It's spring time. Each day is a little bit warmer than the day before, here, in the Prescott National Forest, Arizona.
Living
in the Veterans Integration Center & working part-time in the
kitchen of the VA hospital, back in Albuquerque, New Mexico ~ these
honorable pursuits were having a hard time competing with the
approaching spring of '08.
"You've got a permanent job. You can work until its
time to retire. You've got it made!" quoth Quest, my roommate, a
slightly rotund Afro-American ex-military-man with a bad back & no
pension.
His side of the room, crammed with worldly treasures
& satelite-radio antennas, was organized in such a way that only he
could figure it out. For example, under his bed, under an empty
grape-juice bottle, there might very well be an important
court-document awaiting an important date, and under that a slice of
cheeze to be siezed for a midnight snack that very night. So sat Quest
in his underwear on the edge of his bed at two in the afternoon ~ like
Buddha, like Ghandi ~ a free-moral agent of the community & the
tenacious ruler of his narrowly-confined realm.
Each day of
spring is warmer than the day before, but not warm enough until
summertime, here in this half-rotten Ponderosa Pine forest of Arizona.
Seeing as I was born & raised in San Diego, jewel by the sea, in
southern California where the weather is always mediterranean, nothing
in these here parts seems to be warm enough until summertime.
Back
in Albuquerque, there stood I by the door, on my side of the room,
which was, of course, sparse & spartan. There stood I lean &
ready in my black & grey VA food-services uniform. And said I to my
sedate roommate, "I sure would like to get the fuck outta here."
And left.
That
is, I left to go do my daily chores on the evening shift at the VA. As
I ambled thru the last biting winds of winter & down the long
Veterans Integration Center porch to the bus stop on Central Avenue,
the eternally thoughtful Quest stuck his head out the door behind me,
many doors away now. "You forgot your badge," he chortled.
I
trudged back, a cursing yo-yo. I pulled my VA employee's badge off a
wall tapestry above my rack ~ stood there for a moment blankly
pondering a Douglas Johnson painting felched from a calendar, tacked to
the tapestry. The tapestry in actuality was a piece of rug-mat tacked
over a door-sized hole in the wall.
The
calendar painting, before which I stood a-pondering, was of two Indians the size of
crickets lounging around a pottery vase in front of a window. The little
Indians were painted white & decorated. Strange hieroglyphics were
all over the place. I had not a clue what the famous artist had in mind
when he painted this.
"So if you were to leave Albuquerque,
where would you go?" said Quest, curious & once again perched on
the edge of his rack.
"Prescott, Arizona," said I.
"What's in Prescott?" said he.
"Nothing,"
said I as I stepped out the door. Before I shut the door behind me, I
poked my head back inside the room long enough to add, "And
everything."
Slam.
###
top photo:
Mule deer in Prescott National Forest by John McCormack
bottom photo:
Veterans Integration Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico