I spent the afternoon & evening at White Stands National Monument and took a bunch (over 300) pictures. Most were rubbish but a few came out ok. I’ve posted those and some of my other New Mexico photos over in a Mobile Me gallery, but here are a few of the ones I like most:
(Special thanks to Tom H. who suggested I check White Sands out.)
If you take E. University Avenue east, it turns into Dripping Springs Road. If you follow that, eventually it turns to a dirt road, then, after a while, a paved one once more and you enter into the Dripping Springs Natural area. There are a number of hiking trails from the visitor center and these are some of the pictures I took today:
(Las Cruces from a distance)
(There’s a reason it’s called “dripping” and not gushing or rushing or some other more powerful adjective.)
These last two are probably my favorites of the day:
I’ve been on the quiet side lately as I try to get settled here in Las Cruces and figure out how to make this whole crazy thing work. I will write something a bit more detailed and emotionally richer in the next day or so, but wanted to just let folks know that I’m fine. I am renting a room in a house that has its own bathroom, is quite big, and has a pleasant view of a green backyard and blue sky.
(There is a large closet just on the other side of the tall bookcase on the right of the above picture that runs almost the length of that wall – probably about 8′ or so wide and 2.5′ – 3′ deep and with lots of shelves.)
Sure, the room isn’t decorated in what you would call, “LtL style,” but it’s nice and big and quite and the woman (K.S.) who owns the house seems pleasant enough and there are two cats living here as well. K.S. had rented out this house before she moved in herself, so neither of us quite understand the dried flowers in picture frames that are on the wall in my bathroom.
So, I have a place to live for $340/month with all utilities included, including cable internet. Yes, it’s not my own place, but for the nonce it will do just fine.
The job situation is . . . in progress. I’m not sure what I would be doing right now if my folks hadn’t been able to float me some money when I got down to Las Cruces, but they did and as long as I’m careful I have a least enough to get through 45 or so days. Hopefully I’ll be working before then – actually, let’s re-parse: I will be working before then. Currently I’ve signed up with Manpower and yesterday I did all the online application stuff for Kelly Services and will be going into their offices later this week. I’ve posted some public speaking coaching ads on Craigslist, both here and in El Paso and will just have to see how that goes. Meanwhile I continue to peruse help wanted ads and will also sign up with a couple other temp agencies later this week. In the meantime, I spend my mornings doing the job search, afternoons doing various errands or other tasks (like getting unemployment deferments for my student loans), and evenings I’m starting to get into the writing habit once more (look for a future post on my 500 Words for 50 Days pledge), and have been reading what many consider the first Gothic Novel, The Mystery of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe as research for a potential project with my friend Jen.
That’s the short of it. I’m going to do a bit of exploring outside of the city this weekend and will post some pics of anything I find interesting.
In the meantime, I will be trying to not let myself get overwhelmed by the mundane, practical problems that need solutions and, without neglecting them, focus on the new, the interesting and the peace and quiet that I have, quite literally, in my backyard.
I arrived in New Mexico at high noon yesterday and pulled over and took this picture. Northern New Mexico is very green, lots of cattle ranches, and I must say I was glad to start seeing ridges and mountains in the distance and driving over hills after the flatness that was Kansas. I stopped, briefly, at the general store/gas station (they were out of gas when I stopped however)/restaurant that is the entirety of Gladstone, NM. I walked in wearing khaki shorts, a tan linen button-down shirt, running socks (you know the ankle kind) and sneakers and boy! did I feel out of place as the four old cowboys in their cowboy hats, jeans, long sleeve work shirts and boots looked over my way.
While there, I picked up some beef sticks – basically locally made versions of Slim Jims – and a root beer for lunch. I should have gone for the sarsaparilla to make it more “authentic.”
Before I left Kansas, I had done a little research into motels and found a place that offered a room for a month for $330 and figured that I would just drive straight down to T or C, get the room and have a month to explore the area, look for jobs, find a real place to live, etc. However, that was not the case. The place seemed a bit sketchy, the guy who should me the rooms a bit odd and I got absolutely no cell phone reception there (in fact, I get no cell phone reception in the half of T or C that is down in the valley next to the Rio Grande). So I found a nicer motel where I’m staying for a week that is up toward the top of town (this is a place where downtown is literal), and has free internet and I have a kitchen that is bigger than most NY kitchens.
