I have been thinking a lot lately about the mysticism of the desert. In 2007 I lived in a small town off Route 66 (for real) in Arizona. There were two hotels located on opposite ends of the highway One supermarket; a Walmart, and some other tiny shops. They all lined the highway which was the main road in and out of the town. I can’t even remember the name of it.

The house I lived in was located on a street that was near a dead end. I would walk down the block and when I came to the end of the street, where the paved road met red dirt — the dust collecting on every exposed part of me — I would sit down on the edge of the curb and just breathe. I was in a weird flux stage at that point in my life, but something transfixed me in the desert, something that I still think about all these years later.

Once while out at dusk I was putting gas in my car. I noticed insects that hovered on the road and of course, swarmed in the headlights of cars. It was the most magnificent and disgusting display of nature I’ve ever witnessed, just the sheer number of them. As I pumped gas, I put on a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up (in 100 degree heat) that I had laying in my backseat just to keep the insects from buzzing around my orifices.

Maybe it’s the heat, a powerful element that takes on a life of its own. Temperatures grew easily to 115 F, and there was nothing to do except sit indoors with the air conditioning on high. Going outside, even momentarily is wholly unpleasant and sometimes downright dangerous. I stayed inside a lot and read. I made an altar to my dead grandmother and lit candles for her every morning. I meditated every day for 30 minutes, I ate nothing but raw veggies and spinach tortillas with pesto and pepper jack cheese, and one weekend I even fasted. I do not know why I did this, why I felt compelled to take my health and spirituality to the extreme. Maybe it was the same mystic thing (whatever that is) that makes the desert deeply spiritual that coaxed out of me my own version of whatever ideas I had about religion and self-discovery. Maybe I really did believe that God would finally listen to me and my prayers. I can’t say for sure. All I know is that I did begin the discovery of myself that year while living in a town so small, I cannot remember its name.

I had been considering moving to and getting a job in Flagstaff for a while, but one night I had a violent dream that two men broke into the house I was living at by myself and stabbed my brother (who would drive from the Bay Area to Arizona to see me from time to time) to death. I woke up from the dream in the dead of a night so quiet, the stillness was eerie and it creeped me out, I felt panicked. I decided to get the hell out of Arizona and move back to California, the dream had become an omen to me, of what I could not say but I didn’t want to stay and find out.

Everything felt magnetized to me in that town. I felt deeply connected to what the poet Hafiz calls “The Beloved”. I don’t call it God, I don’t have a name for it. I just remember it and through that I uncovered parts of myself I had long ago hidden. Revealing these less than savory aspects of myself to anyone was a risk too great, but living in the desert, I learned to do it anyway. It was Hafiz who wrote this and while in Arizona I knew it to be true: “At some point your relationship with God will become like this: next time you meet him in the desert or on a crowded city street, there won’t be anymore ‘leaving.’ That is, God will climb into your pocket and you will simply take yourself along.”