Haunting

This is another in the COVID-19 journal. Yes, it is haunting. Very little traffic on the street. Almost none. And the time is 8:45 am. Rush hour is over; but then rush hours have stopped mostly.


Rocky is in the shower. He turned on American Indian wood flute music to guide him through his morning routine. I am in the home office writing this blog. The flute music haunts the air. Calm. Serene. It awakens memories of the southwest.


Buttes and mesas loom in the distance and foreground. They are sandy red, with streaks of some blonde and darker tones. Blue sky frames their shapes. Desert sands of many hues ground the picture. Dry vegetation spots the landscape, but not much.


Grit. Stones. And warmth. Light breeze blowing 82 degree air. Light buffeting. Hair riffled. Sunlight warms the skin, caressing it. Overall, the image is gentle and embracing. This is New Mexico. Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos or Gallup. These are the images beckoned.


It is a lonely landscape only because few others are present. Scenery is a vivid history of eons gone by. We are left wondering of the people who walked here long ago. What were their numbers? How and when did they gather? When large gatherings, what was the number? One can guess that routine numbers were small, family and related tribal cousins.


Their daily routine would have been preparing food, growing it, finding it, enough to feed the small family. Peering into the distance from a slow measured pace of living. Acknowledging the sun and rock. Not lonely but one with nature? One with spirits? With animals, birds, plants. Each struggling to live on the planet, in this dusty solo place.


What were they thinking? What stories did they weave to make sense of existence? What history of before did they conjure. What timeline of people were possible? The founding Gods gifted this place to mankind. Mankind scraped out existence from what was available. Life presented pleasures, work, illness and death. Aging. Death at all ages within the family. Some young; some old. The beginning and the end of a person’s lifespan. What did they make of it? How did this all make sense to them?


The flute plays its lonely tune. Not quite melody. Not even tempo. A presence. A line of sound that pulls the mind into the nature filled place of rock, blue sky and sand.


The tune is the mindset and the story. At least of this hour, of this day, of this year.


And so in shelter we remain. Pondering our own life story. Our own history. Of time begun and time ended. Each age of man has done this.


In that we are not alone. Our flute plays on…..


April 1, 2020