I am in New Mexico to see my friend Michael, who made me tea and drove me around the northern portion of the state and listened to my extended imitation of a predatory bird.
BE HERE NOW
We drove on a small road out of town to a museum created by a man named Ross Ward who painted signs for carnivals and meanwhile carved thousands of wooden people and animals and created his own small carnival, which became a large carnival, larger than any of the carnivals he ever painted signs for, and is today housed behind long glass displays in 22 rooms of a house in northern New Mexico.
"I did all this while you were watching TV"
Further north we stopped at a ranch because Michael said it had art in it, and we walked around until a man came out and told us his name was Ken, and that he remembered trying to have a conversation with Ross Ward while the latter painted curls of perfect paint across a 50-foot mural. I offered Ken some tomatoes. After that, Michael and I drove north past where Georgia O’Keefe looked at a glow out her window each morning. We drove until we reached a series of springs, where we soaked in mud and mineral pools and our skins came out different.
I am the stone & the man & the bracelet & the bone
That was our big trip. Otherwise it’s been writing and working and eating green chile, which I’m told is known for its powers, and holding dinner parties and mashing sweet potatoes and working out at the gym again finally and driving up and down old Route 66 with the windows down and realizing that love is so simple to produce, you might as well give it away gladly.
