When the speedometer reaches
highway speed, I'm in the wrong lane to drive straight ahead,
and return to where I began, the fear of never
being able
to
leave
New Mexico returns
too! The second time I get it right, a Traveler at last, passing the Rio
Puerco and Laguna Pueblo's radiant
past,
classical music on the radio at Gallup; passing the entrance
to the Petrified Forest, and Hopiland's Second Mesa, reservation
casinos, a trestle
over the dry Little Colorado River; climbing to 7,000 ft. outside
Flagstaff, and stopping for lunch beneath a Ponderosa Pine.
Then down into the desert again, rocketing through Hades
toward its elusive exit, I recall the story is
told that the holy Baal Shem Tov was dancing with the Torah
Scroll on the joyous festival of Simchat Torah. He handed the
Torah Scroll
to someone else, but he continued to dance. His disciple said,
'Our master
has laid aside the visible dimensional teaching. He has taken
the spiritual teaching of a junkie driving from New York to New Jersey
through the Lincoln Tunnel to meet his drug connection, but the
tunnel
never
ends. Suddenly he recalls that somewhere along the way he had
died.