It’s easy to tell when things need examining. I lose my bearings, I bleed, and fall completely under the power of buried knots of energy. Maybe I should call them clots, because they stifle the circulation of love.

Today, for example, when compulsive reading of blogs was like squatting naked in a vat of acid, I was tearing myself to shreds over not finding a house for us. Absurd on both counts, but there it was, only why? Out of the miasma floated a clue in the process of recalling an unloving aunt back East who very nearly did me in a few years ago. The curse of my family is a total lack of empathy, which describes her perfectly. Though well into her 90s, she’ll never die, like Dracula. When her brothers were alive, the three of them together could suck all the joy out of the air. On hideously hot, humid summer days in my grandmother’s house, when even the wooden floorboards would burn your bare feet, they’d sit silently in the living room with the fan blowing, waiting for something to criticize. If I was lucky, there’d be somewhere to go outside and play, if I could stand it. (In the 1950s, we called this the American Dream.)

And to think, to this day, that my old friends in Maryland still don’t get why I left the scene of the crime! Well, maybe some do — I can think of a couple — but most of them don’t, I’m sure. How could they? No one talked about such things, and 10 years ago, I didn’t really know why myself, only that I had to get the hell out. The family connection was just a part of it, of course, but a vital one, and even the cornfields stinking of plant sperm under white August skies must have reminded me of it on some deeper level.

The utterly different surroundings of northern New Mexico were a good place to come. Crucifixions abound, bloody Jesuses everywhere, darkness and light in a landscape of giants. The opening here is Spirit — universal replacement parts! — though not without a lot of work. (This little essay is one of the tasks.)

Springtime in the Rockies, this very day

This morning I angered my wife, who kept her tongue fastened, refusing to argue. She knows full well when I’ve entered the ancestral zone: the lifeless monotone and reluctance to speak, the stumbling around for someone to blame. Distance means nothing. She feels it from light-years away but refuses to be caught, 90 pounds of empathic fury in self-protection mode.

This afternoon she went to the grocery store. I mumbled a greeting when she returned and helped unload the car. When I went back to my desk, there was a decorated envelope with my name on it. Inside was a beautiful card with the inscription, “You are a very special part of my universe.” Underneath she had written:

“I love you no matter what!”

It was signed with a little heart and her initials. I cracked. Later, after dinner, I climbed down from the cross.

That is how this works, so never be afraid to go there.