New Mexico

There's something about being more than a mile above sea level and still feeling like you're well below the mountains' peak. It makes you humble. The sky is big. Bigger than anything you've ever imagined growing up in the East. You find little towns like Cordova and Madrid. Old mining towns where the promise of getting rich never seemed to fully pan out. All that is left of some of them are roads and crumbling buildings. Every so often you find a ghost town that's been invaded by artists. The remnants of a drug store turned into an art gallery. The soda fountain intact.

You find a strange combination of people, all running from something in their lives. All wanting to be left alone. The new cowboys with their motorcycles and distrust of everyone they don't instantly recognize. Artists wandering around bra-less, covered in tattoos, green hair and nose piercing. Mexicans whose families have lived on the land for thousands of years before there was any such thing as a Mexican.



Into this you pull your rented Lincoln towncar. A giant couch that screams tourist and you hope to not be noticed. You and your new wife enter this new world with a feeling of wonderment and awe. You're like children ready to go out into the plains and soak it into your lungs. The sun, the snow, the rocks, the rivers, the mountains; they all leave their imprint on you. The soundtrack is silence, broken occasionally by the Rolling Stones (Daddy you're a Fool to Cry) or the Doors (LA Woman). Just enough to remind you that you're actually still in the world. That other people still exist and you haven't left them behind.

Being out there, miles away from anyone else when it starts to snow and you think maybe this is what life is about. There is no meaning but soaking in times where you're surprised and new again. Avoiding the rut of day-to-day life. Grabbing your wife's hand and running headfirst into the dark. Maybe that familiar blue feeling way down in your stomach isn't depression but boredom. A routine of getting up, going to work, coming home and going to bed. Buying useless shit and watching television on the weekends to change things up. Maybe that blueness is your brain telling you to breakout.

"Cut the shit buddy, get out there and live before it's all over."

And in those moments you remember all the times you've had this revelation and how every time it falls away. Forgotten until the next time, leaving only the nagging feeling in your bones to get out and run.

Envy

Well for the longest time I've seen other blogs and had a bit of, well envy toward them. People with digital cameras and a little know-how have been making these slick pages with pictures and frames and little old idiot me has this jamboree of text. I've been reading just enough that I want to try this. Please let me know how the photo shows up.

The picture is of the Plaza in Santa Fe, NM. At night its really quiet (at least in March it was). During the day, local Native Americans sell stuff on blankets to tourists. Most of it is silver jewelry, but they do sell other stuff as well. Overall, Santa Fe is a nifty place.



Well, this photo is my attempt to play with our new digital camera and do some different things with the light filters and shutter speed. So we'll see if my blog now gets more spice, or if I just end up posting the 32 year old man's equivalent of pictures of my grandchildren.

For L

In response to the e-mail I sent you and you sent back, I've had this rolling around in my head...

The second I step away from the ledge I am transformed. My former coworkers gaze at me with giant saucer eyes, in awe of what I have become. I have shed my coocoon and become more. Soaring above the city, larger than life like a superhero.

That's where I am right now, its a soundrack in my head on a little loop.

Runaway Bride

Very briefly, the media needs to stop beating this dead horse. She screwed up. She sure as hell doesn't need to apologize on national TV! Dianne Sawyer needs to stop talking about her in the morning.

I figured out why I like the CBS Saturday Morning show the best, it doesn't cover the flavor of the minute. Its like a home economics class.

I say to network news, its time to leave this poor woman in peace. Her 15 minutes of fame ran out the second she was found. Spend your time being the Fourth Estate and cover Bush's benefits cut proposal on Social Security!