Nowhere afterglow

I knew Nowhere would solve some riddles, piece some puzzles together and then add a whole new riddle puzzle to the mix. That’s just what the desert does best. And perhaps that’s also what I go there for. To be as far away as possible from all that belongs to reality, or at least looks or feels or smells like it. The desert covers everything with a layer of dust, even the sparkle in your eye gets dusty but beneath the dust you still sparkle and you know it and people see it and tell you and you go home carrying that sparkle for as long as you can.

Out there in the desert, I thrive. Between the pounding headaches, blazing sun, crunchy sand between my teeth, a period that doesn’t seem to follow the moon as much as the festivals (am I the only one who has her period during every single festival, no matter the moon phase?), the blur between night and day and the shedding of skin like a dry desert snake, I find my inner most confident beaming being. There are people lifting each other up and everything just makes sense in the weirdest of ways. We all take care of ourselves and each other so everyone is cared for. As lonely as I can feel sometimes in the city, as together we are out there. A few intense weeks that fuel my batteries for the rest of the year.

This year, I was lucky to share this part of my world with my love. For the first time he joined a burn and just like it did for me, a door to a world swung open for him that can’t be closed anymore. Or at least, you would do anything not to close it. You go about your day to day, but your mind is stuck in the door, reminding you of that place where you learned, you saw with your very own eyes, that magic really does exist.

Lots of magic and celebration happened in those intensified days and nights, and we created our decompression on the way back, sweating out the dirt in hot Valencia where we lived as in a moving nest, washing away dust, unpacking then packing again. Then it was off on our own journeys to take back home all we experienced in the years that felt like minutes that were no more than 11 days.

I’m writing this from a lush green forest in the north of Portugal, where I swim in the river as much as humanly possible before turning into a glitter fish, I stare at trees and listen to birds and people and plan on doing exactly this, in a delicious delirious loop, for one dreamy month. Letting the dust settle and dance in the afterglow.