Words keep waking me up. Lying in bed this morning, I look around at the unfamiliar surroundings of floral wallpaper, oatmeal soap and someone else’s name on the door. I feel the altitude of this learning curve, the acute tug of being someplace so far afield.
What once was a cluster of pixels and a disembodied voice now stands before me teaching a class in some dot on the map. This face feels the textured weight of day-to-day life among mesas shaped by metal spatulas and ruins that share a companionable intimacy. Life has gathered depth and breadth among the wildflowers and cottonwood trees, the roots drawn down through fissures in the rock, seeking water. It seeps into me as I dawn a new day.
A heavy silver watchband with chunks of turquoise sits on the wrist of my friend the Geologist. He took me to the pawn shop where it was bought, told of the artist who made it and his untimely death in Phoenix. I wear a small bracelet with silver, coral and turquoise and imagine the skillful hands who crafted mine.
I have stepped into a world I thought had long since given way to urban sprawl. Life unfolds here in an understood balance of community tolerance and raw self management. A man's word is the only marketable measurement. Life is boiled down to its basic elements of cultural respect in the less tamed world of northwestern New Mexico. Locking doors is an afterthought; warm greetings and familiar stories are told with longstanding intimacy.
Life is dynamically shaped by living among the ruins. They are not unique in gathering together in this place to celebrate, grieve and share life season after season, generation after generation. Some still live in adobes in which their great-grandfathers were born. Others are here because they have discovered that to know and be known is a remarkable thing, that an imprint left here will be a lasting one.
I watch this man in real time pay attention and listen intently to the cadence of others as he walks his own path. Step by step, he indelibly weaves himself into the heart of this community and both are forever changed.
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