June on the desert

Wonderful painting I found posted on FaceBook yesterday

June on the desert

7:16 am Monday June 3rd

June is here in its full summer glory. Desert summer glory is not the lush green summer world everywhere else. Nothing at all grows on the desert in summer. The plant world has to wait for the monsoons which arrive on July 4th to be watered.

Summer glory on the desert which takes place in June is all about heat and light. It is the month of our beauty heat and light climaxing. A month of crystal clarity, color, blue skies the green of desert trees,

Enchanted loveliness of morning and evening. And afternoons of unfathomable heat and brightness. Everything about June on the desert is a trip. It’s the apotheosis of everything, the beauty, the clarity, the light, the heat.

And as soon as the month is over the monsoons arrive. Lightning thunder and blessed rain.

That is our July and August.

For me happy summer is June. Altho by the time June is over we become one being awaiting our rains. That is when rock and tree, earth and animal, human and bird and insect, the animal vegetable mineral world and human world too, we become one mind, one heart, all we want most in world is rain.

We are waiting for that crack of thunder so loud it could be heard from here to Canarsie and that lightning so intense it turns red and takes up the whole sky, to announce they are bringing us our rain. We live on this rain all year. LOL this is how the desert gets watered.

The fanfare of its arrival is a not to be believed show. There is no thunder like it, there is no lightning like it. It goes on for hours and hours every day for 6 weeks and climaxes and releases itself in rain.

This is our future once glorious June starts. June is the idyllic summer paradise, that deep peace, the depths of quiet, before the wild raging drama which takes over our sky and desert for two months. When we get the show of shows and life giving rain is brought to the desert.

Is it any wonder I love living here.

We who do live here and love it can easily understand why no one else would.

After all during our glorious summer month June, you cannot step one foot outside the house in the afternoon. 

Even the lizards and snakes who find the world too cold to reside in it so they sleep in the earth all winter and don’t come out till it is 90 degrees, they can’t take our June afternoons either.   

They find shady spots to doze all afternoon. The shade is 10 degrees cooler than out in the sun.  It makes a difference. A huge difference.  Because after you hit 100 degrees, each degree above that feels like 10 degrees.  It is an exponential difference in the experience of the heat.

So being in the shade makes it comfortable to be outside, it is the only way to be comfortable outside for man or beast, bird or insect.

The heat itself increases continuously all afternoon till it finally climaxes at 4 pm. 

That is the point when you can’t stand it anymore.  By that point even having both coolers in your house turned up to high are beaten by the heat. The heat has won. 

All you can do is wait for sunset, when the whole huge heat goes bye-bye. Fortunately on the desert sunset comes early.  

And as soon as it does lovely life starts up again.   Afternoon heat is the intermission in your day.

You can’t do anything, you can't think anything.  No one can take a 4 hour siesta.  For an hour you watch tv.  Sleep overcomes you during the show. You wake up an hour later.  It is mid afternoon you come to your desk.

Spaced out from sleep and dreams you think your mind will click on. But it doesn’t. You try everything to interest you on the computer. At 4 pm you want to give up. You are hot and dazed. Your are in a worse stupor than when you arose from siesta.  And frustrated too. 

You are about to give it all up. “I’ll just water the house plants” you think, “and then go back to lounging on the bed.  Maybe the TV will have something interesting.”

But by that time it is 5 o’clock and life returns to the desert. The birds arrive in the backyard, shadows in your yard begin.  
  Energy rises again, all the energy which you thought was nada, which didn’t exist, comes back. 
  What a life!  5 o’clock the return of the energy.  

So after you water your house plants and think I’ll give it one more college try at the computer, for some reason it all catches.

FaceBook becomes interesting again. You are able to write a comment. You are able to edit one of your stories instead of blankly staring at it. If it is a week day you might even get an email.

I guess that is June on the desert. Life in the morning, life in the evening, and a long blank afternoon.

No wonder I think “how can anyone but a loony tune like me love this world of June on the desert.”