Isn’t Life Strange
Isn’t life strange
A turn of the page
A book without light
Unless with love we write;
To throw it away
To lose just a day
The quicksand of time
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry – ~~~ Moody Blues (1972)
(here is the 1972 original album version)
That album came out when I was in High School. Like the other Moody Blues albums of the period (especially Days Of Future Past), I played it a million times and must have worn a groove in the record.
The photo above is Veronica’s campsite.
She used to live in that tent, and in her car, but she went upscale and now has a Chevy van (it’s the extended length version).
I certainly don’t love Veronica – I’m not sure if I even like her – but she is my winter nomad neighbor in the Arizona desert, for several years now.
Veronica has had a very hard life.
Veronica is a divorced – from a man – bisexual and gay woman (late 40’s early 50’s?)
She grew up in a dysfunctional family that I’ve heard hails from Ohio and/or Seattle.
There was violence, drug abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse and neglect, and prison in the family’s lives.
This winter was particularly hard for her – she had to euthanize her dog Leo (a “Dogo”) due to a painful degenerative nervous disease.
Last week, she had to leave in an emergency to attend to her 85 year old mother in Seattle who is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is on death’s door.
I know more about and have had more intimate and meaningful human interactions with Veronica – my desert nomad neighbor – certainly than virtually any neighbor and possibly any adult Ive known for the last 50 years.
She’s had beefs with me and I with her. But Veronica has been kinder and more aware of, sensitive to, and considerate and attentive to the feelings and needs of myself and my dog than almost any other human I’ve known. Certainly more “neighborly” and “civilized” than the suburban “elite – wealthy” neighbors I had in Hopewell, NJ.
Isn’t life strange.
“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknown God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to tame it. If you are conscious of something new – thought or feeling, wakening in the depths of your being – do not be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to look at it; let the springing germ have the protection of being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in upon its darkness.”
― Amiel’s Journal
Veronica is on the left in yellow. That’s her home (Chevy van) in the background. Her dog Leo is the white dog in the foreground. My dog Bouy is the black dog behind him next to Veronica. My other neighbor Kathy is on the right. The black dog next to her is Pepper. Missing from the photo is Jake, Veronica’s other dog, a small beagle like mutt.