Blueberry Hill

I had a long day, waking well before dawn to drive to Albuquerque to take care of some business, and just now getting back. But, the day was worth it right from the start, as the sunrise pulled me out of the window of my car while surfing Blueberry Hill, taking the backroads out of town. Not only was there this (see above), but the Taos Valley was filled with a gray-blue, freezing fog that mixed with the snaking woodsmoke of nightlong fires to create the daily "you-gotta-be-kiddin-me" moment. There's nothing like the colors of winter in the high country...this high country. I'm a lucky bloke.

Before and After

Part I - Before Hiking up Divisadero

Hyperventilating. Sitting heat pounding my head in the window of the cafe. I'm overdressed for sun. Snow deceives in all its creaminess, and piles, banks, ice flats in the shade, frozen sandy grains mushed around on the sidewalks. It has been so cold that 33 degrees with unfiltered sun, high desert sun, feels pleasant, temperate, relieving; the thermal underwear washed and put away for the next run of snow and frigidity. Something is bothering me. The sun is not enough. The Holidays do not remove the underlying sense of obligation, the runaway, the knot, the fear, the disengagement, the clutter, disorganization; the failure of the light to linger long enough to allow me to breathe, the taking away of that breath, or what's left when the snowy world is squashed into darkness, no moon, two planets teasing. I'm rendered weak, heavy-hoofed, incredulous, doomed, wondering if I'm infected, if my house has toxic air, if I'll ever again feel vibrant and quick-minded.

