Artists, actors, and other fools say its Taos. Nearly anyone else will argue its actually Santa Fe.
They’ll start with something they figure we can all relate to: sunsets. Then they’ll throw in something about being closer to nature. At this point they feel they have you safely warmed up to discuss contrasts: the earth and sky, the historical and contemporary, and maybe even the spiritual and concrete. If none of those sway, they’ll roll out a mysterious conclusion about the light. “The light is palpable, even flavorful. Like the wind or the rain.”
All these things are true but not for either of these places. Santa Fe is a full blown city and nothing kills a gaian shakra like a few thousand gas stations. Taos, well you’ve been there, Taos is just too touristy.
I am no eastern philosopher, but I have to think that if a place is going to be a “The Place” it has to be able to remove you and replace the you shaped void with It. Not sure you even get the curteousy of being a vessel in this case. If that were the case then you could somehow carry a bit of It away; I seriously doubt The Place is going to stand for spritual evaporation of that magnitude.
I have been to The Place. Spent months and years in The Place. I have even spent some time in the The Place Within The Place.
There are a couple of cane chairs there. When I had first been there I might have told you they weren’t that old, but since those chairs are still there 15 years later maybe they are older than I would imagine. Maybe they came with TPWTP. The tile is not spectacular. But the wrought iron grills in the adobe archways are oddly turqoise–edging more toward the aged copper found in the nearby mines than the centerpiece of an awful squash blossom pawn necklace. “God, woman! Get a bra.”
Seems like things would grow better in The Place and maybe they do, but they seem to fail in TPWTP. I can only imagine that the roses suffer from the the same inexplicable malady I do. Sure they twine with the ironwork but only with the help of a few industrial twist-ties. Ultimately, they just aren’t really there as much as you might expect.
I have brought books here. I have brought pen and paper here. Even once, foolishly early on, I brought water-colors. But there was no point.
The book closed before I could call him anything, let alone Ishmael.
The pen was recapped before the night was dark or stormy.
The brush was a lost cause before I was stupid enough to show up Here with it.
I am gone Here. I am as important and as useful as the paint on the wall. Here I am an inanimate object. All my thoughts borrowed for a time while I am here, but returned without purchase in my mind. Don’t ask, I can’t tell.
Here, God huffs on the window of my soul and it does not fog up.
I just don’t understand why the mosquitoes can’t stay away.