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Desert Journey

by Carol May

200 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-1595; ISBN 1-4120-3767-0; US$19.20, C$23.95, EUR15.60, £10.81

Marian travels alone in the desert to search for understanding - of why she lost her partner Conrad - and how to survive. By layering memories, dream visions and transforming experiences, she travels through laughter and tears, love and sorrow, to a new beginning.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

When Marian is left in the desert by her partner Conrad, she is compelled to figure out why. Their project abroad has back-fired, and now Marian's journey of self-discovery begins. As she drives toward a distant line of mountains, she leads her mind back in time. She re-visits her complex relationship with Conrad as physiotherapy colleagues in Europe, Canada and China. Important companions emerge to guide her: her "crazy angel" husband, wise elder women, little children, animal messengers and the enigmatic healer, Dr. Wei. This mix of real and imagined experiences includes the dramatic landscape of the desert. Marian, who grew up in the rainforest of British Columbia, now learns from the Arizona desert how to survive "down to the cellular level." In healing from the wound with Conrad, she learns more about love.

The elliptical rhythm of her inner and outer journey gradually comes to a balance, when Marian creates a ceremony to mark the completion of her Desert Journey.

"Desert Journey"is being carried by: Women in Print Bookstore 3566 West 4th Avenue, Vanouver. phone: 604 732 4128

It is also available at: branches of the Vancouver Island Regional Library

B.C. Cancer Agency Library 675 West 10th Avenue, Vancouver. phone: 604 675 8005

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About the Author

Carol May was born in 1945 in Vancouver, Canada, and lives there and on an island off the coast. She studied at the University of British Columbia, first in Rehabilitation (BSR), and then in Fine Arts (BFA), and at Simon Fraser University (creative writing courses).

In her work in physical rehabilitation and visual art, she has been influenced by diverse lands and peoples. Her first teacher, her father Arthur Adam, alerted her to the profound complexity of the natural world. She seeks out cultural responses to nature, especially in ancient societies such as the Haida and the Chinese. During her own rehabilitation from illness with cancer, she explored a broad range of healing arts from various cultures. Integration of seemingly disparate strands of knowledge and expression has been an ongoing theme of her art practice. For example, her series, "Gestures of Music," exhibited at Hornby Island and Vancouver, unites major musical works and large drawings. Throughout her life, she has been inspired by the creative, integrative capacity of all children.

Desert Journey is Carol May's first novel.

She is deeply grateful for the creative support of her family: Vera, Michael, Heather and Colin, and dear friends and esteemed teachers.

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Excerpts

"This is a wise tale about a woman who, passing through loss of love and the challenge of cancer, reclaims her deepest strengths.

Woven delicately into Marian's story are rich and evocative descriptions of nature and its eternal messages of beauty and transforming power."

Sheila Hanischewska-Dyer

Gabriola Island, B.C.

"I enjoyed this book tremendously. I read it right through -- largely because I got caught up with the characters and the long dance of their relationship.  I thought the use of correspondence was brilliant in showing the evolution of their story over so many years.  As a former rehabilitation therapist and a survivor of breast cancer, I found it refreshing to have these viewpoints shown so well in a novel.  It made me realize how rare this is."

Patricia Ryan

Vancouver, B.C.

"This book was well worth reading and very enjoyable.  Especially, Carol May's description of the Canadian landscape really came through to me.  It was so clear she was seeing it with her artist's eye and painting word pictures/poems.  Of all the landscapes in the book it was clearly the Canadian ones which are best known and dearest to her, over and above the wealth of other landscapes and experiences she skillfully depicts."

Elaine Almen

Vasteras, Sweden

"I am so glad to have this book in my life at this time.  It has a relevant message to me about my relationships.  I admire Carol May's ability to leave each character in their own truth and not to paint them into a sunset.  She has an insightful way of building the moments in the present and weaving them into the web of the past.  There is a connection here between reality and enlightenment, through the beauty of observation. I am not hesitant in recommending this book to anyone."

Ingvar Creed

Duncan, B.C.

from Part One - Starting Out

... Back then, instead of the middle-aged comrade and mother that I am now, it was a naive girl who stumbled into London off the ship. The East End was a confusing din of double decker buses, voices with incomprehensible accents and footsteps rushing through the narrow space between brick buildings. This was far in every way from Herring Cove in British Columbia, where I was born.

All my family were originally from this "Old Country," though my sense of home was anchored in our village on the Pacific coast. I used to sit on the cliff watching the tide sliding in over our beach, while eagles and ravens called to me in familiar voices. Angled against the sky on the far end of our cove, totem poles quietly proclaimed the ancient clan figures: thunderbird, bear, dogfish, eagle, frog, raven. Sometimes my dad took me deep into the forest to visit the stone faces hidden under ferns. Secreted away in them were the stories of mythical times. They silently watched us. That's where I learned to love the damp, green places.

It was rare that we had visitors in Herring Cove. When a seaplane buzzed in, all the kids ran along the boardwalk to the dock to meet it. We were dying to find out who had come and if they had brought parcels from far away.