Part II - Post Hike

I saw the sun dip behind Ogelvie's on the Plaza and knew there was no time to lose. A rush of tourists came in the World Cup as I gathered up my book, notebook and New Yorker and ducked out, saying goodbye to Genvieve. The coffee went down, so luxurious, velvety and supercharged. My eyes had that Popeye pop so I felt I could saw things apart by just looking at them long enough (and not that long). I got in the Honda and zipped around the Plaza taking Ranchitos to the light at Paseo and through the one-way at Quesnel over to Kit Carson. The horses who inhabit the open field of sage behind the usually muddy but now snowed over municpal parking lot huddled along the fence line sticking their noses out to the road. Going east into the world of massive, ancient cottonwoods, I noticed the snow getting deeper, slopped high on picnic tables and abandoned cars (mostly old Lincolns and Dusters). Up and up into the first line of foothills, I wound around and above a heavily wooded narrow valley filled with old stone and adobe houses, and abandoned log cabins. Passing the junction (Santa Fe south, Angel Fire east), I entered the national forest and two bends down the road pulled a U-ee and parked behind a 4-Runner in the compacted ice-snow just in front of the trailhead for Divisadero. It was already evening down by the creek in the bottom of the canyon and the cold air was settling in. But I could see the fire-yellow sunlight against the pinons and granite outcroppings halfway up the frontside slope. That was my first goal, get up into the band of light. I took off at a fast trot, my Sorels digging in toe first in the tamped snow of the trail. The footing was better than I thought it would be. Uneven, stucco ice had reformed on the surface where the top layer of snow had melted in the intense sun of the mid afternoon. I moved quickly, my legs and lungs excited to be on the trail, more excited than for anything else I had done or thought about all day. Coming along the first shelf of the trail, I noticed that the snow had melted off of the south facing rocks sticking out of the chest of the mountain. I put my face against a smooth rock and it warmed my cheek. Amazing how the sun penetrates beneath the snow and into the heart of the rock so that it radiates heat out to the surface and melts the snow as if it were a griddle. I thought about how the good builders who work with the earth and its elements face houses to the south, windows picking up the sun, adobe and pumice-filled walls absorbing the heat and passing it inside while also melting a swath around the house. Even at 9,000' elevation, you can grow root vegetables and lettuces into October, through the early snows, as long as you plant them on the south side of a house sitting on a ridge or in a meadow open to the full brunt of the sun. It made me smile, thinking of carrots and onions and redleaf lettuce. Moving on, I passed a few people on their way down, everyone smiling with the vigor and chill. A little higher up, after the first bend that overlooks Taos, now looking like Whoville with its smoke-spewing chimneys and it's white cloak covering what was just a month ago a tattered burlap patchwork, I ran into a woman who runs a writing group that a friend had invited me into. It was fate, and we chatted, me introducing myself as a friend of a friend, and she smiling broadly, saying she was going to be traveling but that when she came back she'd love to have me write with the ladies (it's, for now, an all female group). Good, good. I always meet writers on this mountain. It is the writer trail. It is the one John Nichols hikes every day, and others, no less diligent although lesser known. Now my nostrils are flaring, and I know that that coffee and that moment in the window, burning up, writing the burn, the discomfort, and that gaggle of tourists Texas-two steppin into the tiny cafe, drove me out to get on this trail and move my ass, see a writer, feel a rock, flex my calf muscles, breathe and snort, and just disappear back into the bulk and fling of it. And my mind is thinking in my body, where it's supposed to be, where I understand what I can't reach when I'm jotting down "to do" lists, worrying about phone calls, thinking about the lottery, feeling the lack. Next thing I know I'm in the sunlight and yet it's getting colder, it's the last, faint rays, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that I know I'll have enough light to get up to my sacred spot. The crows aren't around, I notice. I'm looking up where they usually circle; nothing but darkening blue sky. Up near the top of the knobs you can see that the snow hasn't melted at all, it's all powder, and a bluish color due to the depth. I get to the spot and drop into the bonzai pinons, the bases drifted around with tufts of snow, and I find a compacted hole stepped into by others earlier. The edge of the hole is above my knees, but it's the perfect open view spot for the sacred mountain now turning aquamarine. I take off my hat, my jacket, my sweater and underlayer, and do my prayers for guidance and gratefulness to the mountain, stretching my trunk left, middle and right, and then bowing deeply in prayer to the four directions. There is no cold on my skin, I'm heated like the rocks from inside and it takes a while for the skin to lose its warmth. I stand there after the prayer, deep in the snow, only the sound of a tiny breeze in the trees. Before I feel any cold, I put the layers back on and I'm heading down, the sun already below the horizon. The sky is vibrating like liquid with neon being shone from the bottom of it, like celluloid. When I get back to the front side of the mountain Venus sparkles to the south holding the paper crescent moon on a string, a 45 degree angle, Venus up, the moon down, and they softly tingle in the pixelated crangrape of dusk. It's getting darker, darker, but the eyes can see everything, maybe more than in the full light; my eyes are dancing, they are in the zone like legs can be when you're in a running rhythm and the endorphins are madly releasing. I see that the snow is now the color of a licorice Necco wafer, with a hint of dusty purple over slate. I'm dancing, turning in circles, hopping off of rocks, sliding down the snow to cut off the switchbacks. I'm thinking that the snow is luxurious and inviting. I am drawn to sleep in it. I've always been drawn to sleep in the woods, parallel to the moon shadow of an oak or a birch or an aspen, in powdery snow, deep, deep, cushiony and quiet. It hits me that it is about death. It is a way that I would want to die, and it would be ok, there in the snow, in the soft, being absorbed into that womb. And I think that there are a lot of people who come to Taos, some unhinged, dancing their own dances that they've danced for so many miles, for so many people, and they've come here to die, not immediately, but eventually. And it doesn't always end up well, softly in the chosen snow, or by a running creek in the soft weeds, but nonetheless it is ok, they are here to launch and they are not judged for it.

