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.