Tuesday, September 22, 2009

New Mexico



Well, regular life has resumed, if at a much slower pace. Unlike D.C., people in New Mexico are not rushing around trying to conquer the world, or save it. It seems they are happy to just be here...this is one quiet, sleepy town.

It's cool. I haven't waited in a line since I've been here, traffic and parking problems are non-existent. I've met a few locals, then run into them a couple times since--it's that small of a town. We've been saying that we have to allow an extra 20 minutes if we're going to run errands in town, no one is in a hurry and they love to shoot the breeze.

There's been something to do every weekend. There's a little park in town where all the festivities take place--the pancake breakfast, the Cottonwood Festival, the Wine Festival, the Balloon Festival, the Fiesta--and as you might imagine, once you've been to one, you've pretty much been to them all. There's always a few booths with a few artists and vendors, and a stage with a local band playing...that's pretty much it.

The weather has been nice since we got here, and it's true, the sunsets over the desert mountains are worth a look every night. I do a lot of dogwalking/running out there, it's giving me a quiet, big sky, God-must-exist perspective. Plenty of air to breathe and horizon to vent to--I do not feel hemmed in living on-base.

Apparently it's hunting season. I've overheard some locals talking it up and even saw a guy carrying a rifle downtown--we are in the West. Lots of pick-up trucks, ball caps and a few cowboy hats. I had my first rattlesnake encounter--it was the sound that was more startling than the snake--he gave me a nice warning I took to heart.

If I'm home, or near home I get to hear music every day, a couple of times. Each day at 4:30 loudspeakers all over base play the national anthem. Wherever you are, or if you're driving, you are to stop in your tracks, face the direction of the flag, and listen. I find myself trying to work around it if I'm withing earshot--not that I don't like the anthem, it just feels a little...staged. And, because we have a German squadron based here, on Wednesdays they play the German anthem first, then ours. It's only hospitable I suppose. The whole thing reminds me of the organized way of living in Japan, where every little town had their loudspeakers play a song at 6pm. We would make up our own words to those.

So I'm not sure about the 4:30 call to patriotism, but what is growing on me is the 10 pm playing of "Taps," every night. At first it was a little startling--I felt like I was living in a movie and was reminded that any of our people could be called away to fight and die at any time. Now I'm finding it painfully quieting. It is a reminder of what could happen, is happening, and of our purpose here, and that is just, well, true.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Back On the Horse...

Well I got bucked off the writing horse.

I think it was the move, the traveling, the adjustments to a new life and place--I'll even blame feeling under the weather for a few days. It takes some time to even figure out what I feel about a new life and a new environment, and I don't feel quite like myself here yet.

There are a couple of ways to get back on a horse you've been thrown off...I know this from experience.

You can jump on, grab that mane and hang on, hoping you stay on and gain control before you're thrown again...OR, you can take your time, try to manage the horse close to a fence, be still and quiet, climb up the fence and slowly ease yourself back into the saddle. Maybe the horse won't even know your back on until your set and ready to deal with the beast.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm going to take my time...

Saturday, September 5, 2009

On Writing

"Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do. What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with his problems in solitude--and now and then a piece of red meat."
Henry Miller


"For Christ sake and don't worry what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the waste-basket....Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously."
Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)



"There's no one out there waiting for it, and nobody's going to scold you if you don't do it."
Lynne Sharon Schwartz


"It's easy, after all not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them."
Julian Barnes


"Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
Red Smith


"The most solid advice...for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough."
William Saroyan