Someone Else

Originally Posted Monday, June 17, 2013

The last day of a trip is always difficult.  You begin to think about going home.  There are the things you must do to prepare, of course.  My plane leaves at seven in the morning, so I must get up early and be ready, and no matter how hard I try, there is always anxiety about that.  But there is more.  One begins to think about home in another way, about being there, the people, the food, the smells.  You must give up anonymity which is a wickedly difficult thing to do.  I can be anyone I want to here.  It is liberating once you get over the confusion.  What would it be like to take over another person's identity.  There are limitations, of course, mostly physical.

This morning, I got up and drank coffee and wrote emails and a blog post and then went in search of a bacon and egg breakfast.  I haven't had one in ten days.  I couldn't find a single restaurant, so I asked around.  The twelve year old selling rafting trips told me about the Brew House which served breakfast, so I went up there, but on the way, I passed a beat old diner.  I went to the Brew House and looked in, then turned around for the other.  One of the waitresses was extremely flirty for awhile, then she asked me if my name was Duane.  I wasn't sure if I was ready to exchange identities just then.  I have found it problematic in the past.  Once, long, long ago, I was in a bar when a beautiful woman came up to me with a smile and asked,

"Is your name Buddy?"

Oh man, oh man, I was ready to go.

"Sure it is," I smiled hoping for the best, hoping for love and opportunity.

"Hey, Bobby," she yelled over to a big guy playing pool, "this is the son of a bitch that killed my cat!"

I learned a lesson there.  So to the waitress at the Durango Diner I said, "No."

"Really.  Man. . . you've got a doppelganger here in town."

And that was the end of that.  She didn't come around again until it was time for me to pony up some money.

After breakfast, I walked back to the hotel and packed my things.  I was going back to Santa Fe.

Everything was as I expected, which meant it was the exact opposite of the mystical trip coming up.  The day was overcast and the landscape was flat.  The highway was filled with car after car after car.  I should correct that.  Trucks and rental campers.  I would pass them and go flying again and again and again, but it is a fallacy to think that before that next slowpoke there is nothing but gloriously open road.

Still, the Chama Valley is one of the prettiest things I have ever seen.  I stopped at the Ghost Ranch, the former home of Georgia O'Keeffe, and took some photos.  The cabin at the top is the first thing you see when you pull off the highway and onto the dirt road that services the grounds.  It gives great promise, but it is not supported.  I drove up to the conference hall and got out and walked around, but a fat lesbian with two full sleeves and a mullet gave me the stink eye and I got back into my car and left.  It wasn't my kind of place.

Back in Sante Fe, I checked into my $50/night hotel.  Of course they fucked up and didn't give me the room I requested.  I am now in a room with a bad a.c.  I will cope.  It was soon time for dinner, so I headed back to The Shed for some good Mexican (really) and two very stiff Patron and something margaritas.  Once again, I sat at the bar, and once again, a fellow in a black cowboy hat and stiff cowboy shirt and (this time) a sports coat sat at the bar chatting everybody up about his life.  A young fellow sat down next to me and soon began to talk.  He was from New Mexico but he lived in Denver. He was attending the art institute there studying photography.  We began to chat.  Eventually he pulled out his iPhone and started showing me his work.  Naive, I thought.  He didn't photograph people, he said.  He was not good with them.  We talked about equipment, and I told him that anyone could learn to do the technical stuff, but photography was about balls.  That philosophy is too much to write at present, but you get my drift.  He did, I think.

I told him that these cowboys were exotic to me, that I would like to photograph them though they were what he grew up with.  I was envious of them in many ways.  They were rough and certain.  They worked and weren't afraid of it even if they didn't like it all that much.  Some of them get a little polish somewhere and have a cowboy sophistication that is. . . well. . . enviable.  I am such a pussy, I thought.  These cowboys were something else.  They were why O'Keeffe left Steiglitz and came to New Mexico.  I think she was sporting them all.

But I won't be anyone else tonight nor any other time.  I am heading home to face the mess I call my life that I have created there.  Out here, I know what to do to change it.  But tonight, as I think more and more of home, I know I will slip into the same routine.  I won't be making Sherpa Stew.  I won't give up whisky for my own Chai tea.  It will all be rushing and fatigue and depression and. . . .

But I have a few simple things that I will do that may help.  They are the physical.  I know some clothes I'll buy and some shoes, perhaps, too.  I have a few other surprises up my sleeve, but I will hold onto that for now.  It is getting late enough for bed.  I rise early in the morning.

Here is what I listened to through the Chama Valley.  KT Turnstall was interviewed and performed on some NPR-style station (link).  You can find the album version here, but this is the radio performance--simply for you.