I have a friend from my D.C. days, a tech-head who yearns to be in film, who has been lately torturing me with pictures of cupcakes, so yesterday - still in Denver - I went to the Lovely Convections Bakery on Steele Street. I got some Bees Knees (lavender cake with honey buttercream) along with the classic vanilla, chocolate, etc. and I was talking to the owner as I was leaving, telling her how I was from Santa Fe, not getting into my whole story, just saying I was from Santa Fe. She lapsed into a reminiscence of a time 15 years ago when she went there. The Opera, the huevos rancheros, the light. I didn't mind at all except I'm in the phase - in only a few days I will no longer be "from Santa Fe" - where I'm looking back, from the vantage point of this respite in Denver, and in many ways I see my sojourn there, my sidetrack, as a sort of posh prison sentence. I was talking to my friend Joel last night while sitting on the porch looking out at the shadows of the trees. He said, "Well at least you're on track now. It only took you, what, getting married, getting divorced, spending some time figuring out this artist thing..."
I said, "Yeah, it only took me, uh seven and a half years."
That's some kind of detour.
When I look back I see the prison effect of it because I was working the inner sh** so hard. I worked it so hard because I knew I needed a turning point. Some things in life just come to you in a such a compelling way that you can't run and you can't hide, like it's M.C Hammer time. Patterns needed to be tamed and broken. AND it coincidentally is all over my astrology chart (another Santa Fe phenomenon, that if you live there you eventually need to know things such as your rising sign, your moon, trust me on this if you're moving there and look it up before you get there), that I would spend a couple years wanting to be alone, alone, alone and diving into this cave material. Two years ago an astrologer astutely said I should go even a little north of Santa Fe, to Tesuque (my absolute favorite place to hike) or Abiquiu, and cozy up for this deep alone time, sweeten it up even, because my blahblahblah line ran RIGHT through there. Some things are just meant to be. I was even dating someone for a time within all this, and my exit statements amounted to: "I felt more alone with you than not with you." I know that sounds harsh when I write it here like that, and there's more to that story that I will probably never tell, but...I felt like a renegade cowboy lost on the plains, reading cowboy love stories by Pam Houston...and it's true, just true. More alone with you.
Hmmmm.
Anyway, my point is it's so interesting to listen to people wax romantic about Santa Fe when I was on the interior of it getting my ass kicked and they're thinking: what a nice vacation. And I want to rant and rave about it but I know that only if you've lived there and experienced it with the particular conjunction of this planet in such and such a house can you even begin to fathom what I'm talking about. Luckily I know a few. People like this, that is. One such friend is moving to L.A., of her own accord, at the same time. We can compare notes, commisserate, maybe one day wax romanitic about the loooooong days in Santa Fe, those days we got our asses whooped on the prairie - and it was posh and we went to the Opera and walked in the hills and I wrote poetry day after day after day.
