TAOS, WE'RE BACK!

There is a mountain meadow where our lawn used to be, giant flies are buzzing in and out of the house, Cottonwood seeds waft lazily past the window while we have our morning coffee and the crickets are in full song.  It was already too hot to have coffee on the patio this morning. It was like walking into a different world than the one we left two weeks ago. We intended to stay in Arizona for a week and then PQ came down with what may have been pneumonia or just a serious flu, even though he had flu shots this year.  Three days later, I also got sick. We ended up staying in Arizona two full weeks and spent most of it indoors. PQ was asleep much of the time.

Wild, but the south side is even wilder.

It was a very different visit (understatement). However, we don’t regret going and somehow it bumped us up a level. I know, that sounds contradictory, so I’ll try to be more specific. Being in a different world and perhaps a different dimension much of the time, made this place where our house lives seem less familiar. Something happened in a subtle way to change our lives. We were hoping to go to our Cottonwood retreat and enjoy all the familiar places, possibly check out some places to rent, but above all just enjoy being there.  Instead, everything changed on us and we felt a bit like we went to a different planet and then came back to another different planet, a bit like I imagine time travel.

Time seems to move faster as my earth years accumulate and this month I launched into my 73^rd year. Last summer melds into now and the winter in between dissolves from memory. Time resembles a kaleidoscope of experiences. One might think that the older one becomes, the more familiar the conventions of time would be, but in my experience, it is quite the opposite.

One of my favorite quotes from Einstein is; there are things we don’t see that move the things we do see.  PQ and I succumbed to something resembling a cold while in Arizona last week. I say resembling because I am now aware that even our dis-eases have a highly independent aspect as if they were actually a dialogue between a bug and its victim. However, I use the word “victim” with reservations. As I progress on my life journey, I recognize that nothing is fully explainable by our words and the core of each experience eludes capture by terms like flu or cold. These are mental shorthand to enable us to connect our experience with a common database shared with our fellow humans. However, the convention actually filters out the individual essence of each experience.

While in Cottonwood, I had more difficulty than usual putting words to things and concepts. It is always a challenge, but this time it was so extreme that I couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t significant. I knew the words that wouldn’t come but it was as if they sprinted like nervous deer into a dense forest the moment I began hunting them. It was the extremeness of this fleeing word problem that caused me to see how inadequate words really are.  

I’m a believer in the concept that many people have moved energetically from 3^rd dimension to 4^th and some 5^th. The transition is full of surprise revelations about the relationship with our human conventions and the underlying reality. This dimension thing is beginning to be more than pretentious New Age lingo for something that sounds elevated but makes no difference in real life.  This world has many doorways that I never noticed before. Familiarity is perhaps the most effective blinder there is. One observation is that I trust my intuition more than ever when approaching the unknown.

When we returned to Taos, I realized that my heart doesn’t want to rent out our house. I just believed that it was a must if we were ever to get to Arizona. However, this house is more than real estate. It holds our spirit.  We don’t want to feel homeless in Taos just to have a place in the Cottonwood. I can feel so much change coming that I’ve decided to put the whole issue to rest until we have a better idea of what is brewing.  For now there are family crisis to keep us occupied here in Taos.

UPDATE:

PQ was in great pain from spasms in the muscles of neck and shoulders due to non-stop coughing. We finally realized that we would have to visit a doctor. PQ attempted to get help at the Taos Picuris Health Center but that was an endless runaround. The building was recently remodeled and updated, but the service has declined.  Finally, we found a medical group that takes walk-ins. The doctors concluded that the problem was an exacerbation of the Pulmonary Fibrosis. I’ve read enough about this through an online community of people with IPF that this was already my suspicion when these symptoms began in Cottonwood. Still, I was hoping it was simply a cold.

We have no plans as of now and are just going with the flow, which happens to be a stretch of rapids. Sometimes it’s just one hour at a time. We’ve been home over a week now and I haven’t had time to deal with the mounting jungle outside. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.