St. Francis Of Assisi, the Taos hum, Bruce Chatwin & swimming pools

Driving due south on back roads, the sun a full-on bastard above, watching the Rockies dissolve into scrub-encrusted hills, I found a great hair band station. From a young age I’ve loved hair bands. As a fourth grader two friends and I created a club called The Clan – to this day I cannot imagine why we weren’t shut down, as we were fairly public about our name, maybe it’s because we had a fellow of color among us – how is that that Caucasians have no color ? – anyways we’d hang out on South Street, around Zipperhead, buying Poison and Guns ‘N Roses T-shirts whenever we could afford it. I saw Def Leppard, Poison, Tesla, Queensryche – and many others.

In any case – I found a station there driving south that just about rocked. That lasted for a good hour. In Northern New Mexico I got a better mix of music – some hip-hop, then some country. And it struck me, as the land flattened out, that Conway Twitty, hair bands, hip-hop – the themes of all songs in each of the genre can be broken down into three groups : women pissed about cheating men, men sorry about cheating on women, and the utter joy of love – or of the game, when it comes to hip-hop.

I passed through Espanola – known apparently as the heroin and lowrider capital of the world. One, I’m sure, having nothing to do with the other. Indeed I saw a couple impressive specimens at the carwash – lowriders, that is.

As I hit northern Santa Fe the smoke haze was general – I had just missed it in Colorado, but not so here. Juniper trees, piñon bushes, prickly pear, and the occasional elm tree.

Now I should be clear that Deborah is my godmother after I asked her to be so, ten years or so ago, when I was passing through as well, this time on the way to Los Angeles. My god/parent-given godmother, a woman by the name of Claire, got angry, as the story goes, when I was seven and failed to write a timely thank you card for a gift. So she dropped me. And, well, I picked up Deborah. The deal was a great one. I hope Clare’s happy, somewhere.

Deborah, who makes documentaries, does inspiring work with Reel Fathers – a program to investigate and honor the bonds both between father and children, but also between family.

As I pulled in to Toreo Court in El Dorado, Deb’s dogs gave a riotous greeting. Nina and Sullie are semi-feral creatures, having survived three months on the mesa alone before Deb got them.

We took the dogs for a walk on the mesa to familiarize them with one another, had a fine dinner, and I fell asleep to Willa Cather’s evocations of the shaded Vatican City in “Death Comes to the Archbishop.”

I seemed to have quite bad timing when it came to salsa nights. But farmers markets – I hit Santa Fe on the spot.We attacked that Saturday market the next morning with a vengeance – Deborah purchasing some worms and green beans. We picked up some meat, spinach, and serious chili powder to sprinkle over fresh radishes.

People seemed to be so content in the hot, dry sun – the sky somewhere between blue and grey. Their skin had an etched nature – the desert winds having left their mark. We ran into two or Deborah’s friends – one of whom, she told me afterward, was Natalie Goldberg, author of “Writing Down the Bones.”

And suddenly, there in the sharp light, was a rueda circle – folks moving to fairly standard calls – enchunfle, enchunfle doble, dame!, Dame dos! So much fun! I truly wanted to join – but no partners. Then a little bachata – Deb and I watched, as a guy with a Brazilian soccer jersey filmed.

We finished our shopping, and crossed the train tracks to the gym to watch, through the doorway,  some West African dance – much of it rooted in Yoruba orishas. I began to film, and was roundly hissed at by one of the drummers – with good reason.

I was in a good mood, well, because I was in Santa Fe hanging with my impossibly cool godmother, but also because I had read on Salsapower.com – the world’s guide to Cuban salsa, in case anyone might be interested – that Bert’s Taqueria had some great rueda. Deb, always game, agreed to come check it out with me, and we split paths. I biked around town and installed myself in the Aztec cafe to do some writing.

Upon leaving I called Bert’s Taqueria – a message machine for an artists’ gallery picked up. I searched the IPhone – working spectacularly, I might add, since its dip in that river – and a place called Compostela supposedly had a great scene, truly the mecca for New Mexico salsa, in Albuquerque. I checked their website. Private party. I tried another number for salsa lessons in Santa Fe, and a guy with a promising latin accent picked up.

