Off the highway

"The journey itself is my home." 
Basho






On some deep personal level, this may have been my best trip to Santa Fe yet, at least in this incarnation.  Certainly not in a money sense, although I managed to sell a few things at the end that should keep the goblins away for a while. Yet this trip was special and paid off in spades, in a higher sense, if you will.

This journey was different for several reasons. For one thing, I made it a point to get off the main road at every opportunity. This mode of behavior instantly put me in a better, richer space.

The trip also allowed me to continue to enrich my relationship with several people who are becoming more important in my life. You all know who you are. You can work with people for years and then suddenly things get intimate and real for some reason. Perhaps I am growing up, who knows? But it was a pleasure and a blessing to be with all of my old and new friends. The one thing we can not do without.

***

I woke up from a dark sleep during the night, needing to use the facilities. I wasn't sure which hotel I was in, the only light in the room, the digital glow of the clock, diagonally away from me on the bed. I had no idea where I was, systematically pressing my hands on the wall to find a door like a blind man. I pushed into a closet and knew that I was going the wrong way. I would have to reorient. I sat down on the bed and searched for bearings. After a prolonged synaptic gap, I had the sudden realization that I was on my own bed, in my own house. A couple weeks of foreign home and hotel layouts had caused my brain to malfunction.

**

I certainly have not felt like writing.  Perhaps it was a***'s suicide that kicked me in the teeth. I have very little to say. I explained as much to my brother in Toronto yesterday. Buzz mentioned that my writing had been sparse. "You have had a meal, haven't you?" Buzz is a lawyer turned excellent chef/ restauranteur  and he likes to hear about food. And the truth is that I have been writing a lot about food lately, it is easy and I can be slightly dispassionate and not nearly so miserable.

***

As I mentioned, I stayed a night in Flagstaff the night before last. It was getting dark and I was tired and I pulled the blue chrysler behind a pesticide truck in the little neon lit drive through.  A man and a woman sat on the bumper muscularly restraining a large rottweiler. They left me only a few feet between the dog and the door in which to pass. The dog snarled and lunged at me, barking furiously. "Oh, he's just a pussycat," the woman said. I looked up and without breaking stride said, "Some pussycat."

I got burned at the hotel in Flagstaff yesterday morning. The sink faucet had two temperatures, scalding and boiling. My hand is still tingling. Same thing with the tub, I submerged my right food and was burned.  I tried to call the front desk and noticed that the phone had no actual input, rendering it a mere decorative element on the night stand.

I called the Ramada Corporate Office and got a woman who could have cared less who agreed to look into things, or at least move them out of her domain as fast as possible. I checked out, looking into a room with the sorriest excuse for a breakfast ever and approached the young girl at the front desk. I explained that I didn't want anything but had been burned. "Oh," she said. No apology, nothing, all the sympathy one would feel wiping up ants on the countertop. Wouldn't look in my eyes, the eyebrow pierced twentysomething being wrapped up in a hundred more important things.

Corporate just emailed me, not their problem, this particular Ramada on Woodlands in Flagstaff being a franchise. So sorry.

**

As I said, I had some nice meals, parties, openings and events the last two weeks. Went to Copa de Oro twice which is much more inconsistent this year. Took some good friends and clients and I was frankly  embarrassed when two of the Moroccan lamb stews with apricots never arrived. My duck quarters with a raspberry glaze was absolutely superb. But my next visit, the duck carnitas were boring, dull and unimaginative, unless you think that prospecting through a mound of shredded lettuce to find some dry tasteless sinews of duck a good time. Did have a swell meeting with Daniel and Michael, two good friends who shared the meal with me. Fun to talk dirty with my gay friends.

Went to Morris opening, Moyers opening, Nat's soiree and then ran into my friends Joe and Linda, great people, she a regular blast reader. They had both invited me to a great party and dinner. I had eaten a cashew mole enchilada at the Plaza already so I pulled up a chair and had a glass of wine and we talked for a couple hours it seemed in the warm air. Absolute treasures, these two, we shared a lot of our experiences. More jewish cowboys and wonderful new friends.

***

The show ended with a couple decent sales, a Maynard Dixon drawing of a prospector's burro and a germantown blanket which hurt to sell and that I discounted pretty seriously. Pack out was the normal bitch and then some, the heat and humidity affecting my air intake in a pretty dramatic way this year.

After the packout I went over and sat down at the bar at the Santa Cafe and had a drink waiting for Sue and Steve and their friend Dane to join me for dinner. Three quarters down my greyhound, I signaled to the bartender and asked him why it tasted like pineapple juice? He admitted a mispour and I had a couple of the corrected versions, chatting with a large haired woman from Houston who I am sure found me quite cute and exceedingly charming.

We got seated and had a nice meal, Santa Cafe always the most consistent good meal in town (I had the rack of lamb if you care) and we had wine for dinner. We all agreed to reconnoiter up at El Farol, the oldest bar in America, to hear music afterwards.

I stepped out of my chair and it was like the sea of holes.


The normally hard cement turned spongy and the whole scene took on a carnival act, fish eye like quality. My fellow patrons faces turned into handle bar mustached lion tamers and shrieking operatic contraltos. Unfortunately in my stupor, I realized that I actually knew most of them and can't wait to hear the reviews come in on my drunken state. Stumbled to my car.

Got to El Farol. Bobby Zinner was sitting at a table with his sweet wife and we rapped. A blues guitar legend who lost his arm in an accident and had it surgically reattached. Re taught himself to play, which he does very competently along with being a really good singer. Tiho Dimitrov was playing with his band, a great player and not especially great singer. Don't know if Zinner ever made it to the stage. We were drinking beer now. Really ended up having a nice night. But the effects of the three alcohol varieties played a little havoc with my left temporal lobe the next morning. I also left my car hatch open all night, and miraculously started the car the next morning. God protects babies and fools.

