Bryon
...contemplating ketchup, half-eaten fries, the meaning of life, and iced tea. Diners in New Mexico are full of inspiration.
Month: January 2004
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Home
When the plane took off this morning, in that moment the landing gear lifted from the desert tarmac and the mountains slunk down under my view, I felt this melancholy wrench in my heart. It was like the ground were part of me and I were being pulled and separated from myself. Tonight I sleep a thousand or so miles away from where I started, and I feel as if I've been stretched thin over the whole continent.
How is it possible to love a place, like you might love another person, or child, or a memory of tenderness? How do you fall in love with the land? How do you hold that expanse at night, or kiss its bright face, or look into its endless eyes? Could it be the same thing, like a soulmate, like other kinds of love?
Edward Abbey said something about every person having an innate place they are bound to, and a sense of belonging that is tied to the land. Slowly it is becoming clear to me that I've always been called to that one place, and looked for signs of it in everything I know. It is even contained in the ways I love Bryon, who lead me home after being away for so long.
The year began by appearing to fall apart. I honestly thought I might lose him to all the small vicious nothings that had been eating away at us from the previous year. In the place I most loved, I felt a little lost, a little impossible, and a little unreal.
But he is like that earth under my feet, and his eyes are like the color of sage, and he is tawny and strong like the hills, he is my map and my guide; when I think of home I see the evening light on his skin, and my love manifests itself, and I know where I belong. I am home.
On my last day in New Mexico, we rose early and watched the sunrise. I slowed every second in my head, to make that vision last. I spent the whole day trying to absorb every moment, every color, the blue and tarnished gold, the subtle red and dry green, every line and gulley in the mountains, the shapes and shadows of the clouds.....I wandered through that day, counting the hours until I knew I would be leaving, and saying goodbye.
All of my resolution for this year is focused on being there. In only a little while, I'll find myself home again.
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SannaFay
I have to tell you, it was absolute hell getting here. I showed up, or rather staggered into, Logan Airport in Boston early monday morning. Still sick with the Evil Flu, I endured a two hour line which stretched from one end of the terminal to the other, just to check in, having been misdirected by airport employees three times. I thought I was going to keel over. My flight was delayed. I was completely disheveled. And the seats were wickedly uncomfortable. And to top it off, I committed a heinous moral crime in my desperation for some form of sustenance. It's horrible, and I'm absolutely humiliated to even be typing such a confession. I feel as if I've sold my soul. I bought bottled water from starbucks; I f'ing hate starbucks. It was terrible. *sob*
But this isn't about my mortal hatred of rampant thoughtless capitalist coffee consumerism.
Because I'm here. I made it. The desert is all around. Homesickness has been thwarted, at least for a few days. There are vegas and sagebrush and coyote fences and adobe and snow on the mountains, and all the rolling sand and arroyos and juniper gulleys. There are oceans of empty darkness, and stars, and the road to santa fe at night, and most wonderful of all, I am near my Best Beloved again. Home.
Life here for the past few days has been fairly uneventful. My plane landed in albuquerque, banking over patches of glittering lights surrounded by the darkness of the desert. There was a crazy waitress at the Olive Garden who had a dead early nineties-type hairsprayed tarantula on her head, and kept crowing on and on about nothing I can recall.
" oooOOOO, I love dees cheecken! I loooovie it TWO times! It so gooood! Das like I say to my boyfriend, I say to him, ' oooOO, I looooove you TREE times, ya!'"
Things I love TREEE! times:
- Bryon
- New Mexico
- Adobe-style Target
- Stripey Sweaters
- Green stripey sweaters, ya.
So far I have been to Target twice, as if we never had such a thing in New England, and I had cheese blintzes at adobe IHOP. I love adobe IHOP, in a completely opposite form than my absolute hatred for starbucks water. I drink alot of water here, but it never seems to be enough. The dry air is healing me of the Boston Influenza. Everything feels so much better.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to see some of the desert, or do some wandering before I leave, but there is so much planning and thinking to do before I leave here again, and I wish there were more time. Once again, I wish I never had to leave this place.
Time for some tea, More later~
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