Sunday, June 17, 2007

Manifest Destiny

Tuesday, June 12 ~ I-25 between Albuquerque & Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'm on my way to Santa Fe because Federal Express has delivered two advance copies of The MoonQuest to my mailbox there. (The bulk of the shipment arrives in Albuquerque on June 18.)

As with every aspect of this journey, I'm equal parts excited and scared. And when I get to the UPS Store, I leave the FedEx package until last, opening every other letter and parcel before I rip apart the white padded envelope with its distinctive orange and purple lettering.

Seeing the book in published form takes my breath away. I don't breathe again until, shakily, I leaf all the way through it to be sure that its pages are not only fully present but right-way-up.

When my breath finally returns, it's quavery and teary.

Before I left Flagstaff, Arizona in March for Albuquerque, knowing that I was about to launch the publishing process, I stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. The fortune, which I still carry in my wallet, read, Look for the dream that keeps coming back. It is your destiny.

This dream snuck up on me 13 years ago, when The MoonQuest's first words made their own way onto my blank page (see A Horse or Two of a Different Color). Since then, however long it absented itself from my life, The MoonQuest has always come back. This last time, it insisted that I bring it to completion.

I don't believe in the disempowered choicelessness of most definitions of destiny. As Toshar (The MoonQuest's main character) is constantly reminded on his MoonQuest, there is always a choice. At the same time, a commitment to living the highest possible choice strips us of many other choices and, ultimately, connects us with our heart's desire and soul's passion, which, in the end, is an aspect of destiny.

Why am I crying as I hold the book, my book, this being with its own imperative that birthed through me?

Release and relief, of course. But more than that, I'm crying because I have touched my destiny, a destiny I freed to manifest through me.

They are tears of joy. They are tears of birthing. They are tears of new life -- The MoonQuest's and mine.

Order your copy of The MoonQuest today -- through www.themoonquest.com or through Amazon.com using this direct link.

Desert Spring

Friday, June 8 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

As I amble along a nature path in the foothills of Albuquerque's Sandia Mountains, I feel the stress and high anxiety of the day begin to dissolve.

It began this morning. In fact, I woke with it, with the unsettledness that comes of leaving two and a half months of what passes in my life for domesticity.

Today is the day the (relative) rootedness of a Santa Fe sublet makes way for a return to the mutability of a life in motion.

Today is the day that completes the printing and binding of The MoonQuest.

Today is the day one journey ends and another begins.

It's exciting, of course, but discomfitting too.


And so as my feet touch the feldspar, mica and quartz that comprise Sandia's granite, I'm grateful for the emotional grounding I always feel here. I'm grateful too for the explosions of brilliant color scattered through these desert highlands.

If you've never visited or lived in the desert, you probably think of it as not only dry but barren and colorless. Yet spring here in the high desert -- particularly after a wet winter -- brings with it not only infinite shades of green but the polychromatic splendor of desert flowers in bloom, their intensity heightened by the limited palette New Mexico normally offers.

The new growth and the vividness of the cactus flowers remind me that the same energy of renewal unfolding around me on my Sandia walk is also coming alive within me. Spring is here.

Sandia Photos by Mark David Gerson