The Turquoise Ledge (21 page)

N
ow Sandino lives indoors in my painting studio in a big cage where he screams and deafens me further. I try to wear headphones most of the time I write anyway. He is supposed to be my muse, but I don't know if he will help or hinder me.

I painted a memorial painting in tempera to commemorate Bolee and Sandino; I gave her two legs because she is in the spirit world now and is whole again; Sandino is portrayed as he is in life, with one leg.

About three hours ago Sandino started splashing in his water cup, dousing himself with his beak full of water, flapping his wings and crying out with joy. Now on the southwest horizon I see the ocean's clouds dark blue with rain, hastening to the northeast.

The parrots and macaws sense the approach of rainstorms long before humans unless the humans have Doppler radar or satellite images. The ancestors here in the Southwest called the macaws and parrots “rain birds,” and painted their images on pottery water jars because the water-splashing of the parrots as they bathed attracted the rain clouds.

The desert birds, the thrashers and cactus wrens, sing their rain songs as soon as they smell the sweet rain in the air. The raindrops are an aphrodisiac for the parrots and the desert birds. Tarantulas and desert toads also smell the rain; ditto for the rattlesnakes and the horned lizards.

No thunder, no macho winds, this is a gentle female ocean rain. Later, a big rain cloud over the mountain peak is so luminous it has to be the Sun's eye.

 

The macaws and parrots are able to talk to the clouds, to the ancestors; which is why a macaw oracle was consulted to learn what the dead wanted and what the dead were angry about. (The dead become rain clouds—so if they are angry, they won't appear and the living will die of thirst.) The macaw oracle's words were interpreted by the oracle bird's “human servant” who also collected the fees for consultations.

 

The rain clouds block the sun. The rain evaporates as it falls into the desert heat and reaches the ground as a cool cool breeze that smells of rain. When the masses of nimbus and cumulus clouds began to arrive and covered the sun, a small brown rattler went toward the gate to the patio where the cockatoos sounded an alarm. The snake stopped and looked longingly at the gate all blocked up with wire mesh and rocks so it couldn't get inside. The patio was a good hunting area after a rain. The snake seemed to consider whether he wanted to bother to exert himself to push under the rocks blocking his way, but then gave up and went into a thicket of aloe veras.

 

Early May. On blue paper white and gray pastel clouds and the words in turquoise ink:

Welcome to the first rain clouds of the summer. I hope they linger while I draw them.
On beige paper in white pastel nimbus and cumulus clouds and the words in black ink:

Some believe the smallest clouds are babies and small children who died.

Then one cloud's constant transformations all alone in the bright blue sky got my attention. In white pastel on the beige paper I drew a sequence of this cloud as it changed shape and shifted over ten minutes. The sequence begins at the top of the page. I stopped a moment to smear the white pastel into wispy tendrils of the cloud in the six forms it took. When I looked up again at the sky the cloud was gone.

Clouds in white pastel on beige paper and these words in black ink:

More clouds.

In purple ink these words:

It was as if the clouds were communicating with me by changing shapes in the high winds above.

The clouds changed shapes so rapidly the thought occurred to me this might be extraterrestrials contacting me.

Two nimbus clouds in white pastel on beige paper. In purple ink these words:

The clouds were teaching me how to communicate with them.

It requires long periods of watching the sky in stillness. I seem to have the most interesting encounters with single clouds. Large masses of clouds pay no attention to me.

 

As I walked into the room I share with the one-legged macaw, I was surprised by a fresh light scent. Sandino had shredded a big red apple that smelled of spring flowers, not apple.

Spring comes to the desert again and again with each rainstorm. The rain I smell in the wind leaves me exultant to be alive in that moment. What I like to do after a rain is go outside early in the morning as the sun rises above the mountains to see the night-blooming cactus flowers; their double and triple blossoms are the shapes of comets and supernovas incandescent with celestial light. Their perfume is hypnotic. In the backlight of the rising sun, the dried seedpods appear as exploding stars—dazzling with their reflections.

