katie's blog

I just had to turn on the radio and listen to that station. I just had to turn that dial and they happened to be broadcasting Bioneers. Now, nothing is more annoying while you are getting ready to go to New York City, determined to look chic and well dressed, determined to be professional and taken seriously, than to listen to the King of Bhutan say that nothing is more important than "gross national happiness" and then to hear one of his minions, some American happy person citing statistics proving that being surrounded by family and friends is the most important factor in achieving happiness. And, of course, she mentioned that us evil Americans, in our quest for material goods and status, have fewer friends and less leisure time to spend with them. So therefore we should all think about that!

Meanwhile, I'm listening to this and thinking yeah, yeah, we all must love one another, and I go to put on my MY BOOTS. The Black Boots. These boots have been designated the single only footwear that can take me from happening night life to professional yet funky downtown outfit. They are my round the clock one and only New York footwear. My entire funky yet professional outfit depends upon them. My Image depends upon them. The whole superficial manifestation of my persona for this trip to the big city where everything material and money and style and looks matters terrifically for impressing people and therefor achieving success. I feel confident in this knowledge due to my experience having lived there unsuccessfully for three years. I feel confident that my lack of success was due to my then-conviction that the measure of my character was in the depth of my soul, not in the cut of my coat.

But after a great deal of post-game analysis on the whole New York experience, I feel confident that not having good outfits had actually a lot to do with my not making many friends or a successful career. Part of me knows what a logical person would say-- it's your depth of character that counts! Then another part of me knows what a self-made New York success woman would say--it's the outfit, you idiot. It all starts with the outfit.

So I'm putting on the boots that make the outfit, and I zip them up and lo and behold, the zipper breaks. It is now 8:50 am. My plane boards at 11:37 pm. It takes an hour to get to Albuquerque. So I have to leave Santa Fe by 10:30 at the latest. Without these boots, all the preparation I've done is for naught. No part of the outfit works without these boots. The outfit involves a skirt, so I have the choice of flats--I despise those weak pansy shoes (plus, it's winter), heels--not on your life. So it's boots. That's the only choice. If I had slacks I could switch to slacks and regular shoes, but I do not have slacks. I live in Santa Fe, where dressing up means wearing your GOOD jeans. I don't keep things like black slacks handy. Ordinarily I have no need of black slacks.

Literally, all my good stuff was found at funky garage sales. Hence the skirts. They're fun, unique, funky, and totally me. Black slacks are not fun or funky. I have never been inclined to pick up a pair. Black slacks are for practical people. But back to the skirts-- paired with a black jacket and stylish boots the outfit is ideally professional yet funky. I have honed this look over the past few weeks. I have midwifed it into existence from nothing but a pile of unmatched bric a brac and a series of belabored, brow-furrowing trips to local second hand stores. Again, the key to the outfit is the boots. I have an hour and half before I leave Santa Fe. My plane will arrive at midnight and the conference begins at 8 am. The obvious solution is to buy boots in New York, but I can not. I waste precious time taking the boots to a local shoe repair place, asking for an emergency fix. No. They can't do it. Then I realize I'm starving and I need to sit down and eat and relax. I do it and meanwhile have a small quiet stress cry.

The King of Bhutan is whispering in my ear--gross national happiness! It has nothing to do with material possessions. The depth of your soul, that's all that matters! So I take a half an hour. I have a burrito and a latte and I think about it. But dammit I want my outfit. I want to return to New York a bold, intelligent learned woman with two brilliant novels for sale and a kick ass outfit. The King of Bhutan would not understand this. After all, he is a king.

A king does not have to write a novel. A king has ready-made outfits for every occasion. And . . . a king is a man. A man does not know about that perfect combination of originality and sophistication that make a woman distinctive and intriguing in the eyes of those in power. A king, even less so. I need to buy some replacement boots NOW. And I also need a backup outfit in case these boots can't be bought. It is 9:45. I go home and get a shoddy, unsophisticated backup outfit. I look in the mirror. Crying has transferred my mascara directly in little eyelash lines to the concealer covering my undereye circles. As I try to rub it off I realize the combination of mascara and concealer forms a perfect smearable oil pastel, which is soon swirled around my cheeks like a Maori tattoo. Whatever.

