Click this link to read: High Desert Swashbuckling: An Imaginative Narrative of Thor's Heart
HIGH DESERT SWASHBUCKLING
I DWELL ON THE MOSTLY DRY FLOOR OF AN ANCIENT INLAND SEA, LONG SINCE DRIED UP AND RECEDED INTO THE MILLENNIA, LEAVING ONLY THE GEOLOGIC MEMORY IN FOSSILS AND STRATA THAT TELLS THE TALE, THAT MAKES ME SURE THAT THIS IS TRUE. THE SUN BEARS HARD ON THE EARTH AS WE WALK IN THE VALLEYS ALONG WITH THE DEER, THE BEARS AND THE RATTLESNAKES, HAWKS AND HUMANS FISHING FOR BEAUTIFUL, LITTLE FRESHWATER TROUT HIDING IN THEIR COOL SHADY NOOKS CREATED BY BILLION YEAR-OLD BOULDERS THAT FELL INTO PLACE OR ACTUALLY ARE 'THE PLACE'.
…..NOW, I SWIM IN SHALLOW POOLS DOWN AT SPIRIT GORGE; TAKING COWBOY BATHS; SPLASHING MY FEET AGAINST THE COOL WATER AND WATCHING THE SPLASH FLY AND SHOW THEMSELVES IN RAUCOUS CHAOS AGAINST THE BLUE BLUE SKY AND THE LOOMING SKYSCRAPER/CLIFF FACES, THE SUN HAVING JUST PASSED OVERHEAD AND NOW PREPARING TO SET IN CALIFORNIA, OVER COUSIN PACIFIC OCEAN, LIVING SEA AND STUNNING COVES FOR PIRATES TO VENTURE INTO FOR COVER, HIDING THEIR SHIPS AMIDST THE SANDSTONE FORMATIONS THAT LOOM TALLER THAN THE MASTS, HOUSING SMALL CRABS THAT MAKE BUBBLES WITH THEIR MOUTHS THAT CRACKLE AND POP IN THE RECESSES OF THEIR DAMP CREVICES…ECHOING INTO ETERNITY.
It is paradoxical to think of ships and boats in this desert. I have only built a little skiff, no Leslie Durrell's 'Bootlebumtrinket' by any stretch of the imagination, but close..... sawed and glued up some years ago, with a friend and he gave it to me when he took off for larger waters. I have not actually 'manned' it on water and it waits to be rejuvenated. I am pretty much a land lubber, having only once maneuvered an ocean-going kayak ‘bout 5 miles across to Sea Wolf Island, near Inverness, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia; one-manned my large green canoe down the Rio Grande (with a 5 gallon tub of water in front to keep it pointed downhill), worked the long oars of rafts in the San Juan and the Chama; learning to steer them and tricks such as: head straight for the obstacle or rock you intend to avoid and just before you crash into it, you backpedal the oars and it magically catches the current around the object, often causing the craft to make one revolution and then you are ‘back in business’. Nonetheless, the images that I conjure up recently and that I have appreciated relate stupifyingly well to a old Winslow Homer painting of a bearded fisherman in a sturdy little boat, filled with a coupla large soft bellied fish and back rowing in the sea which is dangerously close to being deadly in the sense that the waves are getting larger, the swells more turgid, the waves rough and choppy and the prospects of safety are unclear. I saw this image amongst the other thrift store 'art' right after a doctor's appointment and it grabbed me like a bolt of lightning, I bought it for $2.99 and propped it up by the front door for all to witness..........I row with all my might this sturdy craft and glance off into the distant horizon and see….. half the sky is golden and clear, like the fish’s bellies and the other half is dark and threatening worse weather. I wonder, as I row, which condition I most certainly will encounter; the lady or the tiger? I see, also, a sailing schooner, with large masts off a league or so from me, towards the storm. This is my predicament.
The last thing I remember was the name of the ship on the side as I struggled to not drown and clutched at the ship cladding: Flying Castle of the Broken Hearts, and then yanked out of the drink (like my ancestor, John Howland, a young servant, fell off the Mayflower, grabbed a ‘trailing rope’ and was pulled back on board, ensuring that I would be born some 400 years later!). It is by strong fingers grasping for a short rope on the high seas; that….he….and I….exist. There were strangely dressed Pirates, it seems; people hovering over my outstretched body as they searched for veins to remove, after being carried deep into the icy hold of the ship, to a room that was large and had only the rectangular colors of deep blue and stark white. I was strangely unafraid and they, oddly, un-oppressive, yet intent on their task at hand. Then there was sleep; deep sleep that fell upon me……
I awoke in a cabin room filled with strange devices, a tube in my throat that was deeply disturbing, tubes from my nostrils and tubes and wires all over my body, all of which had to be constantly attended to, like the ropes and rigging of the ship; to prevent tangling to spaghetti. I was alive, but not independent; something big had happened and I was still alive. Now I remembered that the pirates had warned of me what they would do to me: cut my breastplate clean through, then spread my ribs apart, take blood vessels from my leg and body, stop my heart for upwards of 2 hours, sew the new vessels onto the cut end of my original arteries, and then start my heart again and sew me up. And they painted me blue from the ends of my beard to the tips of my toes!