The Alley Shuffle

It's late for me these days, 1am. The Alley Cantina on a night with the temperature outside at 6 below zero (right now). My friends' band playing a unique and hypnotic amalgam of afro-coastal-americana-latin-grass. In the french and spanish it's meant to be in, the phrasing and intonation dead on. A bone cold night, but in that post Christmas pre New Years zone , with tourists enthralled at the 7 foot base at the ski mountain, native Taosenos visiting from all over the world reunited with their peeps, and locals just out because they know the Brent Berry Band will cause ass-shaking and indoor humidity. I helped kick off the dancing with an undulating group of voluptuous women I know, while all the men lubricated on the sidelines. We swayed and alternated between samba, two-step, shimmy and hillbilly stomp - sometimes doing all at once. They passed me around like a Gary doll until a new, too country tune fractured the dance floor and sent most of us into the corners. Once I was out of the gyration, it started to feel claustrophobic. The Alley is a much smaller space than anyone thinks. I filled up my cran and soda another time, and talked to a few people I hadn't seen in a while. An energy surge was accompanying the critical mass of people, shots were being downed all around the bar, in the pool room, in the lounge, in the shuffleboard room. I was bearhugged by a burly guy with an Abraham Lincoln beard, a guy I'd partied with a few times over the summer. "Hey, man. Hey, man! It's fucking great to see you, man. Can I buy you a shot? What are you doing later?"
"Nah, man." I couldn't remember his name. "But it's great to see you, too. I have to get going."
"Alright, cool. But next time, man. And happy freakin New Year, too!"
A beautiful, shining woman with dreds and the smile of a biblical prophet, the band leader's girl, whispered in my ear that she respected my non-drinking and that it must be hard in this scene. Also, that taking the time to know myself, as a man, as a person, instead of running away, was what real women noticed. Depth seeks depth, as water will continue to flow into descending space. Her voice was like a massage, bringing me back to my breath. A couple more goodbyes and a short chat about homeopathy with a chef, and I was shuffling across the ice of the parking lot to my CRV.

Now I'm home dipping thin matzo in sundried tomato pesto and getting sleepy. Back to the Mirabal and dreams of warm, moist breezes and floating in turqoise water.

Chasing God

I could have disappeared
in the snow,
but I turned back
and slept
I could disappear now
in the new blue
but I'm here,
listening
God is out there,
she's fiddling,
on a black hill,
as I rest
for the chase

Tsee-Lee bpie (red chili)

I'm reading Robert Mirabal's book and I'm starting to fall into the spell. It is all about the Taos Pueblo and the tendrils of the culture outward to the world (including Town of Taos) and back. I wonder if people who do not know Taos or have been touched by Pueblo people and culture will enter the spell? No matter. The structure of the book includes poetry at the ends of some sections and the beginnings of others. Today, I was reading in the window of the World Cup, surrounded by the comings-and-goings of people all bundled up against the snow and blustery cold. Most were tourists, but some were those I know, and others visiting on school breaks and talking about people I know. I was in a cocoon facing outward toward the Plaza. Other than helping a friend finish her crossword (Clue: Gator Bowl. Answer: Moat), I fell deep into the book cuddled by the patter of people all around me. As my fingers are palsied by the chill at my desk, I am going to transcribe the poem at the end of the last section of I read today. It warmed me in the window (as it captured the cold and misty gray of these past weeks), so I'm hoping it will warm my fingers as I type it:

Tsee-Lee bpie
(red chili)

What do I know of loss?
I have not found 'me' yet.

The snow-covered mountains show assurance,

They show promise every year,
Unfolding adventures for those that will receive them.

From the Rocky Mountains, deer and elk evoke
Cold, mysterious clouds, so they can safely, in the fog,
Travel into the valleys.

Overcast sky above provides the backdrop
For the coffee-colored pueblo walls,
Misty, gloomy, smoke trails
From families that still burn the pinon wood;
Going up, straight up.
High above, the smoke travels like a snake
Coming out of its adobe home, with no wind to steal its secrets.

Only time can reinvent you,
you can never urge your angels too far without their demon partners.
Your time and your demons play a child's game of frozen tag.
With every moment that we refuse to challenge ourselves,
We freeze with no one to tag us free.

