October 21 2020

By Bjorn Bengtsson

The moon is growing, larger are the early orange glow evenings the eye over the sea of star shines, smiling crescent before slipping behind land. Birdsongs, they are what keeps me aware of this breath. God is salvation time and apart time and time again and into eternity’s ever. Since first hour of the world, time got to tick-tocking, space unfurling, God walking into made human, made human endure birth as though we in our infinitude at this moment of conception in God’s will became something finite, tearful, wet and incapable. All to learn this we’ve always known. God is love in life. Twenty-one years since my finite renewal and this early morning I thought I’d died. God save me on the road, let me fall into slumber, too sweetened by the suckle sweet of my dreams to notice this world just passing through. Myself crashing into the orange guard rail, spinning, seeing glowing eyes of oncoming semi-truck, turning the wheel, impacting the guard rail again, blocked in, watching semi’s near miss me every couple of moments in time I’d been made to endure. I could not cry, could not puke, could only lay back in the desert sands, feeling my breathing body in disbelief, my fingers through my hair, staring into the sea of stars, it was not dark, the whole of the night sky lit.

Jerry stopped his semi, signaled to me, said I was bleeding, I said it was paint. He waved away the oncoming traffic using a flashlight and headlamp from the dark night accident, no more injuries please. I tried to push the totaled car away. He made me sit. I did. I felt up and again, over and over my skin, my body, my seething soul singing praises to God for sustaining life, quieting the thought I’d wish I’d died on impact. I looked with the stars, the stars are always, no matter the time or person or life. Felt connected at a deeper level to life. I’m kept alive by God for good reason, to this I live, thanks to God and in enumerations of the sacred life we share.  

The highway patrol came snaking the road to slow traffic, threw flares, fireman looked me up and down, I said I was alright, just shaken up and delirious is all. Jerry left. I was questioned by the officer about drugs, about whether I tried to crash, whether and why I hesitated when he asked about pain something because all I heard was painting and how my first canvas was in that car, how another jerry, the tow truck guy came and told me my cars totaled, dropped me off in the 4am place of Indio, like India but with palm trees, I laughed, I wandered the highway-side, put off a few thugs or people stranded like me and unlike me yelling indiscernible profanity mutter at me, and i kept walking in the night, strolled into a casino Starbucks, wrote, let a coffee go cold and undrunk, left and cried into the arms, the rays of pink yellow and white light of sunrise. Peaking over the mountains. I took a ride back to the junkyard, thinking about that cop’s question. I cried when he asked why I was alone, why I wouldn't tell him my family situation when I said and he said he’s only here to help. God with me and not alone, why I wasn’t home, my bodies internal spiritual is my home, if I tried to crash, I did not, I intended to make it safe and lovingly to Topanga. I want to be the greatest artist to love. I felt called to leave, could not live healthily at home any longer, to go, therefore I did.     

I arrived at the junkyard, met with Jerry, I asked if he had kids while he cursed and jingled his truck keys trying to start his third truck, he said yeah. I put my material life into two bags. Opened a fortune cookie amidst the rubble crash of my car’s interior. It said it enjoyed hearing me in conversation, when I’d talk. I realized then I’d be a writer, left all the paints, the pastels, the paint pens, the canvases and notebooks filled, and my first canvas I never painted, always kept pure and clean and with me. A prayer and I departed.  

I packed socks for my bare feet in my yellow paint spotted white reebok shoes I stood barefoot in. Hokusai’s views of Fuji, a small Van Gogh book, my grandpa’s bible, his son, my dad’s watch, my Blue Hour book manuscript, 3 empty midori notebooks. 10 underwears, two Ralph Lauren Polo red and white and black pants, white tank top, a shirt, a hoodie, a big coat jacket, the nameless instrument Jyl handed me, loose cash from the oriental red case, couple keto snacks to last a few days, Gabi’s prayer box, writing flair pens, toiletries, phone, wallet, sun necklace, light bead bracelet, my soul and body and love of God and people. 

This is all, I’ve been reduced to something great. In reducing I feel free. I leave books, paintings, sweet synesthesia memories capsuled in time talismans, imagine all your physicals, just left, junked. The material is only face of spiritual. I’ll live ascetic, spiritual, out of two bags; one bag has lots of colors and old paint love touches, the other bag is a tan tote bag. I have no car. Only love. Only God to carry me on, the only reason I am still alive.    

I sat in the sand drew symbolic tropes of internal happenings, my hands, circles, sticks and stones and the word love. Stood in the shade at the towing place, waiting for my ride. I talked to my father, the twins, my brother; told them I’m alive, the story, God keeps life, I love them.    

In the car I told Razann I’m gonna fall asleep. Apart from that second slumber prior my crash I’d not slept in near thirty hours. I occasionally opened my startled eye to a sharp turn or bump and once noticed no other cars, no buildings, we were on a one-way road deep up in desert mountains. I panicked and kept calm, I didn't know where we were, where we were going, what was going on; truthfully I’d felt like this most days, and all of today. I remember Patti Smith’s mother speaking through her the words what you seed on your birthday is how the year will flower. And Pissaro who said the painter who knows not what he’s doing is best. All I knew is I've seeded love time and time and the times I've felt to be eternal. Again a day comes, a year passes, a birth remembered. My 21st Birthday today like no other. 

I’d booked the first cheap location I found. $50 a night at a place called ‘the art hut’. Where roosters crow, pavement ends, crows squawk, blueberries grow, sun is full, you see the mountains surround from within the mountains, lots of stars. I hung my tan tote bag over my shoulder, strapped my old paint bag to my veined palm and walked along in to meet Kosh. Kosh has bright blue eyes and in his left eye a large speck of golden yellow ochre, glistening, lighting up as he looked at me. Toured with me his art community, homes like Michelangelo sculptures, a city like Kiefer’s rustic metropolis. This is his artist collective, homes he has built up in the mountains. I'm at the yellow diamond windowed, mountain facing ‘art hut’ he says. There is the snack shack, the sun-gloo, like an igloo but sungloo. We’re here he said a woman watched comfortably warm the south mountains blanket white with snow in winter. The star gazing home, open roof. The simple shack. 

Bathroom, the old recording studio. Two studios. His home adobe, masterpiece I’d say, and the paintings he’d made for future homes - digloo and teepee were my favorite. 

My window faced the same mysterious mountains. Old, green, fresh now, speckled with blue shadows and faded to a parma green at sharper distant peaks, near the feet the hills are verdantly green, millions of them and years of walking wise the desert scape, the mountains look like a slow pour of tree and rock. I cannot escape the desert, the desert escapes me.     

I finally slept, the sun made me sweat, my dreams made no sense but I didn't remember them anyway. I was caught in my chest with a serene panic at the uncertainty of my situation. I smiled, kept prayer, fell back asleep faithfully trusting God had me where is, God is, love is, life is.