I found the Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit at a hostel in Jordan. Sometimes books are placed on our own mosaic-potted patio by the universe herself.
I’ll never forget when I read The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, an parable-like tale of poverty, gender discrimination and cultural strife in 17th century China. But not only because it was an excellent book, but because the next night as I started a squishy novel about a pregnant teenager’s triumph above her troubles in the American South, she referenced the difficult labor and delivery of the squatting Chinese woman in The Good Earth. When this happened, I sat up and looked around the room. (Yes, I often believe me life is a sitcom and the disappointment never really goes away) but I just couldn’t believe it. If I had been on Alias, wouldn’t this clearly indicate that someone had PLANTED these books for me to find in succession? It was an eerie, yet strangely comforting feeling. As if the man behind the green curtain had offered me some of his Milk Duds.
But back to Rebecca. Because this is when it happened again. First she talked about the Rocky Mountains (where I live). Then she spoke about being Jewish (I don’t know any practicing Jews or anything about their traditions and was about to enter Israel). Then she spent three pages on Virginia Woolf (I had just read The Hours). THEN, when we were about to cross the Jordan into the wadis and canyons of Petra, she began talking about the D-word.
I’ve never been a woman of the desert. I certainly love the way my sparkling earring lay against my skin (which is turning) so brown. But I’ve always preferred the soft loaf of Wonder grass to the rough brown edges of the wheat. I guess you could say my bubble gum taste gets in the way. While years ago, Natalie Goldberg forced me to consider it, somewhere between the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, Rebecca’s timing gave it a craggy context I couldn’t ignore.
In the Middle East at least, it’s such a suspicious landscape. The wind carries only the wispy, hot breath of Arabic across the sand. Bare skin and bones with steak-colored, magenta veins with the perfect shade of the softest eye-shadow braising its best features. Clunky, caricatured trucks drive at the bottom of my screen. Tracks—a camel’s, road runner’s, snake’s– are the only sign of life you’ll find. As I do in the sky, in the wallpaper, the carpet or in the coals of a fire, I find faces in every texture. Faces of eagles. Men. Gods. Monsters. I am always in search of others.
But the desert meditates with meticulous precision. Its a prodigal student. Naked, but not vulnerable. Buried, but not dead. Empty, but quite nourished. It refuses to talk and in the process, shuts us all up.
(Graffiti’d on the desert-colored visor of the 4×4)
Our camel ride began in Rum Village, Jordan. Between the Mexican, Spaghetti-Western reminiscent walls, we and the Dutch sisters were led into the great wide open on the brightly-blanketed backs of growling camels. After an hour, I brushed the carrot-cake-mix-like sand from the folds of my dress and stepped out, slipped through the silent orange sand wondering how any place could be so quiet. Then we four wheeled and yee-ha’d over dunes and across wadis toward the Bedouin camp to sleep in the desert. Where we drove became the road. No matter how fast our driver went, I didn’t care. I knew that we could only crash into ourselves.
Sounds like fun!