Everything that you are now,
May not be considered necessary in your future.
So what do I have to gamble with?
What in my process will I die for?
Who is my opponent? Where are the playing fields?
What do I know of loss?
What do I know of lost?

I will return quietly,
along the narrow, hoofed animal trails,
Lay claim on the misplaced valleys in question,
Stomp at the frozen, open ground,
Looking for my reward;
Knowing that gift may be Death.

What do I know of lost?
I have not found me, still.
Passing away is a good enough start.
So I will bleed on the snow;
Make myself known;
Descend into the wide open field,
Lie down; watch the steam of my breath
Silently flow, reach into the misty gray;
Mixing myself up in the questions and among the answers.

I will die; that's what I know of loss,
There I will find me yet.

This poem, for me, represents one of those moments when a writer captures exactly how you feel (even when you cannot articulate it to yourself). I had to blink back tears in the window and I shook with the effort.

God Bless You, Man

No choice but to continue on in the vein of cold. I can sit here for 10 minutes until that timer rings, I know I can. It's snowing out there again and the brunt of the last storm in a long series of storms will hit toward morning and through tomorrow. It's Christmas and things seem quiet out there, although I didn't stop in anywhere to find out. I'm melancholy, but the cold makes it hard to sustain; melancholy seems to need some warmth to feed it. Right now, there's too much survival instinct to sink far into the simmering, syrupy soup of it. I felt it in the car when the heater was cranking, slowing me down, snow slanting sideways in the streetlights of the main drag. Even the dusty blue lights of police cars reminded me of times when I was behind the lines, unseen, unheard, uncared for by the strangers around me. But now that I'm home, tending the fire trumps. And I think of the couple that flagged me down in the Plaza as I was slurking around, looking for something to snag me. The guy was carrying a big cardboard box and the woman yelled at me. I thought they were pissed off because I drove too close to them, and I was pissed off that they were pissed off because they were walking right in the middle of the road. But some pull underneath made me stop and lower the window. "Hey," the blond woman in cowboy hat and tight jeans said, "can you give us a ride my Dodge truck is broke down?" My stomach was tight, I was in the skin of my own slightly agitated world, and I didn't want to. I said, "I'm pretty much where I was heading...but..., sure, where do you need to go? The guy, big shouldered, mustache, goatee, sunglasses, very smooth, pearly skin, but wide-faced, maybe half Mexican or native american, said, "God bless you, man. We're heading down to the Sagebrush Inn." I leaned back and moved my laptop and computer bag over to make room for him. She sat next to me. They smelled of wet wool and cigarettes. She had battered brown suede cowboy boots, gray-blue eyes and a mouth that had extra slack in the corners. Her hair was yellow straw and curly. They seemed like country musicians and sounded like Texans. I asked where they were from and she said, "Houston or close by." She did most of the talking and I found out she once lived in Roswell and did a bunch of camping and hunting in the Lincoln wilderness. This was their first time in Taos and they were skiing, getting high, meeting people. She said she used to sing in a band, but "fuck it, that shit is crazy." She said her friends from Texas were afraid of New Mexico because "it's too wide open, too exposed." I was pretty quiet, but I liked these guys. He chimed in with a "God bless you, man" a few times, but not in a religious way. She asked if there were a lot of rich retired people here. And I said, "not that many, I mean it's not a retirement community, but there are some rich older people building big houses that sit mostly empty." He said, "Yep, the white man wastes. It'll come back to haunt 'em." I said, "There're a lot of people who could use housing and those places just sit there empty 3/4ths of the year. They should have to give up the space for housing." She said, "There should be a serious tax for that." When we got to the Sagebrush, he asked me if I wanted to come to their room and smoke a bowl. I told him that would be great, but I was off smoking, drinking and anything else for a while. On a cleanup period. He said, "Too bad, man, but God Bless. Let me give you some money." I said, Nah, man, no need." He reached into his wallet and pulled out a $20. "Take it, man, really. Merry Christmas." I took it and thanked him. She said they'd be hanging out at the hotel bar later if I changed my mind. Three months ago, I probably would have, but I couldn't enter their world, not right now. I couldn't even enter my world. So, there's my Christmas story. It felt good meeting them, Karen and Steve, and I took that $20 and went to the movies.