Later that morning I noticed a bushy tailed squirrel intent on teasing or attempting to frighten something by flicking his tail and fluffing it—fully extended, the hairs made a halo of the shining sun. He didn't mind me watching him, he was so focused on his adversary. At first I looked around the ceramic water bowl and saw nothing, and almost gave up. Then I looked more closely and saw a small rattler curled around the water bowl next to a fence post. The rattler ignored the squirrel that kept looking to see if the rattler was still there. Did the squirrel have a batch of babies nearby? The doves are like me, they don't see the small snake curled up against the fence rail when they land on the water bowl.

The bushy tailed squirrel came back a third time to wave and shake his fluffed up tail in the small rattler's hunting area—that is probably the plan—to ruin the hunting for the snake with his squirrelly dance that alerts all in the area of the hunter.

 

This late May morning Sandino sensed the approach of the rain and bathed himself with much enthusiasm. Four hours later a petite rain paid us a visit. The palo verde, mesquite and ironwood are all in bloom. The true garden is the desert outside my yard.

Two days later in the big arroyo, I found two pieces of turquoise rock both the size of a small button. An orange butterfly with arabesques in black on its wings greeted me with kindness and ceremony on the trail.

 

I have a dozen or more sketchbooks and notebooks only partially filled, then abandoned for years only to have me find them and start using them again for drawing and painting and writing as well. The linear time line is thus tangled and confused as it deserves to be.

The pack rat is trying to move into the barbeque grill Charlie abandoned when he left a few years ago. Is this the same rat that was inside the engine compartment of my car despite the light bulb that burned there all night?

A few years ago I might have tried to kill it with a rock or stick, but right then I didn't feel like killing anything, not even a pack rat. Now that I'm older, I can't bring myself to kill anything except assassin beetles—I even help scorpions reach safety. But I kill assassin beetles, my karma be damned, because their bites almost kill me.

So I showed the old pit bull dog the burrow where the pack rat ran. The dog sniffed the barbeque grill where the rat fled and now the dog is vigorously chewing the steel frame that holds the bottled gas under the grill.

The raven couple called back and forth to one another along the big arroyo. I listened for the voice of their raven child but I wasn't sure I heard it or one of them. I hope their chick survived the attention of the owls and red-tail hawks. The old pit bull is still chewing the grill's door, trying to reach the pack rat that's long gone.

 

The big black collared lizard king I nicknamed “Godzilla” is out and about this late May morning hunting the golden cockroaches I disturbed by moving flowerpots around. This dark mesquite lizard rules all the shady area under the tree and front porch including but not limited to the damp flowerpot bottoms and all the golden cockroaches hidden there.

I saw a light brown lizard without a collar and hope it is the same lizard that was inside the oak barrel debris. I couldn't see the lizard when I started to move the debris in the macaw cage, and the lizard got knocked unconscious. I thought it was dead. I almost threw it out into the desert. But when I went to pick the lizard up, I saw that it was alive, barely, so I took it to a safe shady spot under the mesquite tree. A short time later when I looked, the lizard had regained consciousness and was gone. I kept a lookout in case it just crawled off to die, but never saw any sign of it until I saw the light brown lizard today.

I
read that the way to distinguish real turquoise from chrysocolla is to lick the stones and your tongue will stick to the chrysocolla but not to the turquoise. I licked all the turquoise stones I had on my writing desk. My tongue stuck to nearly every one of the turquoise rocks except for the two big nuggets. With further reading I learned the two cabochons are probably “chrysocolla-impregnated chalcedony” with the hardness of seven—chalcedony is harder than turquoise, and heavier and denser than turquoise.

I found another turquoise ledge off the west side where we throw biodegradable items. A turquoise ledge of very blue, sky blue chrysocolla but soft as calcium carbonate from fossil seashells. So the house I live in sits on top of a chalky turquoise ledge of brightest blue.

