Heloderma suspectum

            I don’t care if gila monsters have one of the “lowest lizard sprint speeds” or that there are “no confirmed reports of fatalities” from being bitten by one of these snakes with legs. i fear the beasts! I didn’t realize this until I was at home in Tucson a few weeks ago. A gila monster took up residence near the garage and would park itself by the front door or under my mom’s car “dolly” for  hours at a time.

     upon learning that the beasts have a jaws-of-life-death grip that can require cutting their head off at the neck if they’ve got your ankle in their grips, I made my family agree to an emergency plan. If I was attacked on my way in after a night of crazy partying, mom would get a shovel, missy would call poison control, and dad would assist if he was home.

     My heart raced every time I got out of the car and made my way down our long driveway and up to the front door. I may have even sweat. I was convinced that my bad luck (a.k.a. I’m a “crap magnet”) would turn me into a  footnote on the gila monster’s Wikipedia page. I probably lost 4 hours of my life thinking about this. Seriously.

     This fear was enough to keep me from enjoying one of the three things I went to Arizona for….the night sky. (the other two were eegee’s and my family, obvi). By the time my last night in town rolled around, i was in a melancholy, bittersweet mood. My trip to Tucson wasn’t planned-- I ran away from LA because I was overwhelmed by school and barely able to read, my apartment was hot and smoggy, and I had a f*d up audition that shook me all the way to the middle. Eating, sleeping, and sitting near the ones I loved the most revived me. I knew it was time to go back, and little mister was hitching a ride with me, but large doubts loomed. Would I be able to concentrate? Would I be able to read and write again? Would things that had been broken start to work?

     While I was packing, I reflected on a conversation I had with a friend a few hours earlier. She was about to  embark on a year-long adventure with life-altering consequences, but she wanted to know if she had made the right decision “am I supposed to go?” to make a long story short (too late!) I encouraged my friend that if I was her I would wake up everyday and say “show me why I’m here”.  Funny how it’s so much easier to encourage your friends than it is to “grab your bootstraps and pull like hell” (bird, Andrew).

 Which brings us to the gila monster….(finalmente)…as I was worrying about my return to LA, pre-missing my dear ones, and fearing the gila beast… it occurred to me that this was my last chance to see the stars. For the first time, I realized that I would be safe from the death lizard if I was above ground….so I hopped into frankie’s big ass truck and went from zero to awe in a split second.

     It was one of those moments where you’re honored to be in the same room with everything else that’s in the universe. A firm believer in practicing what you preach*, I looked up and asked “show me why I’m here.” Instantaneously, co-incidentally, miraculously, an enormous shooting star shot across the sky exactly where my eyes had been fixed. My reaction was some sort of gasp/laugh/point. I felt heard. My position on coincidences will be explicated at another time, so I won’t entertain that objection. Maybe we’ll even chat about how you know what you know and/or the voice in your head that says “no, silly. Go left.” For now, all that matters is that I got a jump-start. A reminder that I’m headed-- very generally-- in the right direction. My intense fear had kept my eyes on the ground. The moment I relented, the very instant I looked up…I got a response. And boy, have things changed since then.

*I try not to preach. When I do, it’s usually to advocate the use of crosswalks and in abhorrence of homophobia.