Purgatory

Dia de Los Muertos occurred last week. “the veil is thin,” everyone kept telling me. “the spirits are closer,” they asserted. I’ve been alive for 31 years now, and have experienced as many opportunities to communicate with the dead. But I’ve never been on the Colorado Plateau at this time of year. It is one of the most unchanged pieces of earth on the planet, geologically speaking. While volcanoes have burst through the earth’s crust, and fault lines have given way to mountain ranges in other places, the Colorado Plateau has remained relatively flat and inactive, save its action of rising up in elevation and turning counter clockwise in relation to the surrounding plate. At one point, the northern edge tilted up, allowing rivers to run fervently southward, and carve canyons through the unaltered layers of earth. With history exposed, this circular piece of the planet rises towards the heavens, and spins against the direction of time. the spirits have greater access to this land.

And then there’s the river.

Translated, Animas means Soul. When I arrived, I was immediately charmed by the name of the body of water flowing through Durango: the river of souls. How rich! Then I was told that the actual name was longer, and included adjectives that might change the nature of things. The souls that this river moves, the ones moving through this landscape, are lost souls.

So, perhaps unknowingly, I invited the three dead men to visit. Before I went to bed, I expressed my gratitude for being here and asked to see more clearly the way in which I could best serve myself and my new community. I closed my eyes, and found myself in a crowd of souls.

I could go into details, but it will suffice to say that I became entangled in the psychological turmoil of 3 different men as they held fast to things they had loved in their lives, or things they about which they felt incomplete. I went through every emotion involved in each man’s unique situation. I felt the loss and the longing, the unresolved conflict, the desperation and the agony. It sucked.

I woke up exhausted. My chest felt as though it had been split open, and my head was heavy with realization: I have a lot of letting go to do.

Over the past six months, I left my home, my job, and a lot of structure in general to see what the world might show me if I just gave up all my preconceived notions about people, places, security, and how things work. What it’s shown me is that, beneath my preconceived notions, I have even more preconceived notions. Many of them are concerned with how I think I should be in relation to the world, what feelings I should and shouldn’t have, and so on. I guess that, in some sense, letting go of so many external concepts has given way to the ones I hold internally. So now I get to work myself from the inside out. Sounds like a good winter practice.

I think I’ll start by playing with fire.