I know it's crazy, but I go to a local department store. I give myself ten extra minutes, but still, it takes a half hour to get there. My God there are one million pairs of black boots in this store and none of them are as awesome as my original pair. I rampage through the place, leaving a trail of open shoe boxes. Cardboard inserts and tissue paper are flying in my wake as I select a pair of boots. They're not perfect but I have to think fast. I'm running on pure instinct. I grab the receipt out of the shocked checker's hand and dash out the door. I am at curbside check-in at 11:15 and at the terminal at exactly 11:37, which is boarding time.
The plane is late.
I made it.
With boots.

And if I were the outfit-centric New Yorker I have been attempting to emulate, I would feel a sense of deep satisfaction like no other. Instead, I hear the voice of that satanic do-gooder saying "studies show happiness is about being surrounded by loved ones." I must disagree. Happiness is simpler than that. Happiness is the perfect pair of black boots. The King of Bhutan wears boots. He knows. He secretly knows.

Catherine S. Manegold, former New York Times reporter, has some interesting things to say about narrative nonfiction in this segment about her new book, Ship of Gold.

Got into a very interesting conflict last night. One of those things that really leaves you philosophically musing about bunches of things. I was at the dance studio where I rent a studio, with my friend, for the purpose of practicing rhythm tap dance, our little hobby. We'll call her Frisco. Well, to make the long story quite short, there were some tough guys there that wanted to use our studio to do hip hop dance. Although we were paying for the space and they were actually not paying for the space, we actually left five minutes early to accommodate them. I, personally, would not have done this, but Frisco and I have opposite philosophies about things. She wants to accommodate people while I want to get what is due to me. After all, twenty bucks spent is twenty bucks spent, and I plan to get my twenty bucks worth of tap dancing in. Anyway, the leader of the hip hop guys decided to try to intimidate us. He insisted that it would be "common courtesy" for Frisco and I to scrub the wooden floor of the studio before we left. Because of certain background information I have, that I won't bore you with, I KNEW that this was baloney and that we were in no way obliged to do this. Frisco was going to do it. She likes to accommodate people. I don't like to pander to intimidating a**holes, personally, as I see the whole thing as a slippery slope. Today he wants us the scrub the floor, next week he'll want us to take out the garbage, then he'll start getting us to end seven minutes, then ten minutes, then fifteen minutes early. Anyway, I simply stated that if the studio manager had wanted us to do that, she would have said so. The guy just changed the subject and tried to intimidate me. He showed that he was a totally unreasonable egomaniacal pig and I stood up to him, which made Frisco start fluttering around the place saying "everyone calm down!" Then more shenanigans ensued and I left literally shaking from being intimidated and harrassed by a couple of different guys who are probably gang bangers, because that's the kind of communication style they have.I was being totally calm and reasonable the whole time, just trying to get the guy to realize that when you pay to rent a space, you aren't obliged to get on your hands and knees and scrub it. But he didn't want to hear that. 

So then Frisco and I went for a beer to calm down, and decided never to go back there again. Frisco is, unapologetically, the type of person who, even if she agrees with you about some conflict, no matter how small, she will never say anything about it out loud, if she thinks it might incite more conflict. She will leave you to fend for yourself. I believe the philosophy is that if you decide to incite conflict, you have basically made your bed and can lie in it yourself. She would rather jump off a bridge than get involved in any conflict whatsoever. By contrast, I would rather jump off a bridge than let some a**hole intimidate me. We discussed this at length, each philosophy making exactly no sense to the other person and us trying to figure out why someone would think the way the other person thought. She thought the ideal thing to do would be to go ahead and scrub the floor as he asked. After all, the other members of the hip hop group (who weren't involved in harrassing me) were helping scrub the floor. Then she would call the studio manager the next day and ask her to sort out who is supposed to do what. That makes perfect sense, of course. A very reasonable, no-direct-confrontation, problem-solving method. Except for one thing:

