LOVE OF PLACE

I walk Sacaton Mesa surrounded by cloud streets, cloud turrets, a small cloud East Asian art museum, cloud doorways arched and dissolving. It is architecture on the move. A storm builds in the east. The cloud cliffs grow taller. The prow of a ship crashes into another. Already there is rain over the Mogollon Mountains, the line clear between where water is falling and where it is not. Already I should turn back and hurry home if I do not want to get soaking wet.

I feel what the Transcendentalists might have called a correspondence. This beauty is not a doorway into something better. This beauty is my other half. This sky, this majesty, is my other self. I feel the yearning to reunite, join with the sky. In some way, we reflect each other. I am transparent, and the clouds pass through me. I have felt this before on Sacaton Mesa, and I am careful now not to get too excited or try and hold on to the moment with words. The Quaker tradition of silence works best. There is something under the words. There is something calm and whole under the words. (from Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist)