Cosmic Ruth and Phil

What can I say. Philip Andrew Helland, February 21, 1985 - April 9, 2010. AK to me and his friends as Phil Phonics, Lightbeam, Homie. And me. Red Arrow Gallery in Joshua Tree, March 26, 2010, drinking red wine, having fun at a poetry reading/art event, mingling with friends, Phil was stoked to meet a famous alchemist and founder of the LA Free Press, who now lives in the small town of Joshua Tree and just walked into the reading. And here it is. You can't always live up to your truth. Sometimes the best thing to do is to write your truth. Write all the way through it, falling star wish sky streak. Do it brilliantly with colors and do it well. And here it is.

The poppies, exploding orange on the Mojave Desert far below the airplane, just last Friday morning, a few hours before Philip took his life. On my way to give a presentation for No Place for a Puritan at the Western Wilderness Conference at UC Berkeley. I had been reluctant to leave. Phil hadn't been feeling well, said he had a virus or something, had been resting a lot on Thursday. I gave him a last kiss and hug and told him to take care that morning, told him to sleep in, I'd call him that night to check in. He said okay, and told me to do a great job at this prestigious and important conference, where I'd be meeting all kinds of famous environmental writers and movers and shakers, northern California style, the chance to bring the desert, the desert consciousness, to those who live in the green. Stuff Phil loved too. We'd talked endlessly about our summer plans, once the semester was/is finished at College of the Desert (where I teach), going to northern California and Oregon to check out organic farms and communities, visiting friends, networking, living green away from the weight of the summer heat soon to be upon us here.

I was astounded and moved beyond words and tones by the sudden rush of orange, near Palmdale, suddenly soothing my view of the wounds of the glaring, white hot dry lakebed I'd been absently staring at, Rosamond Dry Lake. And the poppy fields. What I knew. My immediate thought was to call Phil that afternoon and tell him we'd be going there to roll in the orange shouldered hills first thing on Monday. He'd love that, so would I. That, and the hike high above Whitewater Canyon, I couldn't wait to take him there, too, and he knew it. My phone calls that night went unanswered, and I felt uneasy. I had the worst dreams of my night that life, somehow I knew he had left me, but it didn't make sense at all. It was entirely out of synch, a rhythm gone wrong, a plane dropped out of the sky for no reason, poppies exploding more vividly in my head to take up the slack. Before I know.

Phil. My cosmic soulmate. Bringer of life, inspiration, companionship, frustrations, deeper, shared joys than I've experienced in my life. He was of so many worlds. We'd wake up in the mornings and say "homie hug," and eat organic cereal and hang out, reading vast and varied volumes of literature, go on long bike rides, take weekend adventure-trips all the time: Warner's Hot Springs, Indian Village sites in the Anza Borrego Desert, Tahquitz Canyon, Tecopa Hot Springs, hikes in the desert, hikes in the mountains, a shared spirit beyond words. A world of poppy surprises and psychedelic colors and Be Here Now and Bliss Now and deep, deep friendship. Phil was phenomenal and he had a brilliant mind, light years ahead of his years in earthly age. We had amazing intellectual discussions and also tons of fun.

He plowed through my extensive book collection, and was reading, at the time of his death, and simultanously, like I do, books by Jung, Schopenhauer, Huxley, Native American mythologies, books on medicine and alternative healing and cosmic consciousness, sociology books on globalization, poetry, and much, much more. We saw Avatar, we saw Alice in Wonderland, we saw Borat, we saw foreign films and documentaries on 2012 and sophisticated intellectual movies, too. We did it all. As much as any two friends could. All of the movies were his ideas, he hand picked them out. My netflix order list has about 200 movies ready to go, that he already pre-selected. He coordinated our weekend trips and hikes, too. He did the shopping. He ran the errands. He gave hug after hug after hug. He was my rock. He was a talented singer, musician, speaker, thinker, human being.

The yellow brittlebush soothing me as I drove through the hills Phil grew up with near Moreno Valley, knew intimately, and loved, as I did with my own desert mountains in Apple Valley. The Box Springs Mountains, filled with huge rocks and hidden springs. Yesterday, driving to his funeral and final resting place overlooking Lion Head Hill. I can imagine him directing his mother and brothers to select that spot, where into eternity he can look at the rocks, and the hawks circling over, and imagine himself at the top, getting the cosmic view of all that was around. Phil lived at the pulsing center of so many people, so many things, so many interests and talents, and so much like me, kept it together for everyone else, on a friendship level and artistically and poetically. Connecting the dots and harmonizing the blend: that was and is me, that was and is him. He inspired me, he healed me, he knew me inside and out. As I did him.

I could feel Phil comforting me with a nature hug, yesterday, and it made me cry. The narrow road through the hills. So close to the major freeways, the merge of 60 and 91 and 215, pulsing with traffic, thousands of people pouring through rushing here and there. And just to one side, behind one small hill, another world. A world of me and Phil. Yellow flowers, purple flowers, it's a beautiful spring, we had so much rain, and the light was hawk light, it was lion light, it was a walk in beauty. Phil and I walked in beauty. It was our habit, it was our life, it was our thing. Today a volcano explodes out of its frozen respite in Iceland. Planes are grounded. Ash is falling from the sky, flooding the face of land. Forever altering the familiarity of earthly things. Opening new corridors of the human soul. Like a lightbeam. Like Phil. The force of this volcano grounds planes continents away, and decides when they will fly. Like Phil. And maybe leave jet flame trails across the darkest skies, as Phil did, Phil does, Phil will continue to do.