BECAUSE I AM A CURIOUS SOUL, I always begin each day with the newspaper. I am intrigued by hijackings, mass murders, town meetings, and the latest scoop on quasars. All such miracles and astounding events structure my reasons for being. I cannot look at any bee or buzzard, lover or lunatic, without incorporating their fascinating stories into my daily rituals. All together they forge both the positive and negative momentum of my being.

I stay sane, I suppose, because there is a constantly adjusting mechanism in me which balances tyranny against poetry, holy aliveness against atrocity, laughter against nuclear annihilation... and so my perspective on life is usually positive, creative, adamantly upbeat.

Admittedly, if the redwoods are dying, I have trouble breathing, Yet when Alain Resnais makes a new movie, I rejoice. The Vietnam War, whose weight I bear yet upon my shoulders, still almost kills me. But let somebody bring up Jonas Salk, and his triumph is a glory in which I happily bask.

THE EQUILIBRIUM I MAINTAIN between holocaust and haleluiah has long depended on the fact that I travel through life fairly awed by much that surrounds me. Yet occasionally I get running too fast, I grow absorbed with my own importance (or inadequacy). And then, if I panic because the cars are breaking down, or because the money's getting scarce (or because the kids have become teenage monsters overnight), I begin to lose a grasp on that sense of wonder which has always made my daily struggles worthwhile. And if I am not careful, if my self-destructive impulses allow me to get bogged down in the "rat-race," that balance mechanism I depend on suddenly goes awry.

Abruptly, I find myself in quicksand, "Stop the world I want to get off." But just like that I have forgotten how to kill the juice that runs this merry-go-round. I'm overcommitted to giving talks, signing books, answering letters, writing articles, worrying about the plumbing. I tell people 'I'm so tired! " -- but somehow there is no moment for repose anymore.

I MUST JUMP IN THE CAR, go someplace, travel far from home. Hollywood calls. I work on scripts about nuclear war and Haitian refugees, the deadlines are always yesterday. I have to keep up on current events, make speeches, save the world. A dear friend dies, and I cannot stand the loss. I wake up each morning with a sense of urgency: so many things to do, so many people to meet. Frantically, I try to arrange time for puttering in my garden, for fishing in the Rio Grande Gorge, for simply loving the people I love. But it's impossible to relax, I am always behind the eight ball, the producer is growing anxious, my attacks get worse. I have moral commitments, political commitments, business commitments, personal commitments -- to children, to publishers, to film studios, to friends, to tax collectors, to the wide earth. Though terrified of flying, I take airplanes, thus minimizing the time lost in my busy schedule. Desperately, I juggle all these "important" things I must accomplish. "Quality" goes out of my experience; mind - numbing quantity takes over. And I start losing interest in the "bigger picture." I have lost the thread, I am "strung out," depressed, discouraged.

Text from the book "On The Mesa" by John Nichols, Copyright © John Nichols.
Reprinted with special permission from John Nichols - All Rights Reserved.
Photography © Peter Staats - All Rights Reserved.