In my fantasy the water is so warm again.
She found herself driving through New Mexico on a long highway between two other highways, like driving along the horizontal line on the capital letter H. Everything in New Mexico is so far a part and there are dozens of highways that connect other long stretches of highways. These are some of the most silent places in the world, the silence of the New Mexico high desert.
She left town abruptly and told nobody, she wished she had somebody she wanted to tell she was leaving but anyone she’d tell would ask too many questions or want to come with her. But she did’t want anyone to come on this trip. The new semester at Community College where she had just started teaching will start in a few weeks and she needed to have at least a day to relax deeply in some far off New Mexico hot spring.
New Mexico hot springs are her favorite places in the world and there are many she has yet to visit. There are several that are well known to most tourists but many that are off the map and not on a travel website, to find them you just have to drive down a long stretch of highway and there will be signs. If you are not looking for them you will miss them.
The sky is big a blue and cold, the sun is bright and silent. She stops her car to pee, and turns off the motor. Her steps crunch and grind on the gravel beneath her feet. Animals from miles away take notice of each footfall, she squats and her stream of pee sends waves of sound through the mesquite for miles. Lizards hear her pee, hawks turn their heads, insects feel the rumbling above them as she finishes her business and pulls up her pants and buttons.
She stops to notice the silence. This is what she was looking for. The hot water and the deeply relaxed muscles is why she set out on her trip, but it is this moment, under the heavy blue clear sky, and the massive silence, that she needed.
The world needs to just shut the fuck up, she thinks. She dared not take another step to break the silence of her moment with the vast emptiness of the desert space. This the llano. She didn’t breath with a noise, she barely moved to not rustle her clothes. She stood where she was, above her cooling and sinking puddle of pee, she could hear her liquids as it descended through tiny stones and sand.
The sky and the emptiness of the space pushed on her whole body and mind. This stillness of the atmosphere, undisturbed by even the slightest sound wave, settled onto her. The pressure settled on her chest and pushed out everything that was holding her back. She can’t hold back her tears, and the sky and air pushed out her breath. She keeps as still as possible and lets this giant sky press her to cry. A slow long panting, short inhales, of this cold heavy silent sky, surround her from all sides. She looks up, and out, and turns around without making a sound. Step by step, each footfall crunching the gravel below her feet like firecrackers. She closed the door to her car, and sat in the muffled quiet car space and started the engine. A few miles away, she sees a sign for a hot spring ten miles off the highway.
The ranch gate to the spring hangs a sign, “Old ways hot spring WELCOME.”
Down the dirt road she sees a few adobe buildings nestled in the sage brush. Parked around the largest of the abodes are a few cars and trucks and a fully restored shiny airstream trailer.
She parks and knocks on the short wooden door, a bell rings as it opens. “Hello? Are you open?”
After she checks in and pays the day use fee, she gets back into her car and drives around the back of the other casitas to the hot pools.
The pathways to the pools are dimly lit as the sky turns its dark blue and begins to pepper little stars above her head. She removes her clothes and slips into the deep soft walls of the spring. She hears other bathers voices nearby, but the spring is only and all hers for now. The sounds of the babbling and gurgling waters whisper their prayers into her ears. She sighs and trembles thinking about her bathroom break earlier. She’s never heard such a silence, she’d never felt such a heavy sky.
All of her worries, all of the pressures of the city, were as small a she was.She enters a trance and imagination takes over. The following vision plays like a projector in her mind.
