t was nearly 40 degrees outside, but I was freezing my ass.
It had been damp and cloudy all morning, with intermittent showers of heavy snow that melted on the pavement. Last week’s snowfall was mostly still there in the shadier places, like on the north side of our rented adobe. The snow on the sloping dirt driveway had long since turned to ice, and backing the ’89 Dodge out had been a roll-the-dice proposition since Christmas. Still, most days were sunny and windless, so that even stepping outside at zero degrees in sandals and shirt sleeves was mostly a lark. Today, however, there was wetness in the air, and the wind stabbed right into my bones as I chopped chunks of piñon into firewood for the studio stove.
Winter had finally come, and the mountains were dusted in white. This doubled their size in bright sun, an effect so startling that I’d nearly had an accident pulling out of Wal-Mart. It had been seven years since we’d moved here from Maryland, and the Sangre de Cristos still made me do a double-take every time I left the house, kind of like the neighbor’s tall sugar maple trees used to do back on the Eastern Shore. (In flat, wet country, trees are the biggest things around, and you never see the horizon.) Standing by the leaning mailbox on George Torres Road in Llano Quemado, I could usually see for 90 to 100 miles, like gazing from Balitmore to Philadelphia. Under these conditions, it was easier not to mind the ramshackle fences and half-finished haciendas that lay scattered under the immense dome of blue like homeless unfortunates seeking nooks in the basilica. I finished my chopping and set down the maul, then walked up to the road to have a look: there was nowhere to turn that peaks didn’t shred the clouds, and everything was somehow holier just for being there.
But today the clouds rolled in a little past noon. When my honey and I left the house for a lunch date at the Taos Diner, the snow was coming down hard. By the time we hit the Paseo del Pueblo Sur, we’d entered a clear zone: the street was dry, and I turned off my lights. All around us, though, was a giant gray-white cloud mass blottted out the hills and mountains. It was the most bizarre sensation, yet it reminded me very strongly of something I couldn’t place at first.
Suddenly it hit me: without the mountains and sky reaching up to the moon, we might as well be in Indiana! Richmond, maybe, near the Ohio line. I held this thought a moment while the universe shimmered oddly before my eyes. Yes, Indiana, without the grass. I was in Indiana at the end of a long cold gray day on the road, looking for a motel and a place to eat. I even remembered the bright red German car we used to drive between Maryland and Iowa, and the way money ran like rain in the gutters.
Lunch at the diner was excellent as usual. I had a bacon cheeseburger, while she had a bagel & cream cheese slathered with green chiles. (The diner is about lots more than mere food, however, and always has been.) When we emerged, the low-lying precipitation had broken up somewhat to the east. I could see most of Taos Mountain again, except for where a long, pointed white cloud like the bow of the biggest ship in the world moved slowly across the lower slopes, dragging a wake of falling snow…
Indiana had vanished, taking half a continent with it. I was back in the mountains and grateful as hell.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
OT from your above post
I just read your comment that political blogging isn’t effective (posted on the Billmon-gone discussion at FDL). I think the view expressed there is misguided, and confuses idealistic political hopes with real world political realities.
The ideal is that justice, truth, evidence, rationality, etc. are decisive factors – forever and for all time! – in governmental decision making. The reality is that power constantly and inevitably promotes its own agenda at the expense of justice, truth, evidence, etc.
Political blogging is just one of many ways to resist the abuses of power, and has been tremendously effective (eg., DSM, electonic voting awareness, exposing media bias, K Street scandals, etc.). Despair sets in only when you compare the hoped-for ideal against the inevitable reality. But the important thing to realize, imho, is thta the ideal is unattainable – and should be abandoned – precisely because the powerful will ALWAYS fight for less fairness and equality. The best we really should hope for is reducing the balance of inequities. Billmon has done his part in this, as have others. Where would we be as a nation without the collective awareness provided by the folks who sometimes think their work is ineffectual?
Hi Sundog, you’re welcome any time!
Here’s how it is from my perspective:
1) The dominant culture (the collective) is fundamentally insane. This is not said lightly or for the sake of melodrama! In fact, it’s a necessary starting point.
2) Doesn’t seem to me that there’s much collective awareness of anything that really matters (which of course follows from #1).
3) Since the world is a reflection of what we hold inside (NOT something that oppresses our poor little perfect selves from without), nothing will change for the better until enough people are healed, i.e. made whole through inner work & grace. Integrated, self-aware, etc.
4) That’s an individual project at best, so I’m finally taking full responsibility for myself.
5) NOT discussing the things you mention releases energy required for #4. Oho!
I’ve even been caught laughing and playing music in recent weeks. This is not a bad thing.
Political blogging isn’t effective! Thankfully, there are now so many political blogs that the sheer number and mediocrity has watered down their impact. Thank God! Not long ago they were effective. Now I believe that blogs are read mainly by the already believers. (preaching to the choir, as it is commonly referred to in politics).
I suspect that most political blogs are ignored, somewhat like a tree falling in the woods. THAT is real world political reality. Billmon has been only effective in communicating with those who have him in their bookmarks.
Now see here: all this OT nonsense is detracting from my lovely transcendental essay. Or is it??? Now that I think about it, it isn’t off-topic at all.
Joseph, I have come to agree with most of your points above. The comment that Sundog is referring to is one I posted at FireDogLake, a site like Daily Kos where progressive hearts go pitty-pat 24/7 while the nation slides ever more resolutely into hell. Bah, humbug. My point there was that if the blogosphere hadn’t come into being, the fascists would have had to invent it, just to keep us off the streets. So far it’s doing a damn good job of that, I have to say.
Life is short. I want to dive in as deeply as I can in whatever time I have left. I’m still wondering what you were doing assembling a Model A Ford in Panama or wherever the hell it was, and right now the goddamned Ashley needs more wood, so I’m outa here until I get warm again.
If I were a great story teller like you, I could write volumes about the things I have seen and done. All of it really now is just the stories of an old man that make the recipients sit and roll their eyes back and say when is this old fart going to stop.
No one wants to listen to my ramblings. If you do, you can get a taste of it on my site at lucecounty.net.
Joseph, that’s a very, very fine Web site. A labor of love and pain. I can see exactly where you’re coming from, and it’s a place in the heart I understand all too well…
From your site:
“But not all things have to change – sometimes it is good to keep what has been.”
AMEN TO THAT!
And how do you know no one wants to listen to your ramblings? Put up another Web site, another blog. Put your stories out there for everyone to see. Whatever each of us has experienced in this life is unique. You never know what your particular take on what you’ve seen and done might mean to somebody coming up behind you.