What she sees is a logistical situation that needs to be settled by an authority. Fair enough. But what I see is a guy making a power play on a couple of women. Even setting gender politics aside, this guy's thing was all about establishing his power, and no mistake. But he had nothing upon which to base his notion of himself as the power-holder. After all, Frisco and I were paying customers, and he wasn't. So he based it on the notion that "common courtesy" would be for us to recognize him as the power-holder. Accusing us of ignoring common courtesy made him feel morally superior, and therefore the holder of power. Nice trick. It worked on Frisco. I still don't see how she could even consider avoiding a conflict designed to belittle her, but she doesn't see it that way. To her, getting into a confrontation with someone is the worst thing in the world, so if you have to let someone get their way in order to avoid it, then who cares. You avoided the confrontation, so you basically came out ahead.

After the conversation, I looked at the whole thing and I just could not imagine dealing with it in any other way than how I did. Her way, of course, resulted in a gang banger not hating her and not leaving her literally shaking and afraid of retaliation. It left her reasonably calm and letting it all slide off like water off a duck. My way, on the other hand, left me with high anxiety, a sense of vengefulness, and this incredible fear of ever running into that guy again because I seriously think he willl do me harm. And yet, I can't imagine dealing with it her way. I absolutely can't.That would be like throwing meat to lions. Either way, gang bangers beware. Tap shoes are actually pretty decent weapons. 

Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket? it's my
favorite bumper sticker and the perfect expression for today's rant. I merely
want to talk about a certain specific way in which people are gradually
becoming these sort of club-em-and-eat-em neanderthals without even noticing.
It's about bad-connection etiquette. Ever since the advent of the cell phone,
the problem of bad connections has existed. Along with bad connections
comes a little-known thing called bad connection etiquette. Oh, you won't find
it mentioned in Miss Manners or the latest book about up-to-date party
planning, but never the less, it is there, under the surface of every phone
call. Do we talk about bad connection etiquette? God forbid! People don't talk
about this. You might as well talk about the consistency of your poo. I mean,
it just is not discussed. As a result, people don't really know for sure
exactly what constitutes bad-connection etiquette and they are making social
gaffes on a daily basis, meanwhile allowing their personalities to deteriorate
at an alarming rate. This is why I have come to the rescue, today.

For instance, if you work in a place of business and you get
a phone call where you can't hear the person on the other line, DO assume that
they CAN HEAR you. Does this seem obvious? Yes, it does to me, too, but to many
people out there the notion of extending professional courtesy to someone
suffering from bad-connection-itis is a non-thought. Let's say, just for
giggles, that you are a receptionist at a doctor's office. Let's say someone
calls you and you can't hear them on the other end. Should you just slam the
phone down, like they do at Isis Medicine in Santa Fe, New Mexico? Goodness,
no. What if there is some elderly person on the other line, choking to death?
Remember, you are a doctor's office. Sick people might actually call you and
not have the ability to make bold, clear, well-thought-out
statements of fact. Now, if you work at Isis, you may have a reduced ability to
deal with unpleasant situations because you are so spoiled by your hour and a
half lunch break during which time the office phone doesn't even accept
messages, but still, one must rally.

Bad connection etiquette says that you should politely state
that there seems to be a bad connection and that you encourage the caller to
try the call again, because you have to hang up, now. That would actually be
good bad-connection-etiquette practice. But let's say, just for giggles, that
you decide instead to yell HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! and then slam the phone down.
Then, let's say the caller should actually have the nerve to try the call
again and succeed. And let's just say, just for giggles, that this caller is
not the meek, mild type that is willing to take whatever rude treatment you
decide to dish out, today. And what if, God forbid--and it is so gouche to do
it, but let's just say-- this person should actually draw your attention to the
fact that you just hung up on her quite rudely. So unsophisticated! I know! How
could anyone actually make a rude person face his own rudeness? It's just
absolutely uncivilized, but let's just SAY that someone did this to you. The
correct answer, given the scenario, would be "I apologize for that! How
can I help you?" The correct good-etiquette answer would NOT be,
"Well, I couldn't hear you. My phone connection has been bad for weeks
now. I just hung up. What do you expect, anyway?"

