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By Mina Xavier, September 25, 2009 11:11 pm

From the ecclesiastical Latin dēsertum (originally “an abandoned place”), a participle of dēserere, “to abandon.”

Here’s the first question: How much life is required to satisfy the quota for “teeming”, and at which point do we examine a culture and pronounce it dead?

I’m running on caffeine fumes and sheer tenacity.  I broke my tension tonight by ignoring the GPS wench and taking I-95 and Rt 1 in alternating loops for a high speed therapy drive. My old steel beast of a Honda took me rolling like thunder between 70-90mph to clear my head.

I could hear the engine shift her gears, feel the low hum of the road surfaces changing between highways and off-ramps and Old Lincoln Highway on my blaze through the car dealership district and back onto 95. I always have a song or two stuck in my head anyway, so who needs a stereo?

I pulled into the gravel and decided that I still wasn’t thoroughly cleared out. So I took a walk. I’m pleased to rediscover this lately. For the last few months I’ve been walking more, mostly at night. It’s neat to hear the cars rushing past. If you stand still on a dry night with an adequate breeze, you can trick a tiny part of your brain into believing that the sound is that of nocturne tides touching the beach.

I watched people smoke weed on a stoop beside a Wawa. I watched a guy freak out at the credit card reader at the nearby gas station because he’d only just then realized that he’d pulled into a closed station and was going to have to find another. I listened to car stereos scream by. I smiled at the cop as he waited at the light. I suspect that not many people actually smile at cops.

An uncomfortable epiphany scrolled along the bottom of my mental screen like a sordid CNN marquee: Don’t drop anchor here.

I am aware that this feeling creeps up when I listen to too much Nick Cave and Utah Phillips. I am also aware of the first lesson of my faith: I am living as an absolved soul on a planet of the dead. This is, indeed, a fallen world. So much so that on some days it feels like a post-apocalyptic hellhole of very few reprieves and even fewer signs of life.

I signed up for this, so I’m in it. I could surrender my Will to chance and revel in the death rituals of millions of lost souls and burn with them, or I can push through and remain as I am, carving upward into the face of the mountain until I reach its peak. It is still up to me. I already know what I want; it’s simply a matter of disciplining myself in the discrepancies between the Temporary versus the Permanent.

The walk cleared my head quite a bit, through the barren system of roads and grass that wasn’t dark just because of a lack of daylight. This place has long ago been abandoned by meaningful life and left for [the?] dead. I have noticed that Joel Rosenberg has found, in the Middle East, a hotbed of new life. A volcanic shit-storm of redemption, rebirth and reconnection to human community and the reversal of spiritual death.

For all of its glaring dangers and inhospitable conditions, it’s thriving. And we are not.

Which begs the next question: Do I stay, or do I go?