Souvenir of Santa Fe (August, 2007)

I.
Albuquerque airport: syringe disposal (full!) in the women’s restroom. I always forget about heroin and northern New Mexico. Shuttle to Santa Fe -- heart-tugs as familiar terrain appears. My old friend arrives to fetch me. She is little changed in thirty years. The plaza and its landmarks and architecture -- the rounded-off corners, the mud-colored walls, the vigas, the turquoise painted door and window facings -- hurt my heart. How I have missed it! I remember being nineteen years old once here, and in love -- as huge snowflakes fell, like objects cut out of white paper. Hollyhocks everywhere -- how could I have forgotten them? I walk the sidewalks and alleys of my youth and am struck by how much remains, still, in my kinetic memory. My feet know funny things like when to change sides of the street, due to missing sidewalks. The familiar smell of some plant -- what? -- inextricably associated for me with Santa Fe floods my senses. We sit and have a coffee in the French bakery in the ground floor of hotel La Fonda, unchanged in three decades. Its enigmatic nichos are empty, still. I buy film in the camera store where I once bought my first good camera on layaway. I walk through and browse the silver and turquoise jewelry for sale on blankets under the portal of the Palace of the Governor (when I was a child, the root beginnings of my lifelong longings to acquire souvenir objects). I find the balcony of the law firm where I used to work in Sena Plaza, home of a La Llorona. I walk up Palace Avenue past three of my old abodes (which look exactly the same as they ever did from the outside, although they now will sell for a million dollars). We grocery shop at Whole Foods, and then we go home to my friend’s house, previously inhabited by the actor Alan Arkin, at the far end of upper Canyon Road, right next to where Tom Ford of Gucci is building a mansion. At twilight, my friend, her boyfriend and her dog and I take a long walk.

II.
We walk from its base all the way up Canyon Road, with me remembering all the way, to a cafe for coffee. Then I enjoy a relaxing pedicure arranged by my friend at her regular nail salon -- her stylist, an Española girl, sporting inches-long hot-pink talons and a recent motorcycle injury. I loved the women’s culture of the place, like a harem -- the members of a wedding party all have their nails done, small, well-behaved children wait on their mothers, someone comes in to sell tamales while I half-doze, waiting for my friend. I walk some more through my old neighborhoods, gazing down alleys and up at windows, remembering where old friends once lived, while my friend checks in at her work. At nine, to Maria’s for a late dinner and a lethally strong margarita, hearing about how my hosts had run into Robert Redford in the parking lot last time they ate there.

III.
Early morning: the farmer’s market with my friend so she can buy her weekly produce, then to the post office downtown and past my other old abode, the place I lived with his father when baby Nicholas was born. Then, to the Tesuque flea market out by the opera: good junk, good rugs, good tile. I could spend a lot of money there. Huge blue sky and puffy white clouds. Then, to browse an arts and crafts fair on the Plaza. My friend makes us a lovely, light early dinner. We spend an hour getting ready for the opera. We drive the dangerous backroad way past El Nido through Tesuque. When we arrive at the opera, tailgate parties are taking place in the parking lot. Elegant, dressed up people sip champagne and enjoy picnics and cold dinners before curtain. Most people who go to the opera are very old, I realize.

La Bohème: my first opera ever, as a child, and still one of my favorites. Lightning strikes in the distance during Act II. Negatively charged ions in the air smell great. Incredible production, beautifully realized and performed, and I sniffle through Act IV. It is so romantic, so sad. It strikes me as ironic: my running off to live in poverty in Santa Fe in my own youth was my very own attempt to live La Vie de Bohème, when I think about it. And here I sit, in middle age, at the operatic version. Life imitates art. It rains on us all the drive home, and I have to help my friend navigate. We are growing old, and our night vision is no longer what it was once.

IV.
Long, gorgeous drive out to Chimayo with my hosts for brunch. Afterward, I convince them to drop me off at the Folk Art Museum so they can have some time alone together. I spend a couple of hours there, getting inspired by all the toys and installations. Too bad I have forgotten to pack a sketchbook. I meant to draw. I decide to hoof it from Museum Hill back downtown so my friend can have some time alone without having to come back to pick me up. Pass by my great-aunt’s former house. How is it I can still navigate to the locations of my childhood? Walk back to the plaza past Kaune’s grocery store and the Pink Adobe, frequent settings of my youth. Have a double cappucino and rest my feet for a few moments at a downtown cafe. Hoof it all the way up Palace and Upper Canyon Road to my friend’s house. I like walking alone, memories flashing into my consciousness in a cinematic way. When I walk, I think, and that’s not always good because I quickly become melancholy. I’m starting to get homesick and a little vulnerable now, missing my children and my dog. Thank God I go home tomorrow, I think to myself. I arrive at the home of my host at sunset. My friend cannot believe I have walked two hours (especially uphill and in leopard shoes), but I’ve enjoyed it. We go to a chic place downtown for drinks and appetizers. It’s stylish and mostly deserted on a Sunday evening. I sip my kir royale and admire the shoes of a woman who’s just entered. Then I realize it’s Diane Keaton, who’s just arrived with Val Kilmer.

We go home, I pack for my 6 a.m. shuttle departure to the Albuquerque airport the next morning, and I call it a day. I hear coyotes whiffling outside my window in the night; I half-awake to find the hairs on my arm and the back of my neck standing on end. Nature is close here -- not like in Austin.

Afterthoughts.

I love Santa Fe, but it always makes me sad. I was lucky to have actually lived there in the Seventies, I think; it's like the American version of having lived in Paris in one's youth. I love the architecture, love the mountains and landscapes and sky views, but hate the tourists. I always seem to fall in love with these impossible places where the economy is based on tourism. I hate the high cost of living and the moneyed retirees and those rich Texans who own second or vacation homes there. But if I won the lottery, I’d definitely buy a second home in Santa Fe; what a hypocrite I am! I hate the casinos; this new development cannot possibly be healthy for the indigenous folks on the reservations that house them. Hate the Santa Fe “art” scene. It’s good I left when I did, in 1980. Everything that was beginning to annoy me then has only magnified -- exponentially -- since then.

Santa Fe's just not a livable place for anyone who has to work and earn an honest living. Perhaps it never really was. But it’s one of those impractical places that will always call out to me (like Venice and New Orleans do) because I am, myself, impractical. So those places are just the logical settings for me, I guess. They appeal to my imagination.