I'm not obsessed with manners or anything, but, you know, I
do think the world is sliding into a state of absolute cave-man-ism, where even
grown adults aren't willing to take responsibility for their own etiquette
f***-ups. A state where people are so annoyed by technology, meanwhile taking
it so for-granted, that they resort to these kind-of utterly unsophisticated
playground-brawl methods of dealing with adversity. The cure? I recommend that
anyone whose job involves using the phone should watch more old movies. Put a
little pomp and circumstance into the thing. Act like a phone is something
special. Act like it's a wonderful opportunity to show off your personal sophistication,
because, actually, it is.

There's nothing quite like coming home to find a 2-page, messily hand-scrawled note taped to your front door. This happened to me yesterday. The feeling as I approached the door was a kind of paste of surreal disbelief messily spread on top of a denial of panic. The mind races: who hates me? who have I offended? what have I done? All my recent crimes against nature, other people, God, humanity, and common decency begin to run through my head in a kind of evil film-strip loop. They say before you die your life flashes before your eyes, although many near-death-experience survivors have said this isn't true. That's because someone got it wrong. When it really happens is when you have a note taped to your front door. That's when everything flashes. And when you see the hasty, impassioned scrawl of black on white. Not a nice ball point pen, but the thing is written with black marker in the big bold cursive of an angry or a crazed person. The physiological response is extreme. The eyes, at first, refuse to focus on the words. All they see is Chinese. Black on white, black on white, like runes. They see slashes and loops and emotion and they see the art of it. They see danger and threats and accusations. The eyes blur out and shift side to side in an attempt to avoid the brain's command of "Read, damn you! Read!"

Finally I read the note. Apparently, my downstairs neighbor (I live in a condo, upstairs) is having a conniption fit because her "ceiling is coming down" due to a major leak in my bathroom plumbing. I'm picturing a rain of feces. I'm picturing bodily wastes bubbling up through her bathtub drain. I'm picturing thousands of dollars in damage and lots of endless passive-aggressive "neighborly" "concerned" complaints by this lady who is going to call some kind of housing authority I've never heard of to have me and Panda slapped with some kind of sewage-crimes fine. She has, in her panicked scrawl, commanded us to call our homeowner's insurance, the condo association, a plumber, the guy who used to do maintenance on the building last year, the guy who does it this year, and everything short of Ghostbusters. 

So I let myself in and check the bathroom. It looks fine. I stand in the entryway contemplating the scrawl and the commands and the little additional afterthoughts scribbled into the margins of the note and ponder whether this woman's state of panic is based in reality or her exaggeration imagination. You know how people are, especially when faced with something as mysterious as THAT WHICH EXISTS BETWEEN YOUR FLOOR AND MY CEILING. NO MAN'S LAND. Soon, there is a knock on the door, and sure enough it's the neighbor. She is visibly shaking all over. She is shaking not like a leaf, not like a windsock in a thunderstorm, not like the rustling branches of a man trying to scare away a bear, but rather like something in a video game--some kind of digital character who has been struck by a digital death ray and has gone into the video-game equivalent of death-spasms. I can tell by her demeanor that the problem is not a rain of feces, but rather her profound fear of such a thing. A rain of feces, after all, would be just that. There it would be, in all it's horror. But her particular disposition was one of neurotic fear of a fate worse than death itself. A neurotic fear that has made the potential for a rain of feces into something on a level with being brutally raped at gunpoint. I do realize, however, that "Oh relax, it's just feces" would probably not go over well at this point in time.