In my fantasy the water is so warm and reflective and the moon is above us I can feel their shining wet skin and we fit together so well in that warm pool We also have a bowl of sweet fruits beside the edge of the warm pool There’s a small jar of honey for our tea and I dip my finger in it and she suck the honey off my fingers slowly She sits on me wrapping her legs around me tightly and we sink lower into the warm water . Her head on my shoulder Above and around the pool are trees and bushes with fragrant flowers and chirping crickets and birds nearby call to each other into the night The pool of water is quite hot and we lay at its edge , bathing in the moon’s light and steam rises from our sleek naked bodies We wrap each other in big soft white towels and stay warm next to the pools edge and stare at the bright clear star filled sky . Stars shoot and sparkle and the night seems to last forever We feed each other fruit and pour from a hot teapot that seems to never empty We stay wrapped in our fluffy towels and drift away to sleep and dreams but awaken to find each other still in our embrace- the feeling this brings us is safety security and gentle joy — a quiet peace that fill us and settles deep inside our soul The little grotto we find ourselves in is so private and calm, the air around us is silent and still — there is nothing but the whispers of the softly flowing waters and the easy breath from our delicate open mouths We finally fall deeply into sleep still in our embrace and we dream the same dream again but every time we wake up the grotto and surrounding garden grows around us until it’s. all there is in the whole world All our life is wandering from grotto to warm pool to garden to hidden path, over small stone and wooden bridges, into dark crunchy orchards and back to sleep and dream again in our safe warm embrace Some paths lead to caves with glowing stones and deep turquoise pools where we swim under and out into other overgrown garden paths We simply forget all about the world we came from, all of the pain suffering and loneliness, we just keep wandering deeper into our little flower and spring filled world We eventually forget how to speak, all we do is smile and laugh and look deeply into each other’s eyes, we laugh because we’ve forgotten every word. All we need is to smile and keep finding deeper and and warmer waters, taller fruit filled orchards, and more silent and still spaces to sleep and dream Our warm flower filled world of springs and pools continues forever, we forget who we were and even who we are, how we became, only that we love each other. All we are is love there.
The springs are nestled along a small mountain, a baby mountain, more than a few hills but less than a true mountain. Three small mountains, surrounded by sage brush and mesquite trees, at the base are a small group of adobe buildings, they have a square shape but the sides incline. In each of the small windows a glow is emitted from soft lamps inside.
The pools are behind each of these casitas, maybe five or six pools are spread out between the buildings and are connected with soft dirt trails with sage and softly lit by old lanterns on either side.
The pools are encircled by large flat slate. Each pool has a covered seating area and a iron fire basket with a bundle of wood ready to burn for warmth. The sky above the pools is clear and full of stars, smeared and smudged across the sky like a child’s finger painting.
The air is crisp and cool, cold enough to make sitting in the hot pool inviting. The pools are deep enough so a bather can stand in them with just their neck and head above water. Inside along the walls of the pools are soft benches, each bench a different level and one serves as the first step into the pool.
The water is silky and smooth, filled with minerals, and it shines and reflects the light of the lanterns and the stars like a living moving mirror. The water is hot, hot enough to require frequent submersions and surfacing. We sit on the edge with our legs in, or lie on our backs ladling handfuls of hot mineral soup over our breasts.
We sit naked in the waters, clothed only by the waters and the darkness of the desert night.
The lanterns glow a warm orange atmosphere over the pools, they light the edges of the sage brush paths, the slick wet slate around the pool, and the shiny smooth skin of the bathers.
She feels a drunk overcome her, the magic minerals of the pools distilling through her pores. Her eyes close slowly and heavily, and she falls into a meditative state. She looks at her pile of clothes and old tennis shoes, where her car keys and phone are buried. That pile of garments and footwear is her only connection to the world back in the city. She looks one last time before she lets her self slide under the surface of the woozy effects of the hot pool.
The stars are in the pool now and she floats amongst them, her breasts float above the surface and space with all of her, galaxies swell and swirl at the edge of her skin.
She merges with the waters, with the sky, with the stars, and the minerals. A small star herself, like a grain of sand, loosened from a greater mountain mother. A sediment of clay, washed free over delicate Christina. She is a ceramics teacher at the community college and she often started her new classes with a descriptive story about the origins of clay.
She told her students all clay begins as a mountain, she calls this mountain the mother. The mother mountain, through the thousands of years of being washed and rinsed by storms and rains and blizzards, sheds her tears of sediments and minerals.
Down her sides and breasts these minerals slide, down her hips and between the valleys of her thighs they run like red blood. By the streams and rivers these minerals pool and gather, collecting the bodies and parts of plants as the rains wash over the mother mountains curves. Down by her feet, closest to the earth, she becomes terra cotta, rich red clay. Iron, like the dark metal in our blood that stains our sheets and underwear, fires bright orange. These pots are great for plants and roof tiles, and tiny oil lamps.
Before her body finds its way to the lowest valleys, she is married to rocks and sand, and becomes stoneware. This fires grey and tan, and is good for making teapots and thick walled mugs for hot drinks, and sturdy dinner plates.
Lastly, she tells her students, closest to her breasts, before any thing else has a chance to mix and marry her body, is where she becomes porcelain. This pure and hard clay is called kaolin, and is fired hotter than any of the rest of the types of clay. Fired porcelain almost becomes like glass, vitrified. The thin walls of a porcelain cup will glow like the moon when held to the light. Because this clay is made from the part of the mother mountain that nearly touches the full moon every month.