“No brother, you picked a bad weekend. Nothing really happening until Wednesday.”

I biked back to the truck, loaded it up, and took a photo in the back glass for some odd reason – loneliness? Returned to the house and took a run in the mesa – anything to pull out of a tailspin that I could feel accelerating – wanting to be at a home, unsure about leaving the business, worried. Out there in that open land – open until Mexico, according to Deb – among the tamarisc (apparently an invasive species) and juniper and quietly corroding twisted metal I got winded in no time flat. We were still at altitude, around 7500 feet.

Deb suggested we make some cocktails, bring some beers, and « bag » one of the final foothills of the Rockies. I put Cal’s bags on him, filled them with beer and water, we drove to the lot, and set out.

In no time flat we heard a yipping from amongst the piñons. Sully and Nina immediately set out in its direction. Deb tried to call them back, with some urgency.

“Those are coyotes – they’ll bait the dogs, pretending they’re injured, then attack.”

She described scenes she had witnessed of coyotes giving chase to the dogs, then the dogs turning and giving chase to the coyotes, and so on – a game they played, she said.

Cal, weighted down with beer and water, stayed with us.

We reached the summit and watched the sun set into a notch of the Rockies – slightly south of a Greek Orthodox church. I wondered if the church had been set beneath the hill with the sun dropping directly over in mind – but that made no sense, as the location of the sun set changed. In any case, Iron and Wine’s « Trapeze Singer » – the most enchanting song in the world – glided into my head, the line of the house beneath the hill, and became theme music for the subsequent forty minutes or so of my life.

Looking out toward the lights of Los Alamos, made nebulous by the fire haze, Deb sipping her gin and tonic from a Thermos, me opening my beer on a rock, Cal and the dogs lapping away, we discussed the Galisteo Basin, and how, not so long ago, it was covered in ocean –indeed the flatness had the quality of the bottom of a swimming pool. It was not a far stretch to imagine, there on that hill, with the land beneath obscured by a skein of vapor, that we sat on some sort of atoll, watching the good world beneath make sense of itself.

Mountains lined up uniformly behind Los Alamos,  hiding Espanola and Agua Caliente and farther on Taos Pueblo, with Santa Fe blocked by the Sangres XX, but I-29 lit and snaking coming down from the northwest. It made no little sense that the original name of this town, La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, or The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi, was named after that Italian friar, up there in the hills with his his birds and tamed wolf and stigmata, a rich man having discovered the enlightenment of poverty, breaking away from worldly temptations. Such seemed to be the gist of things out here.

Spurring on perhaps by the setting sun and drinks and altitude we began to compare Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia and The English Patient, drawing parallels between their twin themes of complicated nationhood and the importance of coming from nowhere – to have, as Edward Said counsels us to have, no address, not spot where power can pin you wriggling to the wall.

Briefly, I considered whether I would call myself from Colorado or Philadelphia, or even Alaska. Much more interesting Michael Ondaatje’s character of Count Almasy, fluent in seven or so languages, a walking encyclopedia of winds, at loose among the Bedouins of northern Africa – who says, to Catherine, as they sit in the bathtub during that illicit time spent together at the Intercontinental or the Cecil or some other fine Egyptian hotel, of her suprasternal notch, where her neck ends and clavicle begins, « I want this. »

« I thought you didn’t believe in ownership » she responds, or something to that effect.

Significant to me, this man, who believes in complete freedom, in order to procure transportation to fetch her body from Cave of the Swimmers, deep in the Sahara desert, screams « She’s my wife ! She’s my wife ! » to the British authorities – possession, ownership – or commitment, love – reigns when desperation sets in.

We came down by the light of the moon, Cal limping due to what turned out to be a broken prickly pear needle in his paw pad. Scents of the dried land and sage were somehow intensified as we descended – perhaps by the darkness, as if limited sight was offset by a heightened sense of smell.

