Day 8 - Albuquerque to Santa Fe, NM -
(Some blog "house-keeping": photos may not be forthcoming until I get a high-speed connection; I'll be posting links - upper right-hand under (duh!) "Links".)
While I've kept a personal journal off-and-on since receiving one for my eleventh birth-day, writing (somewhat) journalistic prose for an audience is a new and difficult experience. My "regular" writing is poetry, produced painstakingly (as some of you know) and not under deadline. Finding the right words in their right sequence to convey the imprecise precisely is as slow and laborious a process for me as it is for those Tibetan monks shown picking and placing individual grains of colored-sand, over a period of weeks, to create a Mandala comprised of complex patterns. (They sweep the completed work away as a symbol of the impermanence of things...amazing.) So please be kind if you see typos, dangling participles, etc.: believe me, they mortify me more than you ever could by calling attention to them.
The work on "Baby" was under $200.00, which left me positively light-headed. The technician also completed it in time for me to get to Santa Fe by noon on a beautiful, sunny, and moderately warm (mid-80s) day. I changed tonight's lodgings from a fellow Globalfreeloaders member (see link) to a condo unit in the Fort Marcy Condominium Resort Hotel within a ten minute (downhill) walk from the Plaza. (For those contemplating visiting Santa Fe, I highly recommend this place: my unit is large, has a fireplace, separate bed-room, and a kitchen. And, it was $49.95!! Use "hotels.com" to get a good rate, then call Fort Marcy's reservations desk. They'll match the "hotels.com" price, but save you from paying the "hotels.com" booking fee.)
I spent the afternoon wandering around familiar places -- I've been to Santa Fe several times before -- including a gallery exhibiting photographs by Margaret Bourke-White, and finished the evening with dinner at the Coyote Cafe, which is a favorite from past trips.
Tomorrow morning, the reason for stopping here: a massage at Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese-style spa in the hills outside of town (see link). It's worth trip. (They have a facial that uses nightingale dung....It's sterilized, of course, but still! I thought about it earlier when I saw a local character walking around with a parrot on his left shoulder...and white splotches of parrot poop on the back of his black shirt...)
Lastly, from Katherine Hepburn's biography (one of my audio books), her take on life: "...work hard, love someone, and have some fun. And if you are lucky, be loved back and have good health." Can't argue with that. She and the Dalai Lama would have made a great couple.
2 comments:
Hi Harrison,
This is Susan (I posted Anonymously just because it was easier). I'm just writing to tell you that this past entry was your best - it'll be interesting for you to look back and see the progression in your writing style and topics as the trip goes on.
You are so funny - a whole paragraph apologizing for your skill at prose! You are so sensitive about things like that - or maybe you have some very critical friends!
Actually I found some of your early entries a little odd in their tone. Why, for example, would you devote an entire entry to a stupid, thoughtless or derogatory comment by some uninformed or prejudiced person? It seemed (to me) that you were hyper-focused on the reaction of strangers to you (and racial issues) and also on getting used to being by yourself, in your car, in a strange place for long, long stretches. This entry was nice to read and much more what I expected.
Take care,
Susan
The reason for the space given, in the earlier entries, to the stupid/racist (broadly-speaking) remarks, is that it's a part of the reality of this trip. And a reality of looking different. You - and others - who are my friends know me as "Harrison" and, after a while, forget the "look different" part. Strangers aren't the same way and they are in the majority. It doesn't matter that the stereotype is a positive one (most of the time): it's still there.
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