Now it was me in the far away, hailing a taxi for the first time, dizzied by the ride down Fleet Street and around Trafalgar Square until I was dumped with my dad's brown valise outside the hospital residence. It was straight from a Dickens' novel, with blackened brick, stone statues, tall dark windows and dim hallways. The austerity of my room seemed like the wartime that my father described. All around rumbled London, the centre of the world. I felt like a tiny tree frog in a huge concrete mansion. When I asked some nurses in the hallway where to start work, they had trouble understanding me, the Herring Cove accent was that foreign. They smiled as if to say, "Another Colonial, fresh off the boat."

from Part Two - Correspondence

... This is a peculiar landscape. Nothing is recognizable. These so-called plants are like rag-tag bouquets of bent black wands, each one topped with glowing cigarette ends. The colour of huckleberries, but certainly not edible. I have to stop and look more carefully. No. Not anywhere near like real flowers. Not like that sympathy basket Conrad sent me. All white: lilies, orchids, baby's breath, even gardenias (he remembered about the gardenias). He knew just how to wrench my heart. There's no shade here whatsoever. If I angle the car toward the fence, maybe I can sit against the wheel and not get burnt up. That must be Mexico in the distance.

Now is the time for thinking about Josef, my crazy adorable angel. Our marriage was simple compared to my friendship with Conrad. Sometimes I chuckled to imagine what my father would have thought about Josef. Some people marry someone like their dad; I guess I didn't have a chance to find out what he was really like, because I was still a kid when he died. He seemed so upright, indignant about these new-fangled ideas: "Gimmicks, gimmicks, that's all they are!" But Josef; he was a cobbler of gimmicks, and what glee when he devised an outrageous solution. The dashing away of protests: "Whatever works! Don't knock it!"

But he could be so infuriating. He just couldn't imagine what it's like to be a woman. He didn't talk to my mind, he talked to me as his mate.

My friend Michelle said, "It's high time we take ourselves seriously. That old fun and games is out. And who should take us seriously first is our husbands."

Josef just couldn't get his head around this. He said, "Of course I take you seriously. You're my wife! What do you think is more serious than making children? Come on, let's make another one."

Honestly. I could spit with frustration. So I pounded him, just pummelled him. And that made it worse. Because it's awfully hard to resist someone who's holding you down and laughing and kissing you everywhere. So I wasn't very successful in raising our relationship to a new level. He was so sure that the world is a sunny place. You struggle bravely in the storms and celebrate when you survive. Everyone has a part, and when we share our work and make a good time, we're happy. He was delighted with my cooking, he adored his children, he ranted against some of his clients but he used whatever charm or persuasion to complete the job, and then he had this uncanny ability to brush off the dust and laugh, and look all bright-eyed at the next project. It was the same with mountains. And I knew he would kill for me. That's quite an endearing trait.

from Part Three - Reunion

... I guess we kind of formed the Conrad-and-Marian team, in those months. But we didn't realize how fragile it was. On the weekends we began cooking our own versions of the new dishes we'd been tasting. Nurse Lai taught us the key words so we could buy fresh produce from the street vendors. One Saturday evening we cooked up quite a feast on the hotplate in the centre of our blue tile counter: soup with lotus root and mushrooms, rice, bean curd with greens, and some succulent shrimps. We toasted each other with tea: Buon Appetito! like the old days at Mario's. While we did the dishes we regaled ourselves with favourite songs from the flat in London. Instead of settling down to his reports as usual, I was surprised to watch Con rummaging in the glass bookcase in the corner next to the donated Japanese tapedeck. He flipped through the tapes"

"Well, what have we got here? Polish Polka Party? Not tonight... People's Fourth Urology Congress? No thanks... Eine Kleine Nachtmusich? Another time... Tango Fiesta? Perfect!"

And just like that, we whisked ourselves back to the dance clubs of London. "Marian! You haven't forgotten!" He smiled down at me.

"You taught me well, Con."

How could I forget what it was like to be held by him, a young girl fresh off the boat? The pause and the turn, the legs interleaved, the slow and the quick, the promise of more.

He guided me past the windows, past Neurology Ward 3 across the lane, where nurses were preparing their patients for the night. But we didn't notice. We were immersed in that special rhythm of the tango. We turned and our eyes chanced to meet.

from Part Four - Ceremony

... I put my letter at the end of the conference notes, and slid them onto the back seat. I turned the key in the ignition and swung the car again onto the empty straight road heading east.

There was a left turn off the highway onto a gravel road, after the sign "National Park -- Geronimo's Last Stand." The track wound upward through a long narrow valley, past an old log house with a phone on the side wall. I guess it was a ranger station. I tried calling Mum and the kids but there was no answer. Driving deeper into the valley, I became surrounded by steep rock walls, rising dark and cracked to the top where rounded boulders were piled up like giant heads. They seemed gouged and bleeding because the stone was stained a purplish red. The wind blew through them like the whining and cracks of arrows and guns, the groaning and crying of the dying warriors, the panicked neighing of horses, and the rushing mocassined feet of the wailing women.

I stopped the car in a dry grassy meadow and fished out some stuff from my backpack: an orange, some matches, my mother's coat and Yuen's shawl, my frog purse and the jar with curving lid.

There was a faint path through the grass to a dry river-bed edged with a tall procession of trees -- huge birches with that white bark flecked with dashes, and shivering leaves. Some way along there was a flat clearing of sand and dry leaves. It was so hot even under the trees that I had to sit down. The air was still and quiet then. The sorrowful battle of the wind had faded away. I ate my orange and then I just sat on the sand for I don't know how long. Such fatigue. It was as if my body had just shut down. But around me I had a sense of shadowy figures. They drifted closer. Phantoms...

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Catalogue Information

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