I thought that I would start the campaign west with a good meal and headed over to Pasquales, which was packed and then on to La Fonda, which was crowded with khaki wearing older couples from Oklahoma and a lot of squares and then decided to hightail it back to the rusty and trusty old Plaza Restaurant wherein I dusted off a scrumptious blueberry pancake and sausage. Made conversation with a local retiree from Sears who had a souped up porsche.

So after a stop for Sherman's for Leslie at the Santa Domingo Reservation, I am back on the road. And was yearning to once again, get off. After Hopi on the way in and Bosque de Apache during the intermission, I needed the new again.  Don't know what the variant will be yet.

***

Have those of you on Facebook noticed the growing trend where some of our Facebook friends fashion themselves as philosophers and must give you a daily dose of Gibran, Buber, Wayne Dyer or other of that ilk. It makes me want to scream, this spoon fed simplistic spirituality and I wish they would stop. I have defriended a couple of major offenders. Snatch this from my hand, quan chin caine.  I know that I am cynical, but who you jivin' with that cosmic debris?

Facebook is the new de facto communication methods, conversation of under 140 sibilants being now quite de riguer and the new literary standard. Blogs are now anachronisms, soon we will just exchange a few all knowing grunts that will manage to convey the whole breadth of our cranial and emotional output.

I met up with a writer on Facebook last month. We met head on like two locomotives. Guy has written several books, serious chops. New Yorker. Got very nasty between us and then poof we exchanged arrows and are now friends. Poof. Acrimony dissolved in an almost poetic way. Very cool.

**

I saw the sign for Acomita to my left. I pulled off the road to the south. I had toyed with the idea of going back to hopi and Tuba City but the south intervened. The southwest furthers...I rumbled down the rugged road for several miles and came upon this 3D Shoot, an archery tournament on the reservation. I caught the end of the shoot and nervously asked if I could take a picture.  I don't want to piss off two hundred native americans with bows in their hand. They said okay. Pretty pottery prizes to the winning marksman.

I continued down the road and decided to continue on to Acoma. Acoma vies with Old Oraibi as the oldest continuously inhabited city in North America, its roots reaching back to 1100. The Sky City perched on the impenetrable bluff.  I have never been to the top, always worrying about the safety of my provisions but decided today was the day. I paid for a camera permit and got on a bus to the top of the Mesa. Our guide Conran was the new chief's brother. Father was Sun Clan and mother from the Pumpkin Clan, two of the twelve clans remaining from the original 21.  He led us around Acoma for an hour and a half, patiently answering our questions. He said that everybody in the tribe prayed not to get picked for chief, since the job was a lot of work and mostly a pain in the ass. Conran used to drive a big rig truck for Werner.

He took us into the church, named for the patron St. Esteban, a place where we were not allowed to photograph. A massive affair with huge corbels and beams, seventy feet tall, walls twelve feet thick. Originally situated over their sacred kiva. Mysteriously built sympathetically with the arcane numerology practiced by the pueblos, with the special emphasis on 3, 4 and 7.

He methodically recounted the pueblos travails with the Spanish friars and conquistadores, explaining to us how the Spaniards would cut off a pueblo indian's foot so that he could not run away. A colonizer that saw and caused the tribe to diminish from 2500 members to a few hundred. He talked about the revolt in 1598, when the Spaniards came back with cannons and decimated the village. We saw the spirit gods that ring the cemetery guarding the dead. He showed us some of the seven sacred ways off the mountain, the runners rock, the place for water, he introduced us to the people. I told him that I too was once in a tribe that loved St. Steven.  You could deduce that the tribe has pretty much no use left for the Catholic religion even though it appears to cloak their native beliefs. I asked him about a particular saint and he said he just learned what purgatory meant and that they had gone back to the old ways.

I talked to some of the potters in the village, got to look through the mica windows and into a large chamber. It was hot and we tried to stay in the shadows. After a time it was time to leave. He offhandedly pointed out a vertical trail off the mountain. "You fall, you hit the bottom in 3 seconds. From 372 feet. Do not go if you have a fear of heights, vertigo or heart problems." Bingo. He looked around and said, "Lets get on the bus. Unless we have any takers." I watched the muggles get on the bus and softly said, "I am going over the side."


It was very difficult for me, at times resorting to crude butt skipping and a grasping for available handholds. Not to mention that I am petrified of heights. Half way down in a scary spot, I wondered if I should go back up top and was doubting my resolve. But I pressed on, past the chewing gum rock and finally made it to the bottom in one piece and the long walk back to the Cultural Center. It made me feel good to test my limits in such a magical place.

The rest of the trip was nothing out of the ordinary although the sunset in Flagstaff was spectacular and the magnificent peaked clouds stretched all the way through the Mojave.

Listened to a public radio program This American Home that asked people what there choice would be if  offered the superpowers of invisibility or Flying. They surmised that the Platonic narcissists would fly while the Aristotelian sneaks would prefer to invisibly watch their friends have sex and shoplift.

 Managed the resolve not to stop at Tommy's in Barstow or pretty much anywhere else. My cat Nigel was waiting for me and had a good back rub in the dirt. Great to be home after a special month. Great to be with my pals when I was away. When the whole thing is over the money will mean nothing, it will all be about the people. I think.

I come away with one epiphany, if I may play the philosopher myself.  My body needs roads that lead nowhere, the solitude of the vast. I will always be a child of the southwest. My superpower derives from getting lost.