I fell asleep again and in the night I felt creatures, like silky roots with fingers that were gently but intently grasping my legs and trying to coax them down to their fairly homes underground. Then I saw horrible bands of dreadful creatures, clustered together in groups that had only one goal, it was clear, which was to relentlessly tear into me and kill me, over and over again, each swarm/group chopping, biting, tearing at me from limb to limb, then allowing the next cluster of ghouls; disgusting, dreadful with unbelievably horrid expressions, but tall and thin, glowing murky neon tones in their auras; to do the same….kill me dreadfully with no other goal but that…..I awoke incredibly relieved to realize it was a dream and the fairy fingers were the pulsing and randomly reappearing from pillows they had put on my calves to prevent bedsores and the like. My consciousness was chasing my unconscious for clues and a way to come to grips with what had happened. Somewhere deep inside me, I could revisit the fact that groups of people had stood over me and butchered me in unthinkable ways and with immoveable resolve and determined to, as it turns out…..fix me by breaking me in half and stopping and restarting my heart; a lovely person dedicated to assuaging my stilled heart with cool saline liquid, like a village might do for a beached whale or a stranded dolphin, recognizing the primal salten sea we all rely on and come from. This layering of images and emotions then began to engage my imagination.
As I watched shifts of nurses come and go; evening and daylight, each one I feared would take advantage of my helplessness and do something untoward and, with each new care-giver, I found only different kinds of care and love….despite my apprehension that strangers had my life in their grasp and that they would be tough and overbearing. They sometimes appeared potentially threatening, only to surprise with kindness and concern and wanted to hear what I was feeling. This situation led to a narrative that is well dramatized by the movie, *Stardust......where the ugly old witch sought to yank out the pulsing heart of the heroine, an incarnated star; recombined from star dust, just like we really, really are... and, in particular, the sections that described the flying pirate ship and the burly, harsh toned and murderous pirates and their heartless captain, only to slowly discover that they were actually pussycats who were intent on protecting the crusty reputation of their pirate ship and their captain, who was the epitome of gentle sensibilities! Paradoxical, enigmatic….and humorous, to boot. Gentle swashbucklers; very sharp swords and daggers, implements of torture as the skilled healer/surgeon’s necessary tools.
This was (and is) getting to be sorta fun!
My Captain 'Mainmast' is obviously adored by his staff, burley as they all appear and they play along with his humorous rhetoric about 'not tolerating errant nursing' and the like and he, like Captain DeNiro, is a most approachable pirate, it turns out; with far reaching interests and sensitivities, including alternate lifestyles (such as my own). The male nurses are bearded and fast moving, soldiers and homesteaders; you feel like you are tossed around, only to discover that it never hurts and is always completely competent and we had long conversations at 3 in the morning, about beauty and saving the world, while new intravenous tubes were being inserted. Then, the narrative blossoms with my new shop helper driving down just to see me and she is now the disguised cabin boy who is really a lovely young woman. My daughters are like strong, beautiful, smart princess/pirates from far-away exotic lands; competent, strong and intent only on protecting the treasure (which, I discover, is..me...). My wife is the matron of the ship, modeling for the beautifully chiseled figurehead. My son is the ship’s carpenter. There is a host of cooks in the galley, concocting all sorts of culinary delights; fit for any civilized pirate or rescued fisherman.
I am **‘Blue Beard’ now , a simple strong, capable fisherman who barely escaped death on the high seas, was on the verge of a heart attack and was rescued by the serendipitous ship of pirate/surgeons, like doctors without borders or Greenpeace Robin-Hood type pirates or burly bikers with Teddy Bears for the poor children during holidays.
I have enjoyed this method for processing my open-heart surgery at the wonderful Heart Hospital in Albuquerque, which also lies atop the dry seabed of the great inland sea of 100 million years ago, whose length was from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Circle and 600 miles across, a narrowest point, like the site of a restricted artery in huge scale, was between right here at the ‘End of the Rockies’ and the Oklahoma Panhandle.
I have recovered well and quickly so far and my basic guide..... (other than the 'last pirate', the intrepid 1st Mate, M. Christy, who fits the bill perfectly as bossy and armed to the teeth {...but quite friendly...} tough pirate, gadfly and protector extraordinaire, kind albatros; tender and fashioner of the ship’s treasures, remains close, navigating the tricky course of the healing of my great scars and repaired heart, like it was her newborn colt, tough pirate; both hands on the wheel and rudder of my health, she and Mainmast fashioning my health like careful jewelers with a magnifying glass and torch in the other hand, fashioning health like jewelry featuring great fish and adventure symbols...... careful not to let me go astray or fall over the rails or misunderstand what is truly happening here on the Flying Castle of the Broken Hearts ) ......my basic personal guide still; my emotion and sensibility is….gratitude and fascination about this ‘troubled voyage…. in calm ....weather’.
Happy High Desert Swashbuckling, Mateys!
-Thor Sigstedt, Spirit Valley, New Mexico, Sept. 2017
Below is how we all feel, I believe....deep inside:
High Desert Swashbuckling: An Imaginative Narrative of Thor's Heart
*This just goes to show that there 'is nothing new under the sun' and most thoughts are borrowed, except for the fact that there are no two snowflakes that are alike, each one intricately 'crafted' to be totally unique....I guess that principle is 'nothing new........'.
**(not the one of pirate fame; actually he was, if anything, never a pirate but a no-account wife/baby killer...not much of anything to talk about, just an archetypal, bizarre man who should...just recede into forgotten history).
