Santa Fe

I am sitting here in a cafe' trying to think of the best way to describe the past week in Santa Fe. It’s akin to another world. The man sitting across from me is wearing a dress and muttering to himself. There is a man here also who is carving a cane on the patio. I said that I was sitting in a cafe, well it is a cafe of sorts, nothing close to the idea of a Parisian Cafe'. It’s more a coffee den. The adobe walls covered with a bright yellow paint that seems to radiate its own heat. The air is different here, not just in the 'den" but all of here. Most often it resembles the smell of burning leaves, like fall in the Midwest but not quite. It makes me think of racku, for those of you who have done pottery. Aside from the smell the air undetectable, its absence of moisture and virtual non-being is it most memorable quality.

There is a lacksidasicalness that surrounds this place. At times it seems like apathy often it seems like this. Not just the people but also the buildings themselves seem to sag in a tiredness and laziness that could care less that you see them, that you walk through them. They have long given up on appearance excepting their cracks and dust. Embracing now the dilapidated beams that jet out of them and the overgrown piles of junk and rubble that in the name of "art" adorn their font walks.

September is bringing with her a wind that whispers words like "chill" and "freeze" if you listen carefully. It is pleasant for the time being. At night it punishes the buildings for there apathy, they seem unmoved that next morning. I have thought that perhaps it is the sky that has brought this town to be as it is, with its huge expanses and crimson and gold settings. What could compare when God paints such a canvas as this? Everything is smaller here. Even the Sangre de Cristo Mountains seem dwarfed in the grandeur of the sky.

How is it that this town has such spiritual darkness? With such bright skies? They think they are so spiritual with their festivals and the effigies they offer up in the name of who knows what... Whom? Who? We sit, all of us under the Sangre de Cristo (the Blood of Christ) unaware of the healing sav of a mountains namesake. There is so much to point to here, to say see this points, this is a sign to the real. But most will not hear of it.