Mountain Man Mockery

Hunkering down at the desk. Hat pulled tight on my head so I look like a mushroom with facial features. Shoulders hunched and tight. Upper abdominals tensed along with the glutes. Knees together. Nose cold enough to shock the back of my hand when I run it across to check for runnings. A little bit, yes, a little bit. I have thinly sliced yams in the oven turning to my new favorite snack chips (with a peppering of garlic salt). My toes are marble on a chilly Miami morning, tucked too tightly into my Sorels, which have trudged through too much snow to gather the firewood for tonight. Unfortunately, the fire is about 50 steps away at the exact opposite end of this house. Bucking the rustic, I've given in to placing an electric space heater next to my right leg. It isn't doing much - I have it on a low setting - but I don't want to use too much energy and I know heating requires more amperage than most other appliances. So, I'm tensing and squeezing and letting my nose run. It's not like this is Minnesota or anything. Yes, the snow is pouring down, and it's around 20 degrees, but it's not below zero with howling winds. My inner mountain man demands a lot more from me than this radiator-shaped space heater filled with oil (the only satisfying aspect is hearing the oil roil and pop as it heats up). I just checked and the wood stove is quaking with a cedar log blaze. It's gotta be 10 degrees warmer in the great room with that stove fire and the oven at 350. Whatever...it's winter, right? And the weird thing is that I'm excited that the snow is coming straight down, an abundance of small flakes steadily, steadily. That's accumulating snow. That's the sign of a dump. I'm going to wake up like a 7 year old on Christmas, before dawn, convinced I've heard Rudolf and Donner and Blitzen (always those three, no others) prancing on the roof, and wondering what gifts lay under the tree (I don't have one, but...we're dreaming here). But, really, I'll be waking up with a snow globe of dancing fairies in my stomach anticipating a snow so deep and creamy that it undulates halfway up my bedroom window so that it reaches my chin as I kneel on the bed and squint into the heavy, humming gray density. And I'll say to myself, "holy shit, holy shit, it's that fucking high. It is that fucking high!" And the greenlit digital alarm clock will say 5:26, and I'll turn on the radio to see if the NPR lady in Alamosa is talking in quiet tones about the record blizzard currently buffeting north central New Mexico and that the town of Taos and its outlying areas (me!) are getting the brunt of it. "Steve at the El Pueblito church called in a few minutes ago and said he measured 43" a mile and change north of the Taos Plaza. And he says it's coming down so hard he can't see the Chevron station across the road. Well, I hope everyone in Taos has his Christmas shopping done because folks, the highway department is urging everybody to stay put. We'll keep you posted on road closures." And with that I would loosen, knowing my work is done, and that I can sleep another couple of hours with the sweet thought of being snowed in, and that I'll have to don my snowshoes (ooops, meant to buy them at the Taos Mountain Outfitter Christmas party at 40% off) to bring milk (Silk) and juice (Superfood) to my neighbors who live on the top of a sage swell about 1,000 yards east of me.

That's the dream. I have a enough food for several days. I have my 'net, my radio, my phone. I have hundreds of books and, for now, electricity. There is running water from a good, deep well. I have two space heaters and 2/3 a cord of wood. My mountain man laughs at me. It's 8pm and I can already feel sleep in my legs. I'm giving in, that's what I've been doing lately. I've dragged this body over so many hills, and, in the last bunch of weeks, through protozoa and bone-splitting infections. I did not stop, but now I can. Weariness in the points of the hip bones, in the coccyx, in my right temporal lobe, just above the knees, in the Aquaman pit of my solar plexus, in my big toes, in my still healing left ankle, in the middle part of my spine, and in my eyes, the bottoms of the sockets.