I tell her we'll take care of everything and she can just relax. I contemplate suggesting a glass of cognac, or sleeping pills, or a little primal-scream therapy, but wisely, I don't. Somehow she manages to shake her way downstairs without getting dissolved by either imaginary feces or a death ray. Next day, a guy comes and fixes the toilet, which seems to have been installed with a faulty seal. It's not a big deal. He says her bathroom ceiling has a tiny little fracture. I say, "I was picturing this giant stalactite filled with human waste, ready to explode at any moment." He chuckles. "Oh," he says. "That's just Susan. She's always like that." And so my and Panda's first experience of potential homeowner hell ended just as abruptly as it began. Perhaps we'll frame the scrawled note, for old times sake. Or if we have kids, we can show it to them to scare them. "See? If you're bad, aunty Susan will come over and write you a note like THIS!" (follow with diabolical, evil laugh)

(By the way, prepare oh ye readers, to join the upcoming fan page for Bits of String Too Small to Save, which will feature excerpts from the soon to be published greatest best seller of all time.  Coming soon, on a web page near you.)

Oh damn. It has finally happened. My trusty '91 honda civic, Penny, has finally betrayed me. You see it all started a couple years ago when I went to spray windshield wiper fluid and the windshield wiper control broke off in my hand. Yeah, so I'm holding this thing baton-like thing like some mad orchestra conductor, driving down the street, waving it madly to a chorus of "What the f***! What the f***!" At first, I figured I was just too strong for my own good. You know me, triceps of iron and all. But pretty soon, when all the plastic things on the car started disintegrating, I realized this is whatchucall planned obsolescence in action.  It's obviously a conspiracy. I mean, within the space of a couple years both my back door locks and my windshield wiper thing broke. Now, I have to reach my finger into a hole and diddle this tiny windshield-wiper clitoris UP to get fast wiping, DOWN to get intermittent wiping, and then to turn it off, it's tricky. I have to find this no-man's-land in between up and down, which is a matter of a half a millimeter in between them. If I'm lucky, the wipers will stop and not start again randomly on a dry windshield. Of course, the wiper fluid squirter doesn't work at all. I suppose I could take a spray bottle and reach out the driver's side window and squirt the windshield in an emergency. But come on, people, I have some pride. Not a lot, when it comes to cars, but some. Even the dashboard seems to want to sort of divorce itself from the rest of the car.

Oh, and the latest thing? I went to pull the lever that opens my gas cap and got an electric shock. But the funnest thing was when both the back doors locked themselves permanently. That was okay, though. I mean, who needs a back seat anyhow? Damn bother, back seats are. But then a thief decided that the only thing worth anything in my car, the stereo, was meant to be his. He broke--I suppose he thought he was being considerate--the tiny triangular window in the back seat in order to get into the car, then must have realized he couldn't reach in and open the back door because it was permanently locked shut. So what the hell, then he went ahead and broke my drivers side window. I replaced the driver's side window, okay. That was cheap, actually. But you see, in order to replace that triangular window (which, by the way, all you thieves out there-- that little window costs twice as much to replace as any of the other windows), a mechanic would have to open the door. And in order to open the door I'd have to pay to get the door fixed. So, long story short, replacing that little triangle window is going to cost me hundreds of dollars, which I'm not going to do because I'm sure the very next thing to happen will be that the roof will freakin' blow off or something. But now the damn radiator sprang a leak!

