September 11, 2003
-
Home
I think it’s been weeks since I was there.
When things are hard I think about New Mexico. I’ve often wondered how I would remember it once it became something long after the fact, and what exactly would sit in the forefront of my recollection. It seems like the ordinary things are the ones that I hold on to. I wonder if they will start to wear and fade around the edges from all this handling, like a book or a well-loved shirt; and whether I will lose a little bit of them day by day from all the times I’ve turned them over and over.
Everything I am wants to be there.
I remember things like standing in the morning sun in front of his mother’s house, looking at the clear blue sky and soaking in the light and the dust. Or standing in a parking lot blissfully soaking in the parched heat of the sun as it radiated off my shoulders. I remember the vegas which stretched across the ceiling, and the parts where they had splintered or cracked, and were nestled with knots. We drove across the valley past Albequerque, and i remember how I strained to see where the horizon ended, and where it was cut with blue hazy mountains, and the stretches of sand and sage. I think I might have cried a little bit to realize that i was really there, though i never let on how much it hurt me to feel that awake and alive. Sometimes I still dream about that landscape. I remember the rain, and the black thunderclouds sliced with lightning which rolled along the foothills, and water that vanished nearly as soon as it touched the earth. I remember the sound the wind made. I remember standing with him on top of the mountain, and realizing that I never wanted to go east again.
I am in love. And I am going to get home again.
Leaving Train
The finest silver needle
Shouldn’t ever slide between
When lovers stand as parting friends
Gonna put myself on a leaving train
And I won’t come back again
I could wait til morning
If it don’t come down today
A dime says I won’t be satisfied
Gonna put myself on a leaving train
And I won’t come back again.
The words that go unspoken
on the color of the sun
And the coolin’ air of the evening shade
And the breathless hours on the sleeping plane
And the last taillight on a leaving train
And I won’t come back again.
-Gillian Welch