 

I try to leave the house before the sun rises over the Catalina Mountains across the valley to the east. When the sun breaks over the Catalinas, the Tucson Mountain peaks catch the first light and glow an incandescent yellow gold that makes them look purple then orange. The early morning air of the desert is incomparable—it is delicious—the air is cool with the least hint of moisture that holds the scents of clay and stone and even the perfume of the late-blooming catsclaw bush. Later the heat parches the air and the scent will be of wood about to combust. Early in the morning is the time all creatures in the desert move about; the pack rats are light-sensitive and must be in their nests by dawn. The night hunters, the bobcats, pumas and the snakes, begin to head for their day shelters from the sun. The cactus wrens and thrashers call; the doves begin to fly to water.

Sometimes it is completely silent. No human sounds (unless you count my breathing), no engines, no trains, no barking dogs, no airplanes, just the sound of the wind moving through the palo verde and saguaro and for a moment even the desert creatures are quiet. I might be standing here a thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago.

The ancient people stood here and looked at the Catalinas with the sun rising over them; they watched for any clouds that might come. Clouds from any direction were always welcomed.

 

During the 2007 snake season, the mastiffs finally managed to kill the big rattlesnake that lived under the dog shed. One evening when I brought them in at bedtime, I saw that Snapper and Lyon had been bitten though they weren't swollen much; Lyon was bitten on the foot and Snapper on the lower lip, but they both had developed immunities to the venom, so were barely affected by the bites. The next morning when I fed the dogs I wasn't paying much attention and when I walked past the dog beds I got a big shock. There was the dead rattler, its huge head smashed flat, and its four foot long body torn into three pieces.

Now the squirrels are excavating a huge cavern under the dog shed which now teeters on the edge. That's what we get for the killing of the big snake.

 

I blamed the manuscript of my memoir for the anxiety, the ringing in the ears and the poor concentration I had; I'd never had such a strong visceral reaction to writing before. But now I've realized the true source of my symptoms—it wasn't just the childhood recollections that started to get to me as I wrote this book.

Over the past months, I'd managed to poison myself with a strong electromagnetic field in my house electrical wiring. I had plugged in a gizmo to drive away rodents about eight months ago. I didn't leave the device plugged in all the time because I had a pet mouse I called Mystery Mouse. I worried the device might irritate her so I called the 800 number on the device and spoke with a polite man who could tell me nothing about the device or how it worked except that it was safe for humans and pets.

I was familiar with the research done on the dangerous effects of alternating current's electromagnetic field on the cellular development of zygotes. But the desire to find an easy fix to the rodent infestation in my attic led me to delude myself with the false assurances the device was safe for children and pets. I threw caution aside when I plugged in the device. It caused all the wiring of my house to give off an electromagnetic field that slowly destroyed any creatures unable to escape its force field.

Mystery Mouse died in late April. Once she was dead I left the device plugged in all the time because I didn't have her comfort to consider anymore. I thought large creatures like myself were not affected by the field.

Within five days of leaving the device plugged in, I was ready to go to the emergency room. My ears were ringing loudly, my heart was pounding and my blood pressure was uncharacteristically high. I felt anxious and unable to sit down at my laptop to work on the memoir. I blamed writing the memoir because my symptoms got worse when I worked on the computer due to all the electricity required to run it and the peripherals.

About that time the roofers came to fix the front roof of the house. The roofing foreman noticed the lights we use in the engine compartments of our cars at night to keep away the pack rats. I told him about the plug-in device, and he said his roofing company used the same plug-in device. It worked great, he said, no rodents, not even birds would fly inside their warehouse anymore.

That was when I let go of my self-delusion and realized what was wrong—it wasn't the writing of the memoir that set off my pulse and blood pressure. The anti-rodent gizmo's electromagnetic field utilized all the electrical wiring in my house to create a strong wave signal twenty-four hours a day. No wonder the spiders indoors had virtually disappeared; even the assassin beetles were gone. The rattlesnakes didn't leave because they lived under the floor below the grid-work of electrical wiring in the walls.