An Art Bell Radio Journey

An Art Bell Radio Journey             
              
     The parched hills roll like whales in a sea of the desolation of bone dry tumbleweed desert just past Tucumcari. We are hoping for a Santa Fe motel vacancy. The purple sunset glows like a nebula in the western expanse of the sky. It is 70 miles to Santa Fe and an old episode of Art Bell plays on the stereo, to bring the mystery of the cosmos into our cubist world on wheels. Here the night is a show billions of years in the making where satellites are newcomers on the celestial scene. The galactic night is for lovers who gaze across the millennia at the light of stars that are now cinders in hopes that SETI will intercept a signal from escape crafts on their voyage to our homeworld.  
     My heart beats in ambient percussion. The motel rooms are booked for a holistic healing convention and we don’t know where we will rest our heads tonight.    
     We pass silently across the dark New Mexican desert. Crimson sunset falls across the mountains. The scent of creosote bush blows through the window. Shadowy arroyos curve off into the blackness. Cars flow down hillsides, their headlights blinding me to the shadowy shoulder whizzing by.    
     Making the night drive from Tucumcari we    
listen to new age music as the ancient land sweeps by through the void that is at the heart of all, that emptiness that we minor characters in the great play of life pass through on our road to eternal bliss.  Occasionally I see a lost soul of the New Mexican night who, like a scarecrow, thumbs a ride to oblivion.      
     I sit comfortably in our vehicle creeping like a blind man through the darkness that we all know. I watch the lights pierce the darkness guiding us on our journey through the forgotten land.  This land was long ago deserted by the Pueblo tribes whose spirit washes across me as we plow through the night.      
      Native American flute music plays on the radio. The soothing, haunting melody suspends me in time. The road unfolds like a path to some sacred place. We bank and swing around the curves through the limitless void of darkness.      
      She sits beside me speaking quietly of life, death, and rebirth. Her syllables flow melodiously from her lips. She is a river of wonder, passion, and love. She is hungry to know what lies out there beyond the veil.      
     Her soft voice caresses my mind sending me to a place out of time. It is a celestial sphere of shining light where eternity stretches out limitless and majestic. Human reason cannot lead me into this mystery. She touches my hand with divine warmth.    
Like an angel of mercy, she leads me from the wilderness into myriad worlds.    
     I follow the highway like a falcon on the move deep in the dark well of the night with the city aglow in the mountain bowl below like the soft radiance of the Milky Way where Fourth of July fireworks explode in fiery fronds of heat and light.    
     We descend on the mighty rampart, the exit ramp, to the living breathing city and onto the street lined with stores, gas stations, and ephemera. The kaleidoscopic world dances by. Trillions of atoms vibrate in a chorus of wave patterns. City life buzzes to the fields of energy.      
     We pass through the city oblivious to the lights of buildings as they shimmer in the night air. My thoughts escape the bounds of the city encompassing multitudes of worlds.      
     Thousands of people trickle through the labyrinth of streets like corpuscles flowing through a maze of arteries. They move in a cybernetic organic body melded with circuitry.      
     People sail through the mechanized hive of humanity like angels flying in formation through a celestial sphere. They are beyond care, fear, or pain, the apotheosis of humankind. We are children of the stars, divine but mortal.      
     My heart flutters as the stream of humanity vanishes into the ethereal night. But there is no vacancy in this city of dreams. But still, the traffic signals lead us onward with their green flash. So we lay our quilts under the adobe façade of the Palace of the Governors where we join the people down from the hills to rest for a spell in the arms of love.    
     The passersby leave traces, residues of energy in the arc of light emanating from the street lights. Our fellow sleepers are shadows of the eternal who haunt the night. Life palpitates endlessly.