So last night, I was all freaked out that I was going to have to move fast to find a job and an apartment as well as a bit depressed that my perfect plan of showing up and getting a place for a month didn’t work out. There was also a bit of sadness that the trip was over because I would have liked to have spent more time exploring and meandering but simply don’t have the money to do that. This morning however, I was a bit more resolved, got some groceries and the local paper to look for apartments and jobs . . . and what I saw wasn’t very promising. Then I got to thinking about what my goals are, especially my goals of self-employment and finding ways to generate income through my writing and my theatre skills and my teaching abilities and my fertile imagination and my intelligence. While achieving some of these ambitions are going to be difficult anywhere I go, I realized this afternoon that they will be particularly difficult in a small town. Perhaps if I had more resources saved up or an already established independent revenue stream, I could try, but considering what I have and what I need to survive and to have time to write and build up my own business ideas . . . T or C does not really have what I need. Namely, jobs. Well, more specifically for the short term: temp agencies (for necessary money quickly) and a university (for adjunct work in the future, as well as a built in population for getting work as a public speaking and writing tutor/coach). Both of which are present in Las Cruces. After thinking about it for a while, after talking with J and with my Mom, I’ve decided to take the next few days to explore this area, check out the recreation at Elephant Butte lake and on the Rio Grand, take a dip in one of the famed hot springs that the town was originally named after and then head down to Las Cruces. I’ve already started emailing with a person who has a room for rent in their house. While taking a room in someone’s house is not my ideal situation, and while I will probably look into getting my own place in 4 to 6 months, the room comes with all utilities included, free internet and I will have access to a washer & dryer, a yard, and a covered patio.
I always knew that this was a likely outcome, and am glad that the month rental didn’t work out. I’m here at the Belair Motel until Tuesday morning and plan to enjoy my days here as a mini-vacation—one where I’m not driving an average of 10 hours per day—before heading to Las Cruces with the knowledge that even if I’m not living in my “home” just yet, I’m in a part of the country that I’ve wanted to live in for years and will have the opportunity to explore and learn more about New Mexico in the coming months and years.
So that’s where I am right now, both physically and emotionally: Truth or Consequences. I may not be staying here physically for much longer, but I hope I’m learning to live up to my own truths, regardless of where I’m living.
And I leave you with a picture. I saw a storm off to the east as I was driving down route 25, probably about 45 or so miles north of T or C and then a rainbow. In fact, I could see, at the same time, a rainbow and fierce lightning bolts. So I tried to take a picture on my iPhone while driving. It’s the most interesting picture I’ve taken since I left Maryland and skill was nowhere in sight, this was all luck:
The original idea for my oncoming adventure was to move to Truth or Consequences, try to find work at the Spaceport in order to be part of building something that I find terribly exciting, blog, podcast or otherwise document the building of the Spaceport and create a life that let me focus, as much as possible on my creative work (especially my writing).
But lately, I’ve been hedging my bets, telling people that T or C might be too small and I might end up in Las Cruces because it’s bigger and will be easier to find work and is more practical for me to consider as an alternative to T or C. But I don’t want to live in a city, even a small one, right now. Sure, after 8 million people, 100,000 is not much more than a town. Yes, my reasoning may also be sound and I may indeed end up in Las Cruces for a variety of reasons. However, I find myself leaning toward Las Cruces because it’s a choice that seems safer, that provides more of a known quantity than T or C—I’m not sure I know how to live in a town of only 9000 or so people and what would I do without a university nearby and theatres and . . . and . . .
Well, that’s kinda the point isn’t it? To live in a place where I can focus on writing. Not only practicing the craft but on developing a stronger habit of writing. I mean, part of this whole journey a search for the physical, mental and emotional spaces that will enable me to find myself, to find my core strength as writer. The more distractions offered by my surroundings (especially during the beginning stages of this journey) the greater the odds of me, magpie-like, getting distracted by shiny objects (directing theatre, taking undergraduate classes in philosophy or economics or computer science, starting theatre companies, etc.).
Are there reasons I might end up in Las Cruces? Sure there are, but mentally I’ve been giving up T or C before I even get out there and check out the situation. A lack of trust in my own resourcefulness and abilities perhaps?
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. – Anais Nin
Some of you may already know that I’m preparing for a pretty major life change in the coming weeks. Namely, leaving New York City and moving to the Las Cruces/Truth or Consequences area of New Mexico.
Alone.
And no, I don’t know anyone out there. This is going to be a free-fall time, a solo adventure with a few specific personal development goals. But let me back up a moment and begin, as they say, at the beginning (which, of course, is never really the beginning, just a middle you happen to call a beginning because that’s the scene you come in on):
As I mentioned previously, I have been longing to get out of cities for a while now and at this point in my life. Living in NYC has only exacerbated that feeling. The concrete and steel and the screams of the bus-brakes and the subways, the smells of the garbage and the press of people the constant press of people have only further instilled a desire to find a place, a quiet place, a place where I can relax my defenses and have space to breath and sit still and listen to silence and tune in to the rhythms of nature. To find my center, to breathe clean air, to open myself up to my surroundings with a sense of peace and safety and joy.
