...do it tomorrow

All I kept saying was rad. The people, totally rad. The weather, the view, totally rad. The activities, professions, museums, performances, all rad. But what an outdated word for New Mexico! It is no longer the 80s, Simon; no one’s saying rad. Except me in New Mexico, apparently. But I couldn’t help it.

The Midwest is back there...ahead is the South West

Before I left I had a feeling I would like the South West, and I did. It began the moment I crossed into the state…something in the air shifted, perhaps. We were no longer in Kansas—thank God—and Oklahoma was behind us too. We were officially in the South West. The landscape responded immediately, as if to greet us from a deep sleep. First there were the easy, deep breaths in rolling hills. Then the mesas—glorious mesas!—rose in first movements and fresh eyes. That kind of love only morning sees gently grew into mountains in  the seated position, eyes rubbed with clouds. And that sun, fully awake, smiled at me and said ‘hello’ in a ‘good morning’ kind of way.

Omega Bridge outstide Taos, NM

Our first stop was in Taos, an artsy spiritual town unsurprisingly nestled in the heavens. In every direction you can see for miles and miles and then up even higher to surrounding peaks. In one corner lies the land of the Pueblo Indians, the other has a shrine to poet D. H. Lawrence, and in between are the shops and restaurants of tourist-fed wares and well-fed tourists. Indian artifacts and artwork, cowboy garb and southwestern spices were in the windows of shop after shop. But it is becoming with a view. Maybe even quaint. 

Easter sunrise in Arizona

At the Taos Diner II we interacted with genuine gals more concerned with contact and communication than orthodoxy, and I enjoyed every bit of it, from the off-color jokes printed on their menus to the casual way they poured coffee, to the matter-of-factedly way they denied service when the power went out. We sat and drank coffee until it went cold or the electricity came back on and told stories of bears in the mountains. Outside the restaurant the cook toked on her cigarette and laughed with the neighboring businessman about the situation.

It is the land of mañana, apparently, so this is par for the course. I met a transplanted New Yorker who told me that first when he explained the difference between “the way it works” in the North East and South West. Cowboy poet S. Omar Barker (aka Ol’ SOB) said it this way:

Mañana is Spanish word I’d sometimes like to borrow.

It means “don’t skeen no wolfs today that you don’t shot tomorrow!

An’ eef you got some jobs to do, in case you do not wanna,

Go ‘head an’ take siesta now! Tomorrow ees mañana!

Le Canyón Grande

But I like it this way—not so fast paced and crazed, with less stress clinging to us like our wintery garments.  I like that it is markedly different in the South West. The character is distinct from other state clusters. Maybe that's why I'm on the West Coast and finally getting to this haphazard post. Santa Fe is growing on me. Or maybe that’s why everything was rad—because it wasn’t cool, like California, or wicked like the North East. It isn’t awesome or tight or right-on. It’s just, totally rad.

…get the hell out of dodge

It’s been day after day, it seems, in deceptive listlessness. Like plains rolling into farms rolling into fields—the experience one has crossing Kansas—these recent weeks have been monotonous, though anticipatory.

My travels back from Nicaragua went as anyone’s would. I was able to spend my final hours on the stoops of the Ometepan locals, a joy I often miss on the fenced porches of the States. It takes a certain kind of life to end the day sitting outside, peaceably, watching children pass, conversing with neighbors, content with stillness. In Palestine they understood this secret pleasure. So too did those in Nepal and Jordan. I was reminded of my sweet life in the West Bank as I tried to speak Spanish, both jokingly and seriously, which are hardly different to the local. I sat through dusk into darkness; the volcano silently faded into the navy night and a host of starlight broke through the sun’s waning cover. Paradoxically, the conversation was light, but the contact much deeper, like Michelangelo’s God touching Adam. These moments of connection are so delicate, intricate, even beautiful, and they occur wherever we are able to really meet with someone as ‘other-worldly’ as a Nicaraguan, or United Statesian or wherever-ian.

However, I had to say adios beneath hopes of return and a smoky volcano. I rode the ferry across the choppiest waters I’ve ever experienced and I marveled at the fact that we docked. For a moment there I honestly had no idea how or when we’d stop and what we were going to smack into and from where I will jump to save myself. Good thing I don’t have an iPhone to get wet—I thought (yes, these are my concerns). Luckily the plane ride was smoother.

The PoeMobile gearing up for departure

Home was freezing, my back peeled completely from a burn and I discovered I had developed shingles across my side. So when folk asked me how was Nicaragua, I found myself replying with a kind of love-hate paradox. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it, really; it was packing time! My father were to be off to the West on another leg of the Dead Poet Tour—this one exploring from Santa Fe to L.A. to Seattle. And there was much to do.

As I write this, on our way to our first stop in Taos, New Mexico, we are in the windy, cold, precipitous tedium of Western Kansas. The phrase “get the hell out of dodge” was first said in reference to Dodge City which we just passed through. It makes sense. Three titillating days of sunshine in Kansas City and Wichita spoiled us. Now all I am hoping for are the sunned clay homes, mesas and cacti of my imagined Southwest as we chase the horizon.

Westward Poe!

Ever westward. Towards occidens, the setting sun. It is a historically poetic direction in which to explore. Eden was in the East, and so lay our beginnings. From our exile until Lewis and Clark, until now, even, we have been headed West. It seems it is as Kerouac says, the east of my past with the west of my future. It is in the west our days end, unreachable but chase-able. And so in the hand of Discovery is the hand of Dusk, and they are inseparable.

So let’s get the hell out of dodge and head westerly. There’s nothing here for us anyway.