We reached the parking lot, Cal flattened himself against the ground and scooted beneath the wire fence –  and back to Babylon we went.

The following day we turned north to Taos Pueblo, where Deborah and D— were running a Reel Fathers event at the Hatwood Center. My mother had lived in this town, where she had her first newspapering gig – story goes the editor asked if she could drive stick shift. She said of course, picked up a Volkswagen Bug at the airport, and lurched off the lot, trying to make sense of that strange third pedal.

On the way north we had the Rio Grande on our port side, running fairly hard despite the area drought. I sat in the minivan, watching tubers, the occasional fisherman, and considered what it would take to live on the high plains. Anxiety over water – I’m not sure I could take it. We stopped at some outfit showing and selling salvaged metal – more to get sandwiches out of the back, but the place was pretty cool. 

We set up for the event, filling paper bags of popcorn – which we later found out would not be allowed in the auditorium space. Kids and parents began to file in, despite the beautiful Sunday outside. Folks wandered around the impressive museum, with its American Clay walls, circular joists layed out evenly, strolling among the artwork – curated, I might add, with great thought and care. I’m usually no great fan of museums – where things go to die, as Adorno once observed. But the Hatwood had a special sense of peace, not unlike the Robie House in Hyde Park – where the horizontal lines almost force a sense of quietness down on you.

We settled in to the amphitheatre and took in Pixar’s Finding Nemo. Afterward about ten folks spoke frankly about the vicissitudes of fatherhood and couple-hood – and about the difficulty Nemo’s father had with letting his son go – the role of rites of initiation, and how we navigate those treacherous waters of child-rearing. We discussed how Crush, the pot-head hippy sea turtle, just let his kids groooove, let them figure it out for themselves. And Bruce the shark – « He never had a father ! » — who struggles through the twelve-step program for eating fish. I told a bit of my story. One woman, raising two kids on her own, while attending school at night, took considerable interest.

Afterward we repaired to the outside area, where we ate Fritos smothered in green chili, pinto beans, red onion, shredded iceburg lettuce and diced tomatoes. Just about the best thing I think I’ve ever had. Traditionally I was told you just open the Frito bag and dump in the chili and toppings, shake it all up, and there’s lunch.  We were a bit more civilized, and used paper bowls.

I cruised around town a bit, walking down Ledoux Way, enjoying that sharp light painters and artists alike seem so drawn to. I bought a water bottle to replace the one I lost, and almost broke down laughing when I saw the plaintive note attached to the parking meter.Oh Philadelphia Parking Authority, if only you had some perspective on the blackness of your heart.

We decided on a trip to the Rio Grande, Mexico’s Grand Canyon, and discussed on the way the « Taos Hum » – a noise emanating from no-one knows where, audible only to certain people, but audible enough, in certain cases, to drive them batty. On the bridge stretching over New Mexico’s Grand Canyon I spent I don’t know how long staring into the depths, the dark thread of river below, the wind whipping up vertically, blowing gusts of dampness into the nostrils with such force it made it difficult to breath. I thought about my mother’s acrophobia, and wondered whether it had found me as well. Also of Freud’s concept of Thanatos – the death urge, as opposed to Eros – and wondered if it played any part in the vertiginous feelings I was experiencing – or perhaps that was simply lack of food over the course of the days. Finally of Springsteen’s song « I’m on Fire » Like someone took a knife edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull . So seemed this canyon before us – cleaved from the earth, and its connection to desire – Eros – and its opposite, struck me as blindingly evident.

We considered going to visit the earth ships – shelters on the mesa constructed from tires and reclaimed material not far down the road – but people wanted ice cream, and that sounded good. We discussed S—‘s first marriage, and the time she spent on a ranch, oftentimes taking care of the livestock. Not an easy life, I decided, looking out at the light to the south, gauzy with ash – not an easy life for women especially, who somehow seemed to be thrown into sharp relief by this land – embattled women scouring the hardpacked yard with worn brooms.