At the same time that this desire has been growing, I made a huge decision a couple of years ago when I left CUNY’s The Graduate Center, forgoing the academic and career path I had set myself on in 2001 when I began my Masters degree at the University of Maryland. Namely, becoming a full-time, tenured college professor. The ramifications of the decision are still being felt, the meanings still being teased out by my mind as I grapple with the awareness that I have chosen to leave behind (for the foreseeable future) a life that holds a tremendous amount of appeal and a career that I’m very good at doing. For years, even when I was mentally (and sometimes vocally) railing against graduate school and feeling ill at ease with the whole notion of academia, I was being told, on a near daily basis, that I was very good at thinking, at research, at writing and at teaching. That approbation felt damn good, regardless of what I was feeling about the system. I was also surrounded by friends and colleagues who were damned smart and curious and excited by ideas and theories and theatre and thinking. Actually, I think I miss that community more than anything else that I experienced as a grad student. In many ways, those colleagues provided more of an impetus for me to think harder than many of my professors and I adore thinking and trying to wrap my brain around concepts that are hard and not necessarily intuitive.
(Well, I do when I am grappling with notions, ideas, and subjects that come naturally to me. Subjects like critical theory, dramaturgy, directing, even teaching others. If I’m honest there are all sorts of things that are hard for me that I avoid – like math and foreign languages. And actually, that’s one of the things I’d like to change about myself.)
What do I really want to be when I grow up? I am tempted to say the same thing that I said when I was seven: “a writer,” but that’s not completely true. What I most want to be is a storyteller. One who can work in various mediums to affect peoples minds, heard and souls. I want to make other people feel what Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, Joanna Russ, John Crowley, Samuel Delany, Sherri S. Tepper, Stephen Moffat, and Ron Moore have made me feel. I love directing theatre, and plan on continue to tell stories through that specific art, but directing is easy for me (the challenges of each moment may be difficult, but the process is one that feel entirely comfortable and confident in). Making music is something that I want to become better at, both as a composer and as a songwriter and I will be making a more concerted effort in that arena. I also plan on furthering my experiments in sound design as an expressive and storytelling art
But the most challenging medium for me is writing. And, if I’m honest with myself, writing is also what I most want to leave behind as my legacy. Through plays, short stories, novels, comics and screenplays, I want to tell stories that will astonish and delight, that will make people think and cry and see themselves and see something so alien as to see the world anew. I want to invent worlds where other people want to come and live. I want to create realities that have never been seen and re-write those that have become so trite as to be invisible. I have never stopped writing completely, and have almost always carried a story or two in my head that needs telling, but because writing is hard, it’s very very easy for me to find ways to not do it. School provided me with a convenient excuse because I was writing, just not stories (to be honest though, I do see my academic work as stories, just in a very different sense of the word – but that’s another discussion for another time), and I was expected to focus all my energies on my studies.
Now I no longer have that excuse. Neither will I have a myriad of other excuses for not writing . . . actually, to be more specific, I will not have any excuse not to make writing the primary focus of my life. It won’t be the only thing in my life with any meaning, but the other parts of my life need to be arranged in support of my life as a storyteller and as a writer. Trust me, I know that simply moving yourself from one place to another does not ensure personal change and a sudden ability for self-discipline. So I do not see this move as a solution, or as the answer to my struggles to become the writer I want to become, the writer I’ve always envisioned myself but never actually made happen. However, I do believe that for me to get my shit together as an artist, I need to find an environment that can allow me to feel more open to the world, less defensive, less cut-off from my own needs and desires; a place of silence and stillness that will allow the stories (and myself) a freedom of being that I just don’t seem to find in an urban setting, or, to be completely honest, while living–and by living I mean “significant other” kind of living–with someone.
Scared? Hell yeah. I will have no obligation to anyone but myself and I’ve not been terribly good on that front as it is far easier for me to get work accomplished when it is for someone else. That situation could be directing, where if I don’t come through I let down my cast and crew, or it could be school, where teachers demanded both content and excellence to be delivered to them on deadline. The last time I was not in school, the last time I went west, I fucked around and did very little of worth because I was lazy and undisciplined and unfocused. Graduate school has definitely given me some good habits and abilities that I didn’t have back then, but the fact is I don’t know if I can do this. I have spent a great deal of my life doing things that I know I can do, often times with great success. So, do I have the life skills, the self-discipline, the fortitude, the courage, the skills, or the focus to be who I want to become?
I don’t know.
But I guess I will find out. One way or another.
Those of you who know me have heard me talk about the spaceport that is being built in NM. I posted previously about how the spaceport fit in with my long-standing love of space imagery and exploration. While Jo Cose believes that the project is doomed before it’s truly begun, I have this exciting faith in the possibilities of Spaceport America and truly believe it is going to be a historical undertaking and one of the key moments in humanities quest for the stars. My faith is baseless, true, and I have no evidence to back up my assertions and predictions while Jo Cose does have a bit of insider knowledge. In fact, I’ve been wondering if there is any progress happening over at the Spaceport because their blog seems quiescent and the news seemed to be slowing down. Recently, however, a new Executive Director was hired and a test flight was launched and they are expecting the spaceport to be completed in about 2 years.
Even writing this short and simple post has me smiling and the child in me getting excited. The child in me doesn’t get excited by much these days–partly the adult me’s fault–but space can still bring out the wide-eyed sheer wonder of it all attitude that swirls your stomach and makes your heart beat fast but in a good way.