce the depth of our mother Water, a.k.a us. I have asked her why she moves away with the tide, and down with the tears. I have cried her when she dries. I have asked her why she travels in and out of me like a snake, passing on a message I can never quite grasp. Around the rocks, along the path, she finds her way. I shifted, just 180 degrees. Now I look toward you. Toward it all. It’s simple at the end, because nothing or nobody really reflects who we are, the inventive mirrors might be playing a fascinating game, such do movies, stories, your mother’s smile, your lovers eyes, a face across the table in a café, but I think that reflections don’t really exist outside of us. They are very tangible, like a photography, a chemical effect of millions of argentum cells swimming through water to transfer your paper self, millions of electromagnetic pixels to make you round, out of little squares. Ammonia, copper and water make your computer, your digital self. All sounds, all waves, matter. So turn your back and let the mirror be in you at all time. Not like a simple reflection of the self, but like the magical spiral of water communicating from skin to eyes, from bones to heart. I’m now in the present time of my non-image, in the concrete space of water. Swimming around the rocks to know you. Fluid. Grounded.

Biology of Change or The Fat Fear

There's a time when fear has to go. Because when fear looks at the other side of the world, checking her face into the shiny surface of the grand glacier, she might not recognize herself. See, when things start changing, they first stuff fear with all the nutriments she screams for: the disturbing vision of an aggressive enemy, the collapse of a system, the anger of a population, the sadness of a loved one, the paralysis of the self. Fear slurps it all, and burps it back in contentment. For an obsolete system, there's nothing more reassuring than the pillowy comfort of its own fat fears. 

In seldom times of history though, things start to drastically change. They melt so fast that the fear feeding gets out of control. Bulimia and anorexia dance like best friends in a weary discotheque. People make fear soups at every corner of their streets, on every page of their magazines, and every screens of their devices. Fear is a pledge in times of dramatic changes. Like weed, it grows everywhere, vomiting out of our ears and mouth in lianas, covering our wood floor with webs of acidic ivy, climbing back onto the walls, steaming up out of our chimneys, in a filthy yellow cloud. Fear gets obese. Rolling around like a gooey ball, chewing any events like junk food, ever bigger, seemingly stronger. 

But what happens when change gets completely out of control, while fear gets so fat, it can't even swallow a crumb? Fear stops to a giant bench and falls asleep, paralysed. Change, on the other hand, gets so busy, that it passes by sleepy fear and forgets to throw her a penny to help with her next meal. Fear can't recognize herself, too fat, too rich. Plus change doesn't pay her any attention. In that extreme case, change can't support fear any longer. Hasta luego, fear! I'm too busy changing to take care of you, I AM change after all, and you got way too big, I have nothing left to feed you with. 

When things are melting, when the world is melting at a speed we can't even comprehend, fear ceases to be a security, falls in a coma and melts under the blazing sun. She spreads one last greenish paddle and disappears into the darkness. It's a little bit like trying to recognize our old self in the melting mirror of the grand glacier, up there, on the other side of the world. We look different, changed, formless. Strikes of multi-colored waters, shaded black, blue, grays cover our traits onto the canvas. We melt too. Are we still here? On it, in it? Is it another self? Why can't we be comfortably sat in our fatty fear club chairs? Where is what we know? Knew? 

Well fear has gotten so sick, she had to die. Changes have gotten so strong, they now taking us on the scariest ride of our existence. What shall we do if grand-ma fear is gone? How can we cope? Why do we cry so often? Because we are melting. Not just the grand majestic glacier up there. There's no UP THERE actually. The distance between us and the pole is no greater than the one between your head and your toes. We are here with the glacier, which is taking us by the heart and guts, making us shut up, and listen to the crack of the melting ice. Hearts feel broken because they're melting. We try to listen, but those silent words are unknown. We just sit on a small icy platform curling into little balls under the polar bear's soft belly, drifting. 

The glacier is melting, our heart is melting. The waters are taking over because Gaia's fever calls for a big saving cleanse, as we're drifting away, clinging to our disappearing raft. Déjà vu? I know nothing but I feel a lot. I feel a possibility, so I'll try. This possibility is not in the head as we too often misuse it; this gorgeous electrical system which produces solutions but also produces limited beliefs and fear. The other brains, heart, organs are magnificent machines of health. When they change, when they open, it's to produce more life. Whether we sit on a little ice cube or in the middle of a waterless desert, we are facing our extremes. And in those extreme times of change, only the chain of hearts pumping together can replace the broken pipes. Water is so much stronger than us, yet we are Her. So if we start loving her, respect her with all our heart, we can expand and heal. We can channel new ways. Melting waters bare no dams, but it feels energies faster than the speed of light. 

Now I feel the time to love and to pause, to breath. Take the hand next to you, next to you, next to you, and make a long pipe of oxygen, all around this crazy home we call our planet. We can't tame the waters, we can't tame the change but we can channel the dance of it.