There are more notes in me, but they will have to keep and play in the astral. The TV is in my bedroom and I will watch a movie and, if that is not enough, I will dig deeper into Reyes Wind in Robert Mirabal's book. That's that. It's 8:11, snowing hard, and I'm off to put a few more logs on the fire.

Love Your Ass Off

Have you ever heard anyone say, "I loved my ass off last night"? or "I loved my head off" or "I loved so hard I burst a blood vessel" or "I loved my brains out" (we've all heard "fucked my brains out") or "I loved myself silly"?

Ooh, ooh That Smell...

Do you know the smell of the late night? It is metallic in liquid form, melted from the people that walked earlier in the light, plying the "daily life." And that smell, that air, is filled with genies, they dance and swim in circles, and they want more; they've been rubbed out of their hiding places. Some are affable, some bent on destruction. These genies are everywhere, freeze dried, in spores, spilling from ceilings and crawling out of couches. They are smart and protozoan, just looking to latch on and suck nutrients. The later it gets, the colder they smell. Only a warm touch can neutralize the odor.

Union of Truth Digging

I'm digging for the truth, but I take a lot of breaks. It feels good, the digging, makes muscles, increases lung capacity. But I'm used to breaks. Just as I hit my rhythm, as I'm about to be lost in the task, gone like the jiggling tips of sage plants, like the clouds in their dusk shapes, like people making love locked in dreams, unrecognizable, on the edge, of falling or flying, it occurs to take a break, to be found again, to agitate, to loaf, to slouch, to move about awareness, to taunt it and then to feel guilty.

Ze Moon

I live out on a desert where snow and ice lay thick on the caliche, and I am weary looking at red, perky Jupiter out my writing room window. I want to listen to my body. It's voice has been in my ears and in my eyes forever, and I have heard, but rarely have I listened. On the doorstep of the solstice and I am alone. I remember little Jack, on a years ago solstice at Virginia's house on Valverde, looking out the window at the late, late moon rise, and intoning "ze moon, ze moon. Look, look, ze moon." A 2 year old mophead, smudge faced and naked, stalking around a bunch of beached, shroomed up wee hour revelers strewn about a room filled with couches, sleeping bags and piles of people's belongings. Somebody was stroking a guitar in the other room, and the scent of brownies and pinon logs filled the air. I sat on the couch under the big window with Jack and reached out addicted to the texture of his baby skin, those elbow dimples and that face of exploding delight. I bounced him around, got him all giggly and hoarse. It had snowed a lot that night, but the sky cleared late and the moon crossed the front yard above our snow-hatter cars and the leaning telephone poles. It took it's time and Jack was transfixed. The room was dark, but for the orange fireglow, and l could see la luna wobbling bright on Jack's amber irises. That was the solstice, right there, in Jack's eyes, on the couch with the rest of the people lying on the wood floor propped on elbows, heavy-lidded and happy, knowing that the longest night of the year was almost behind us. The moon slid toward the southern edge of the window where it began to disappear behind the neighbors' house. This time Jack asked, "ze moon?"

