These four short stories are close to my heart. They were written during the '90s, along with many other stories, tales and fables while living in an adobe house next to the wilderness just outside of a small Hispanic village in New Mexico named Rio En Medio. In that strange, still primitive part of America, wildness in the air felt palpable. The urban life Sonia and I had led in LA seemed like distant dreams, yesteryears lived by different people in different lifetimes long ago and very far away.
In Rio En Medio, deer, coyotes and wild bears roamed the forest. Ancient adobe ruins left over from Spanish settlers 400 years ago dotted hillsides. Winter brought snow. Spring danced in cherry blossoms, roses, orchids, and purple lilacs. Summer carried lightning in the wind, booming thunder, torrents of rain, and whitelight sunshine in clear blue skies. Fall celebrated autumn leaves and crisp air and an unforgettably poignant beauty. With our various dogs and cats, Sonia and I lived a loving life, energized by artistic creativity and our participation in nature's wondrous processes. These stories, some of them loosely based on autobiographical incidents, emerged out of those times.
"
Listening Song" is a prose poem spanning the arc of experience from ignorance to awareness. It transcends the narrator's dissolute past while honoring and including it in a harmonious new order of body/mind/spirit.
Set in the context of a vivid hike in the snow up into the mountains during the depths of winter, "
Crystal City Ice-falls" delineates an inner journey from knowledge into the direct experience of transpersonal realization.
"
Buddy and the Blue Yarn Trail" sensitively portrays two lost souls being reborn. Eric, the man, and Buddy, the dog, are both heart-stricken. Through a series of events, each moves beyond grief into trust, beyond fear into love.
After his dog, Charlie, is intentionally run over by a man he knows he will see again, Kit Jackson has to deal with his own rage. In "
The Question," he is put to the test: What kind of human being does he want to be? How does he want to resolve the situation?