Then, of course, there is the "custom work" I did on the hood and left front fender some while back. Me and a large pickup truck actually customized it together, quite dramatically, in the middle of a hairpin turn on a snowy morning. And so my car is what you might call . . . ghetto. On a good day. But only on the outside, people! I've hung onto Penny this long because she runs like a CHAMP. That's the thing. The Honda engine-makers had enough integrity to make their car invincible, but the plastics department came in and said WHOA! WE CAN'T HAVE PEOPLE DRIVING 20-YEAR-OLD HONDAS! THAT'S A SACRILEGE! Frankly, I had thought the Japanese were above such American-style tactics. Excuse the lack of automotive patriotism. But, apparently not. And so anyway I apparently have inherited the depression-era mentality that makes it a point of honor to keep every hunk of junk until it disintegrates in your hands, such as Bits of String Too Small to Save. Why mention Bits of String? Well, of course because this is a shameless plug for my as-yet-unfinished-but-close novel entitled Bits of String Too Small to Save. Remember the name and keep your eyes peeled for it in a book store near you!

I would like to take this moment in time to blog about goddamn punctuation and goddamn blackberries. Not the kind Huck Finn gets in trouble for having smeared all over his face. If you, dear client, want me to write something for you, sending a message such as "i want you to write what his is you know the one wich is like the one on the other website that i showed you that time its very strong." All I can say is -- I hope you expect me to charge you for the time it takes to decipher the possibly seven different meanings of your punctuation-free blackberry fart. I'm no idealogue, as Obama once famously said. If your poetry is better achieved without punctuation, then to hell with commas! To hell with periods! to hell with subjects and objects and verbs and all of it. But if you want people to actually understand what you say, don't use your goddamn blackberry as an excuse to revert to the first grade. Now, isn't that reasonable? I feel very reasonable saying that. That infernal device is supposed to enhance your communication, not RETARD it. Right? Am I right? Can I get a witness?

Well, I decided to do it. To audition for Survivor. Not because I watch Survivor, because I don't. I just assume those kind of shows are staged. "Reality?" Oh please! Yeah, they just happen to have television cameras perfectly positioned in the forests of Borneo that happen to catch all the devious conversations between every single scheming participant. It's just not likely, that's all I'm saying.

It all came about because I was looking for auditions in Albuquerque, googling around, and this audition for Survivor came up. It said it was an open casting call and to bring "your best 2 minutes." Which, to me, seemed like a call for monologues, thus proving that the whole thing was actually a TV show with actors. The auditions were on January 2 and 3, and I spent the last week in December trying to get my house ready for a New Year's Eve party, so January first, I went crazy trying to develop a monologue. Then I discovered another website that talked about this audition. The whole thing was being sponsored by KRQE news, and gave you a KRQE news phone number to call for info. But no one at that number answered my message. There was also a number to call for Sky City Casino in Acoma, which is where they were holding the auditions. No one picked up there either, and the recording said nothing about auditions. BUT THERE IS WAS ONLINE! PLAIN AS DAY! SURVIVOR AUDITIONS AT SKY CITY CASINO!

So I decided to go anyway. My friends all backed me up, saying I'd be perfect for it, I think because they think I'm really conniving. I wasn't really flattered by that actually but what the hell. I yam what I yam, as Popeye would say. But there was another odd thing about this second website. This one didn't mention the two minute monologue, and also it had the dates wrong. It said Saturday December 2, and Sunday December 3. This is incorrect, because Saturday was December 1, and Sunday was actually December 2. Well I figured the advertisement got it wrong. It happens. Thus the only safe day to go was Sunday December 2, since it was already Saturday by the time I read it.

Now, I figured it would be good to actually watch the show before auditioning, so I
went to the local video store and rented a season of it. Panda and I stayed up until 2 am watching this thing only to discover that the final episode was NOT ON THE DISK! Oh well. Meanwhile, I filled out the application form, which asked all kinds of questions, like: what 3 adjectives describe you (I went with creative, diplomatic, indefatigable) I already told them I was a writer, so if they didn't know what indefatigable meant, I figured that was their problem. And: what cities or countries have you lived in and what did you do there? That little write-up took a few hours alone. They wanted to know what you did for a living of course and what accomplishments you are proudest of and why you think you could win survivor and "what is the craziest thing you would do for a million dollars" and "what wouldn't you do for a million dollars" and so on in that vein. I had to cross things out and start over so much that i finally decided to print up the lengthy answers on the computer, and actually cut them out with scissors and glue them onto the application form. My friend Sondra, who just got fired from her job yesterday, wanted to go with me to distract herself from her own misery, so that was great, because her car is a space ship and mine is a jalopy that doesn't go over 80, and has plastic taped over one of the windows.

