the driest spot in continental united states, where temperature could reach as high as 130 degrees, has been for this year not that dry at all.
because of the record rain in california this season, some three feet of relentless rain, death valley has been transformed into a showcase of life, vibrant, colorful and pollen heavy.
and in the bottom of the valley, below sea level, an ancient lake, lake manley, that has disappeared for ten thousand years has reconstituted and reappeared, a fully realized mirage of shimmering lake in the middle of what should have been a parched desert.
manang soling, the washer woman scheherazade of my island childhood, first introduced me to the giddy world of stories. as she told me, stories, if only i have the devotion to them, would unceasingly fall down from the skies, like monsoon rain. and all i needed to do to hear them was walk under the pouring rain like a pure hearted penitent.
growing up, i remember telling my friends with conviction tales of visitations, night visitations, of winged men and horses with blonde maned human heads. then a friend told his mother that i told them these strange tales. worried, his mother rushed to mama to tell her i must be delusional.
from then on, with manang soling forced to make a disgraceful exit from our household, i was reduced to memorizing multiplication tables, a necessary skill in helping mama tend our little store in our island’'s chaotic market.
i have been so dry since then that when i first read gabriel garcia marquez in college, i literally cried.
it rained for four years, eleven months, and two days...…the sky crumbled into a set of destructive storm and out of the north came hurricanes that scattered roofs about and knocked down walls and uprooted every last plant of the banana grooves. this from gabo'’s tale of the buendia family of macondo.
and i remember reading cien anos de soledad in a graffiti pockmarked cubicle in the university’'s cavernous library, skipping my afternoon calculus class, just to hear manang soling once again tell me this sweeping story allegedly written by one colombian writer named gabriel garcia marquez.
and since then, my only benchmark for a good read is when i hear manang soling again every time i decide to give the whizzing world the dirty finger and just curl up with a book.
this week, thinking of putting my hour'’s break at work to more productive use, i have began listening to one of my downloaded audiobooks, an audible potboiler. potboiler, because i thought this would keep me up at two or three in the morning.
this about a promising melange of a murder in an ivy league school, a mysterious - what else? - coded manuscript, and the secrets of a renaissance prince. but alas, I could not seem to last more than five minutes per seating. i ended up twiddling instead the radio attachment of my ipod.
scanning the airwaves last night, i got hooked to this quirky college radio station devoting almost an hour’'s worth of ad-free air time to the current miracle at death valley.
contoured badlands, splintery rock towers. now festooned with bright yellow, pink, white and deep purple blossoms. scruffy mountains, buckled earth. now a strange world of wildflowers, reflecting pools.
and then i hear manang soling, wash tub on her head, thrashing in the knee deep water. then, plonking down the corrugated iron vat, she uncoiled her bun of graying hair and started washing it in the murky water, the basin of soiled clothes drifting ever so slowly towards the psychedelic horizon.