January 3 – January 6, 2018
I left Bryant and Kelly’s in Denver in the early afternoon of January 3rd. I’d dragged my feet leaving, going to the gym first and then getting an oil change. The stay at my friends’ house was, in my mind, the Last Outpost before venturing into the wilderness of the world. I’d intentionally left all decisions unmade as to where I would go once I left. I wanted to see what it felt like to have my entire future in front of me with none of it planned or defined and to learn what kind of decisions I’d make in the absence of any structure.
My heart caught in my chest for several days leading up to the departure, understanding the personal significance of what I was about to do. Something about leaving, about doing this, was real. It meant something. I could, of course, return to Utah. I had the ability to do so, but I’d taken that option off the table and done so instinctively. I was leaving, and while I might come back to visit, I was letting go of Utah as my home. This raised the stakes and made it an adventure. I wanted to remove as many safety nets as possible, making a strict(ish) budget, avoiding spending too much time in a place that felt too comfortable, and foregoing extended stays with friends. I wanted to cut away all but the essential. Even having everything I own fit in the trunk of my car felt cumbersome. I was pushing myself into the deep end, or hoped to.
When I drove out of Denver, I decided to head South, probably in an attempt to chase the warmth, and lightly chose Santa Fe as my first destination. I was excited and hopeful and the world around me glowed in harmony: mountains, trees, clouds, and sky lit up in romantic hues. I’d seen the world with this kind of clarity and hope before, usually after a good cry or meditation, and now felt that optimism again at the beginning of something new. Signs near Colorado Springs announced the turnoff for something called “Garden of the Gods” and I decided to take a look. After all, detours weren’t detours now that there was no plan. I spent an hour or so there, walking among the massive walls of red and orange rock. These mammoth formations had originally lain on what we now see as their sides until tectonic shifts pushed them straight up into the air, like hairs standing on end. A few hours later I stopped in Trinidad near the New Mexico border for a dinner of taquito-style cheese sticks and wine at “Las Animas,” a newly opened restaurant owned by a late-thirty something guy named Jay. Dressed in a dark gray flannel and sporting a hip, sharply cut mustache, Jay had recently moved to Trinidad from Denver where he’d worked as a restaurant consultant. Now, with two kids growing up fast and a desire to leave a legacy, he’d bought the restaurant and started investing in the town. Jay has high hopes for Trinidad. The aging and largely ignored oil town has languished as the energy industry shifts away from fossil fuels and Jay believes soon enough people will see the area for its potential as a recreational paradise. A large lake sits about ten minutes outside of town and about an hour away nestled in the nearby mountains a ski resort is being built near the sleepy town of Cucharra. Jay thinks the area could become the next Breckenridge or Park City. During our conversation, he wondered at the irrationality of some of his former clients and dropped a piece of entrepreneurial wisdom: “You make your money on the deals you say ‘no’ to.”
I stayed the night across the border in a renovated road motel in the tiny town of Raton, NM. The next day, on Jay’s recommendation, I drove back up to Trinidad and then on to Cucharra to see what all the fuss was about. It was a pretty area and in a different mood I might have called it gorgeous, but while the town was quaint and quiet and obviously aspired to be a resort town, I wasn’t really in the mood for mountains and trees. They were too much like what I’d left behind in Utah. If I wanted mountains and trees and skiing, why not just go home? Besides, mountains and trees and skiing still reminded me too much of her, and this whole thing was probably as much about letting her go completely as it was anything else. I hadn’t expected to be hanging on this long and the fact that I still was, despite all the revelations and transformation 2017 had brought, both surprised and bothered me. Had all the progress of the prior year been a grand illusion? I knew it hadn’t, but also didn’t know what to make of the twists my chest still made when I thought of her. I had also already(!) started putting pressure on myself, without realizing it, to fucking adventure! I was wasting time and opportunity, man, going on this pointless excursion back up into Colorado on someone else’s recommendation. I should be jumping off a cliff into a lake or sailing on a boat with interesting people I’d just met. I hadn’t really cared about driving to Cucharra and had only done so because it gave me something to do, or something I could say I’d done. Part of this whole thing was to learn to steer my own ship, and I’d already let someone else set the course. I do this kind of thing a lot. Those who know me best know I have for most of my life lived in a world of “oughts” and “shoulds,” a world of duty and obligation that clouds my judgment and blinds me to myself. It’s a way of being I want to be rid of. Hence the adventure.
