Friday, November 16, 2012

Canyons

Yesterday I spent the day with... with the mother of a very old friend, a woman who is living here in Truth or Consequences, who I've known for so much of my life, but haven't seen in close to two decades, a woman who moved here after her children had grown and began to paint and made the southwest her home. It was a really extraordinary day, not in the least because I love the way our relationships with people change as we grow, I love that I am not a child anymore, or a teenager and yet that I have that memory as a foundation for who I am. It was an extraordinary day because we drove into the canyon towns of Monticello, which look like nowhere I've ever been in the world. The landscape changes with each passing minute, where the shadows fall on the dust, how deep you drive into the canyon, and then the irrigation systems suddenly give way to farmland, its off season now but the crops and feels spread along the valley floor and the trees, with massive spread arms and bright yellow leaves... we visited a friend who has one of the most beautiful homes I've ever seen, old adobe, wood stoves, high beamed ceilings and an orchard of peach and pear and apricot trees... beyond this there are some abandoned homes, rusted cars, and then a small village of cowboys and hippies in these old farming adobe homes... the facade of the schools is still there, just a facade, crumbling, three walls and no roof, cattle peek their heads around its steps. I tried to imagine going to school there...

There are SO MANY worlds. I wake up each day worrying I'm not writing enough, worrying I'm not writing the right things, worrying period... I'm so caught up in writing about what I see, in just being in this strange little town, that my novel seems to be sagging, that other stories are taking shape and fighting for time, that I keep thinking what if I leave here and I don't finish anything?

What if I don't? I think I'll still be okay.

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