Written circa 1988, a few years after I began writing using computers, post-divorce, still trying to figure everything out, but continuing to write. Unlike most other entries, this one has no dialogue, only an internal monologue and goes just a bit surreal. Enjoy (2024-02-20).

Lunchtime. Serious look on my face all day, trying to mentally negotiate the dangerous territory of my emotional instability. Depressed. Confused. Taxed to my physical limit. I have set myself on a rigorous course. The aerobics, the writing, the relationship expectations, I have gone beyond previous boundaries.

I have risked. And just when I was expecting some sort of oasis, some place for me to glide along the trailing edge of the path I had chosen, I hit turbulence.

Across the desert I had flown, far beyond the urban edges of my previous reality. Under the cloudless blue of the endless sky, across the ocean of white sand, I became one with the voiceless expanse. In my memory I could see the spot where I would find the spring of cool water, I could see the single palm that I would recline under, I could feel the soothing caresses of the woman who would take away the terrible ache from the recesses of my parched soul. The hot desert wind blowing across my wings, pulling at my feathers, I smiled at the thought of my resting place. Finding strength where there had been none, I faced into the wind and made straight for my destination. 

The wind was the only melody that I heard and the sun never moved from its spot. My mind tired of the sand and the wind. I was lost in countless thoughts and questions. My soul began to ache again and I shut my eyes tightly against the pain of it. In my memory I saw that beyond the next ridge lay my destination. 

Instinctively I began my descent. Rather than beginning my descent with a gentle circular corkscrew pattern I was so sure of my waiting refreshment that I went into a straight sloping descent. Rapidly gliding along the trajectory set in my memory I was horrified, upon opening my eyes, to find no spring of water, or shady palm, or ministering soul where my feet were about to touch down. Only more sand and rocks, uninhabitable and unwelcoming. 

Eclipsing the efforts and pain of the previous hours I furiously flapped my wings, staring straightway into the unflinching unfeeling eyes of the barren desert floor. Feverishly flexing my chest muscles against the unresponsive wind, I closed my eyes against the vision of the accelerating flat plane of death. I strained at the thought of being no more. Time stood still. I knew in a moment I would hear the sound of breaking bones and feel the dizzying sensation of a dreamless sleep. But that moment never came. 

The desert floor broke away, yielding to an endless chasm. A hot updraft blew along the edge of the cliff and I found myself miraculously hovering above the cliff’s edge. I was not made for this hovering and the foreign sense of balance soon left me and I began to drop again into this greater chasm. Only this time there was room and time to begin the circular pattern that was going to draw me out of this descent and along another path. 

Again, engaging the reserves I knew I no longer had I flexed and relaxed, flexed and relaxed, wings against wind, rhythm and sweat. Ever so slowly my shadow climbed along the walls of the chasm toward the cloudless blue of endless sky. 

Was there ever an oasis there? I still don’t know. Somewhere there has to be one. I was only a finite speck along a carpet of sand and earth under a dome of unyielding blue. Only so many more times would I be able to avoid finding dreamless sleep across the unfeeling desert floor.