I am now back in New Mexico. Don't know how long I'll be here but, oh well, I've come to terms with that over the past week of heavy soul searching. So while I am here I am going to enjoy it with my weekly hikes up into the mountains.
Having grown up in the East, I remember magnificent Fall colours. Reds and deep greens and golds. Here in this part of the Southwest though, we have the aspen. I do believe they give the maples a run for their money. Take a look at these photos and tell me if you agree:
Someone on a hike last week said that she thought of the sky here in Santa Fe as "our ocean." I think that's very apt. While I sometimes miss the sound of waves crashing against rocks, there is a similar feeling of spaciousness, of timelessness looking up at our amazing sky. The midday color, that blinding blue. The cloud formations. The "dry rain" that is called virga; the moisture evaporates before it touches the ground. The evening sunsets, which are incomparably beautiful--although Arizonans would probably demur. The night sky with its thousands and thousands of stars. I remember a hike I took earlier this year--a full moon hike--where one of my fellow hikers pointed out almost every single one of the constellations that comprise the Zodiac. Wow, I had never seen that before.
There is so much to see here when I pay attention, when I am not immersed in my arguments with myself. "Be still and know that I am God"--if I place the emphasis on the pronoun "I" while saying this aloud, then all my machinations, all my worrying over making decisions, get put into perspective. "I" am not God and my creations are very small in comparison to His. I need to nurture them though and keep on creating, always being aware of what my place is in this world. A blog is a creation, relationships are creations. Dreams and worries that float away in my mind are not.
Ironically, though, after all my talk about gold and blue skies, it has been raining throughout the night and into the early morning. No virga, just honest to goodness rain that puddles on the ground. But I no longer here the "pipipipipip" on the skylights so perhaps it has stopped. The cat-who-lives-in-this-house, Flame, is lying beside me, having missed out on his usual morning poke around the back yard.
And my car sits in the driveway, the bird poop washed away (Sheila would be so pleased, she of the "bucket and soap every morning and those blasted pigeons" brigade), glistening in all its newness once again. I am not really "into" cars, not like my dh is and my dad was. This is a nice car, it performs well. But, truthfully, I'd rather have a home than a car. It was just that this was less expensive and easier to choose :) But I also want to say a quick word about our modern buying and selling and the lies that we tell one another. The car salesman told me this was a great deal. We had exchanged stories about how car salespeople cheat women and he was forewarned that I was in no mood for being shmoozed. So he didn't "shmooze" me, just told me the great things about this car and let me decide for myself. I only know certain "great things" about cars--how it drives, what the gas mileage is, does it have cruise control--just the basics and not much more than that. Dh wasn't around when I bought the car. As soon as I brought it back to Santa Fe, he immediately noticed that the back tires were different from the front. ???? Was I supposed to check that? So he called my salesman and the salesman gives this story about one back tire having had a blowout so they had to replace the other back tire as well. Dh says, why different tires and where's the warranty on the tires? Oh, said the salesman, ummm, well, we just buy tires from a tire place and I'll have to get the warranty. So on my almost-new car with 7000-odd miles, I have a pair of Michelins on the front and a pair of cheap tires on the back. Sigh. And no floor mats. Another sigh. And the CD player doesn't work properly. At least that's under warranty. What have I learned from this. Well, it's kind of like what Susan in "Miracle on 34th Street" says to Kris Kringle: "You're a very nice man, but you're not Santa Claus." Caveat emptor, buyer beware.
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