Part of the Circus

Writing is hard, man. That's not what I came home to say, but that's the first thing that comes to mind. It's snowing, the darkness has hardened the frozen slop on the roads, and another fetch of moisture is streaming in from CA and AZ as we speak. A little while ago, I was in town, getting a package out through the virtually empty post office, dumping some garbage in a dumpster behind a place I used to live (and, by virtue of that, still lay claim to dumping rights), and having an easy chai at the World Cup where I found myself talking to a retired economics professor from the Univ. of Tulsa about identity theft and the blind trust that inhabits the other side of that coin and is essential for the human community to function. Usually, I avoid conversations with this guy, he's one of those black holes, a nice black hole, no dark energy anti-gravitational force, but I'm living "out there" now and he was the first being I spoke with today who inhabited the same time and space (I think). It was pleasant to converse. And then, with a little time leftover from the no-line post office transaction, I went over to Robert Mirabal's store in Yucca Plaza; walked through fat flakes over the sidewalk mushy with mashed potato snow plowed off Paseo. It was calm and moist, mild-feeling with all my layers on. Mirabal has just published a novel, autobiographical, called "Running Alone in Photographs" where he writes of Pueblo life through a female protagonist, Reyes Wind. I wanted a book for myself, and two as presents, and I'd been shut out when he sold out in 10 minutes at Moby Dickens bookstore last Saturday. Tonight, I got there right at 5:30 when the selling/signing was to begin. There were only 2 or 3 others there when I came in the door, my computer bag full of books and notebooks slung over my right shoulder (no room for the computer). A scruffy man in an orange cap with a salty and peppery five O'clock shadow, a bulbous nose and bursty bright energy, introduced himself to me as Dean and told me that the food would be ready in a few minutes and I should eat. Then I saw Robert. He came across the room with those wonder-lit eyes, somehow shining through the flourescence in their coal-and-white combo, long pontail, Levi's jean jacket over a brown suede vest over a buckskin shirt, faded jeans tapering to snow boots of fur and leather. When he got to me he gave me a peace hand-grasp, then a hug. He doesn't know me well, but he knows me, and vice versa. We connected a few times 5 years ago when I was hanging with his striking and skittish cousin, B. The one time that stands out was at the Taos Inn's Adobe Bar, on a snowy night, when I came to meet B and she was hanging in the far corner of the bar, against the wall, with Robert, her usual 9pm smirk on and a shot of tequila in her hand. Mirabal had one, too. I joined and we got to drinking. We each had 5 or 6 shots of Commemorativo, and the conversation turned to creation, the need, the heart of it. B floated out into the other room and we just talked about art being like breathing and food and exercise and religion and love, and the endless need to do it, or "do this", the drinking (which he said he doesn't do much of - and by his prolific creations in music, painting, instrument making, acting, writing/storytelling, you know it to be true). And without going too far or getting too reverent or sycophantic, or just plain cheesy, we fucking bonded, as artists. We hugged on it and he gave me eye-to-eye support and told me he knew I was a writer and creator whether I was doing it or not (at that time very little), and in that is the memory that stands, the communal bond. But it was more, too. It was a welcoming to this place where I now live on a level in the dirt and rocks beyond the people screaming me off my bicycle from their trucks, or the macho challenges in the bars. This is when I first lived here, before I was sure-footed enough and rooted in the history of this place to stand comfortably on its skin. And B was his family, and he was ok with me and her, although he did warn me that she had "the old Indian blood." So, when I saw him tonight, all of that was there. And that's not all of what I mean to say. What struck me tonight, in his store, was a sense of celebrity, the excitement of being around a person who creates in what seems like fearlessness, and that I am part of that circus commune of people who channel and entertain and spill and tell. And all of this is sounding cheesy to me, but what's more and at the core is that I feel this here about a lot of my friends and acquaintances. I'm in this humming, hodgepodge world of actors, writers, poets, acrobats and circus performers, chefs, performance artists, painters, potters, healers, filmmakers, monologists, extreme athletes, sculptors, musicians, toymakers, creators and interpreters of everything - and I freaking know them...they are my people. We are fugueing together. And I'm dumbfounded that I get to be part of it. My skin tingles. I'm forever a little kid invited backstage to meet the actors at a Broadway play. It's ridiculous. That's what it's like living here. And I feel like this about so many people. When my friends in a band play onstage (even when I'm the MC), I can't believe my good fortune to be part of it, in the organism, just in. It's hard to describe, because the ego of it is gone most of the time, friends are friends, but still, still...they are talented and creating and blowing people away, making them move, weep, leap, remember, fall in love, change their course....so much it dribbles into a puddle. And I'm not saying they are good, bad, better or worse than anyone else, it's just that it's a tribe, a traveling band of people, mixed and matched and mismatched, too, but all with that eye-to-eye support from whatever is the thing that drives creation. And I got that from Robert Mirabal tonight. Eye-to-eye, full person to full person. He who now has an oscar, a touring band, is in a movie about Georgia O'Keefe coming out next year, makes flutes, writes childrens stories and now novels....all of this is inspiring. And, at the same time, it's ordinary. Maybe that's where my sadness bled in as I left his store after listening to Mirabal talk to Ted Egri, a 95 year old sculptor who still sculpts (who looks like he has years left to go, smiling, sharp, clear-eyed and moving his walker along smoothly) and saying goodbye to a couple I know who run a fitness center (the guy acts, writes, plays and writes music and is a super athlete). I was walking back to my car in the darkness and I thought of various friends, their faces floating in front of me, and realized that I both love them in the most ordinary way in the soil of us as people, and also I am captivated, motivated, titillated and inspired by them, and feel lucky, giddy, a holy-shit-I-am-part-of-this grin in my solar plexus. And maybe that means I am home.

