Jealous Sunbeams
By Daniel ‘DL’ Landes
Art by Nick Flook aka Flooko
Published Issue 129, September 2024
✨ For Alicia Cardenas ✨
A long steady gaze at nothing in particular is better than prayer. A slow walk, side by side with a friend in silence, is a dream within a dream. Life does not pass quickly when you move at earth speed. Spend an entire day traveling the same distance as a roly-polly or an ant. Do as little as possible to see what you attract. Now do even less.
•
Jealousy exists in sunbeams. Clouds carry the frequency of avarice. All rivers lead to the lowest point.
Where would I have to sit to be at peace with the state of the world as it is right now?
•
In a car with a cracked windshield I cross the country to escape myself. Pulling into truck stops every few hundred miles to purchase gas and check the oil; I also attempt to buy some kind of escape: erotic massages, donuts, lottery tickets. I’m aware these entry level addictions would get me laughed out of a NA circle but they cause me enough distraction to prevent me from liking myself, or even knowing myself. With each stop, I hope to feel a warmth; like my mother’s touch, an accolade from my father. Perhaps by desiring sex, fat, salt and sugar I seek to be desired in return. My deepest desire is to be desired.
Unfortunately, the feeling I’m searching for never comes, or at least it never lasts. These experiences only deepen my shallowness. When they don’t deliver what I so desperately need, I feel waves of shame and promise myself to change my behavior; to make healthier choices moving forward. Making a mantra of the promise, ‘Never again. Never again,’ I repeat this over and over for miles until the shame abates opening cracks for the cravings to crawl in again. I spend hours driving down the highway trying to convince myself the next stop will be different. Of course it never is.
Who is the ‘I’ that is doing the convincing and who is the ‘myself’ that needs convincing? This thought begins to break the shame/reward cycle I’ve been stuck in for decades. Why are there two parts of me? Where do the I and the myself reside in my body? In a molecule? A cell? The mind? The soul?
The battle between I and myself leaves me exhausted. The relentless shadows overwhelm my best intentions. With no more left to give this fight, I pull over on a road with no name outside of a town I can’t remember. The moonless night is humid and full of insects. Whatever disease I carry has become too heavy to travel any further. Incapable of a full satisfying breath I wheeze closer and closer to panic. My joints ache with inflammation. “Who is to blame for this shitshow of a life?” I scream into the night. Falling flat beside my car the damp air smothers me like a blanket. The bugs feast on my body. I can go no further.
Can I kill the ‘I’ to save ‘myself’?
•
The sun announces his arrival by turning pink the low clouds on the eastern horizon. The sky begins to take on the blue-green color of the sea. A bird song beckons me onto a path that leads into a patch of trees that once was a forest. A group of people gather around a fire next to a low tent, like a giant tortoise shell, made of bound willow branches and covered in blankets. My shame prevents me from making eye contact with others as they tend a fire and mill about preparing for what I do not know.
A man invites me forward and smudges me with the smoke from a burning bundle of silver sage. This is not me I say, this ritual is not mine. I have no rituals. He motions me toward the low tent. On my knees I crawl inside through a small opening. A return to the womb. In the center is a shallow pit filled with rocks glowing orange with heat. I see only slivers of faces illuminated by the early morning light coming through the opening of the tent. We are all in this because we are broken beyond belief. We all are searching for relief.
Wearing a simple cotton smock, a woman with tattoos across her fingers and hands grasps the ladle and spoons water onto the hot rocks. Steam. Heat. The smoke of cedar curls up like a blue ribbon. My body is cramping. The panic builds. I can’t breathe. Get out! Bolt for the door! Get back in the car and drive! Fuck this! The water hisses on the stones. The woman sings songs about our ancestors. “You are not your thoughts,” she says as she continues to ladle water onto the rocks, “although they will stop at nothing to convince you that they are.” “Thoughts” she says, her eyes bright like the moon, “are wonderful tools but terrible masters.”
The heat eventually abates. The others dissipate back to where they came. The woman with the tattooed fingers slips beneath the underbrush and disappears. The river, gently falling beside me, is the only sound. A rolling gospel pure and clear.
‘Do less,’ it says. ‘Now even less.’
Daniel “DL” Landes spent decades as a restauranteur, author and publisher. As the owner of multiple restaurants in Denver, CO – and then a hostel in Mexico – he dedicated himself to creating environments where people could work out their humanity while eating and drinking. Now relocated to Santa Fe, DL says that “living in the Galisteo Basin impresses a unique and humbling perspective. Under the expansive, enchanted New Mexican sky I can feel so small and so big. I made a career of kicking up dust; living in the storm until the storm lived in me. When the dust settled two guideposts appeared: Spend more nights under the stars; provide a service.”
Nick Flook aka Flooko is “the O.G astronaut painter” and takes his fans on adventures through original acrylic paintings and animations. This Toronto-based artist specializes in surrealism, space-themed work and impressionistic city and landscapes. See more of his work on his site and follow him on Instagram for more work.
Snag issues of Birdy past for Daniel’s other published works, and check out Nick’s August Birdy install, The Meeting Place, in case you missed it by heading to our Explore section.