Albuquerque

The moment came and passed without ceremony, a breeze rolling over the back of the cold ocean. We had been living for years with our new names, arrogantly assumed, and store bought lives, heads down, naive and in hiding. But they found us anyway. The witch who hexed our births, the king that demanded our newborn heads, the shadows that existed to consume our light, they all found us, as they do, our monsters.

We bought a 1977 Coachman Cadet a few months back and have been fixing her up since then, that is, until last month. Large parts of the subfloor and framing showed signs of water damage, so we pulled on our gloves and got to work stripping, removing and deconstructing the affected bits. Before we knew it, we had her completely bare, and then started the daunting task of reframing the whole unit, laying new subfloor and insulation.

Even in the beginning stages of demolition I could see that this was a process of one step forward and ten steps back, but the time of one’s Saturn return seems to imbue you with the superhuman ability to push past limits familiar and perhaps wise. Working sun up ‘til sundown for seven days a week on nothing but Bobo’s oat bars and coffee, the work was filled with more than its fair share of blood accidentally spilled, sweat lost and tears upon tears shed. Not even dreams escaped unscathed; nighttime visions were filled with choking clouds of sawdust and fiberglass. Anyone trying this at home, be easy on yourself and be easy on the ones you love.

Last month, while the moon was new, Nam and I both had disturbed dreams and uneasy sleep. The next morning we drove to our worksite to find that our whole structure had collapsed; we hadn’t been able to replace all the rotted pieces in time and had rendered it too unstable to stand against the night’s winds. Processing gradually, we looked to each other with a shared sense of unspoken resolve. For both of us, the project has come to be a monolith in our minds, a symbol of something far greater than the sum of its parts. It was a home, finally. It was self empowerment, the end of a cycle of victimization. It was putting our money where our mouths were. It was allowing ourselves to be happy. But mostly, it was building something concrete as opposed to a house of cards on the shifting sands of an unsubstantiated ideology to which our childhoods had us accustomed.

“This is a metaphor,” Nam said, breaking the silence. I nodded soberly; isn’t it always?

You know, astrologers say that life repeats itself with every completion of Saturn’s orbit, like the larger iteration of some cosmic fractal. Every 29 years or so, you pass through a gate wherein you can choose to take or leave behind certain behaviors, beliefs patterns, relationships, etc. according to your personal developmental needs. Nam and I had chosen to buy an old fixer upper while I was simultaneously attempting to mend challenging familial relationships, in fact, that was a large part of the reason why we chose to start this project in Colorado. While both ventures initially seemed as though they were proceeding smoothly, they eventually collapsed in a manner that was all at once physical, emotional and mental. And yet, as we stared at our pile of wood, nails and aluminum, an odd sense of lightness and relief slowly spread through us. Some things cannot be recycled, and we were beginning to see the resonance of that truth on many levels within our own lives. Maybe this is what the end looks like right before you walk through Saturn’s gate, and maybe your monsters are supposed to find you when you hide, so that you don’t miss an opportunity to walk through with eyes open. Perhaps our setbacks were nothing more than the spasming labor pains that come before waking to the dream of new life.

What the artist instinctively senses, but what no one ever tells you is that every act of creation is also an act of destruction. From the ocean of possibility, one and one only reality is selected, pursued and concretized. From that moment on, no other possibility is allowed to coexist until your psychic baby has completed its gestation and birth process. This dead cat in the box conundrum has gripped me for as long as I can remember, for how can you know that your choice was the best option out those myriad possibilities, that it was right? The haunting specter of perfection waged war with the natural sense of egalitarianism and burning curiosity that reside in my heart, as it does to this day. I was taught that mistakes came at too high a price, so measure thrice, cut once, if in fact you cut at all. In fact, best to let others make the cut for you. This restriction of expression evolved into a disempowerment of the self, fueled by sickening fears of failure and the ultimate self-victimization mantra, “I can’t,” all culminating in that moment when the frame fell. Right then, the wisdom of Saturn spoke louder than all the howling monsters, his message — if you give up, if you pass the buck, then you really can’t, and you never will, and all your fancy thinking won’t be able to able to change the reality that you rendered true for yourself. Failure is an attitude that reflects in the action, never the other way around.

So we decided to go to New Mexico for the next few months, Albuquerque to be exact. We hope to find warmer working days, more space with less people and some space of our own to continue our RV reno. Like a metaphorical flying carpet, all we’re hauling is our finished subfloor, our new foundation (how very Pluto in Capricorn). Since the decision, I feel myself opening up again and I’ve realized that being the co-creator in your own life can necessitate playing the role of destroyer at times. Some bridges are meant to collapse, some doors must be closed for others to be able to open. The deflowering mark on a blank canvas, what I used to think of as hubristic, I now see as an act of essential courage. Mistakes cannot and should not be avoided, to do so robs you of the opportunity to interface with novelty, the spark that creates new life. The pathway that leads to the fountain of youth rearranges itself after every visitor, endlessly unique and forever hidden to all but those willing to enter the maze.