Blue Dream

Waiting for the phone to ring in a blue dream, a full moon floating out the window. It may have rung, you feel a conversation and it leaks about you the next day, maybe for years. A fiddler in green satin with her chin poised to play takes up residence in snowdrifts, and empty houses, in airports, and in the bare orchard along the river of the canyon that you keep driving by, always wanting to stop and look around. You're slow in the waiting, in the listening, not sure if you've heard, or seen, or felt...anything.

Rabbit Redux

A rabbit rooting dawn today out here on the high Mesa riding the white-capped waves of old volcanoes. No clouds with 2 below on the window thermometer, the caldera silenced, a subtle cherry haze made of woodsmoke and yesterday's snowmelt drifting over town way in the eastern and southern distance. Out here aboard the Watership (upside) Down, I skim along with rabbits, plump ones and stringy, sinewy, demon-eyed jacks, lured out of my warm nautilus into the newly bright world, stalks of dry grass glistening like Christmas tinsel. Those rabbits, the rotunds, sniff the Tiffany-glittering surface of the snow for rabbit food and don't mind my first, heavy gulps of frozen air. I walk in my rubber and leather insulated Sorel's (bought, I must relate, for $80 at the Boulder Army store in 1994) in the direction of a dark juniper covered hump topped by a kissy-lips peak. I'm hoping to find the rabbit city and enter that world, whatever size may be required of me. But once I start moving with purpose, they skip into the dark tunnels of sage, and I turn back to my vessel. Only one remains in sight, a tall jack thinking it's a kangaroo, bounding as if on a pogo stick, along the south side of the dirt road, keeping up with a sherry red prius going 30 mph in the direction of the gorge.

Nearing home I am halted by three dogs, a bony malamute, a shorthaired, lean-muscular african looking pup, and a wylie-faced collie-shepherd mix. They move around and in-and-about me like water, sniffing and smiling, rubbing and panting. I'm soft among them, nobodied, and wish to enter like Gumby into their world. But there's the house, and they see it, too, and it brings back memories of the former tenant lady who, I'm told, used to feed them porkchops. I've no chops, and realize that I don't know what to feed them. I've been petless my whole life other than Dannie, my friends' Newfoundland, who I lived with for 4 years, and had been trained to feed. I tricked myself for a minute that they were just happy to be with me as a being among them, but they wanted the goods and they knew I could, or eventually would deliver. And I will, but still, I'm left with a lingering sadness from this morning; the disappearance of the rabbits at my clodding steps, and the heads-turning-in-unison departure of the tres amigos, noses tuned to other gastronomical possibilities up-mesa. I stepped back into my house, still toasty from yesterday's sun, and sat to meditate, thinking that maybe one day I'd crawl out into the sage and find Alice's wonderland.