After heading back down into New Mexico, out of curiosity I stopped by the NRA Whittington Center just outside of Raton. With fifty acres of land to shoot at and on, the Whittington Center is the largest shooting range in the country and boasts a gun museum, which interested me, and gift shop, which didn’t. I don’t have strong opinions one way or the other about guns, but I lean Left in most things and felt out of place because of it. If they knew I’d voted for Obama and Hillary, what would they do! Would they notice I wasn’t sporting any familiar trappings of the in-group and had no proof of my loyalty to guns and the second amendment? The gift shop attendant, a young guy probably in his twenties and dressed in a camo wind breaker, greeted me with an at-arms-length cordiality, his “hello, how are you?” just a little too loud and rehearsed to come off as sincere. The song “Baby, Baby” by Amy Grant piped over the sound system as I walked through the shop and I chuckled. Something about Amy Grant playing in an NRA gift shop full of knives and guns and camouflage seemed both wonderfully appropriate and inappropriate. The museum itself houses a large library of guns from various eras displayed in glass cases throughout the room. The quality of craftsmanship on the weapons was obvious even to me and I ‘oohed’ at the intricate designs of game animals and fox hunts, among other motifs, engraved into a few of them. On my way out, the attendant asked me how I had liked the exhibit. I told him enthusiastically I’d discovered that prostitutes in the Old West, who often kept pocket pistols like those displayed at the museum in their garters, were commonly referred to as “soiled doves,” and wasn’t that great. After a beat of silence he admitted he’d never read the informational cards next to the guns in the museum. Another man at the counter appeared just as perplexed as the attendant, perhaps wondering why, amid all the glimmering firepower, I’d found an archaic term for prostitute to be the most interesting thing in the room.
On my way I went! On towards Santa Fe. I stopped in the tiny town of Cimarron to check out the St James Hotel, in operation since 1872 and host to almost any iconic figure from the Old West you might think of, from Wyatt Earp to Billy the Kid. Those rooms not rented out for the night remained open to visitors to explore like a museum. Walking through the swinging wooden bar doors into the saloon was like stepping back in time. An antique roulette table commanded the middle of the room and against the wall an ancient parlor piano stood silently— wood furniture standing in relief against a backdrop of yet more wood. I bought a glass of wine at the bar and plotted my next move. I was still feeling discontent from the day earlier, still thinking I should be doing something more adventurous, whatever that might be, and the more I tried to plan the more frustrated I’d become, the more the whole endeavor seemed like a colossal waste of time and resources, and I questioned my ability to make a good showing of it. I should be doing something to save the world, instead, I thought. Who could argue with that?
It was getting late in the day and I decided I’d head to Taos, a small arts community about two hours north of Santa Fe and situated near a couple ski resorts. The drive was spectacular even for a dead and snow-less winter and when the canyon opened out into the valley contained by the Carson National Forest, I wordlessly vocalized the awe. Maybe it’s the recency effect and an inclination to superlatives, but I can’t think of a more beautiful area I’ve seen in my life. I stayed the night in a spartan and questionably clean single-room adobe house I’d found earlier in the afternoon on Airbnb and the next day set out to see some of the art museums in the area. I’d recently become familiar with the work and story of visual artist Agnes Martin, who famously left a flourishing career in New York, “turning her back on the world,” to focus exclusively on her art in Taos. An abstract painter, Martin aspired to present pure experience on her canvas, to show exactly what she felt and saw in her mind, not in a representational way but as the raw thing itself, as The Experience. Her paintings usually involve nuanced patterns of pastel colors on a grid. I find her art resonant as much for her story as for the work itself. She was so interested in cutting away everything but the essential to get to the root of experience, to the root of life, that she rejected a career, honorary degrees, relationship, awards, and any labels or constraints. She renounced all for the sake of her art. An anecdote tells of feminist Jill Johnston trekking to New Mexico to win Martin to the cause and when she put the question to Martin, “Do you feel neglected because you are a woman?” Agnes replied, “I am not a woman.”
Also on exhibit at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos was Ronald Davis, a self-described “geometrician and abstract illusionist.” His murals challenge the sense of three-dimensional space with objects in his pieces seeming to gleefully float in front of the canvas in bold hues. I’ve come to my affection for abstraction in art recently and would like to think of it as a maturing of the palette. Ever since starting to meditate last year, it’s become easier to focus as well as completely let go of my attention, which is the whole point of meditation, particularly mindfulness as I understand it: learning to hold and let go of attention. As that ability has deepened, abstract art has started to make sense. It likely has to do with letting go of a need to figure out the meaning in a work, the ability to empty the brain and let the piece speak for itself. Nowadays, instead of scrunching my face in an attempt to milk meaning out of a piece of art, I’ll notice details on the canvas like I notice my breath when meditating, I picture the brush strokes the painter might have used, I widen my focus to include the entire work, all without judgment or thought, and it’s made viewing art an occasionally powerful experience. I feel like I’m starting to ‘get’ it, which is to say I’m realizing there may not be anything about a piece of art to ‘get,’ nor does there need to be. Art doesn’t need to have meaning.
By the way, I’m going to digress a lot in these travel logs and since we’re now on the topic of art for art’s sake, we’re also on the topic of ‘without a why.’ This blog’s name comes from a couplet written by 17th century mystic Angelus Silesius and summarizes not just what I believe about art, but also points to how I’d like to live my life:
The rose is without a why/It blooms because it blooms
This is the adventure— not to jump off cliffs into lakes or wrestle lions, per se, but to self-edit less, to strive less, and instead learn how to reliably and simply ‘be,’ and see what comes from that.