So I got up at 7:30 in the morning and we drove to Acoma, which is practically in Arizona. We expected the parking lot to be mobbed. It wasn't. We expected a sign to direct us to the Survivor auditions. There wasn't one. We wandered around the casino until we found a desk with a girl behind it. She said she didn't know anything about it. We went to another desk, where a lady said she didn't know anything about it either.

I protested that it was advertised online, in two places at least. She just shrugged.

Then another lady behind the counter shook her head, saying "I don't think we're doing that this year."

"Wait a minute," I said. "What did you just say?"

"No. We're not doing that Survivor thing."

"Did you say, 'this year'?"

"Yes. I think, we did it last year."

"On December 2nd and 3rd?" I asked, while pounding my head against the counter.

"I think so. It was in January. I remember that."

"Ooooooooooooooh" I moaned. The advertisement was a year old. Sondra and I left the desk and continued moaning. And laughing. Moaning and laughing until we were just laughing and that's all. Getting the dates wrong, no one answering the contact phone-- it all made sense now. Then we went out for breakfast. I tossed my 12-page application in the garbage, ordered a double latte and that was that. That was my Survivor audition and the biggest fake-out of 2011, barely a day into the new year. When I got home I check the website, and sure enough, in tiny tiny small print, it said "2009." We weren't a year late. No darling, we were actually TWO years late. 

But in watching the show I actually got to like it and now I'm thinking I might actually audition via video tape. Apparently all you have to do is send in a video tape of yourself being yourself. Maybe I will and maybe I won't. I'm pretty conniving, apparently, so for all you know, this whole thing could be a lie. A lie intended to make you . . . um . . . to make you go "Aaaww" against your will. Yeah, that's it!

Atalaya is a trail that takes devilish delight in vanquishing me on a regular basis. Located right here in sunny Santa Fe, it ascends the mountain next to St. John's College all the way up to--as you might expect--the peak of Atalaya mountain. Or so I hear. As we're having an unseasonably warm winter, I took my pup out for a hardy stroll this afternoon on this diabolical trail of evil gnomes. When a hale and hearty friend recently bragged to me that he "hiked Atalaya just this morning!"  I responded honestly that I had never made it to the top. His incredulous remarks of pure disdain don't bear repeating. This planted the same seed in me that were planted in the fourth grade when my music teacher encouraged me to take up the french horn because "the oboe is too hard." Of course I naturally took up the oboe just to spite her and her low expectations and proceeded to squawk my way through the next year in total denial of the fact that she was 100% right. My point being that I have had this niggling need to prove I can reach the summit of Atalaya mountain simply to prove that I could. How hard could it be?

Its not hard, per se. I mean, what does "hard" mean, really? If something is hard to do, generally that means that either it presents physical difficulties for which you don't have the strength, stamina, or dexterity, or else it presents intellectual difficulties you don't have enough prior knowledge and reasoning skills to conquer. With the later, you can often accomplish said "hard" thing by just being patient and trying a lot of different techniques until you find the right one. So what's really "hard" is the attempt to be patient with our own failings. Patience: that's what's hard. In the case of Atalaya, however, you have what is essentially a physical activity with the hardships of that, but you also have a third element of "hardness" which is known as staying focussed. But physical difficulty and focus issues can all be remedied with enough patience. After all, if you need to lift a box and can't, you can always go ask a friend to help. You can always go rent a dolly. You can build a pulley system. . . if you have enough patience. And losing focus is a patience issue as well-- isn't focus simply patience with the thing you are trying to accomplish, and lack of focus an inability to concentrate on this thing because you are impatient and want to get to the next thing? So truly patience is the key to it all. You also have the element of timing, which falls under the category of being intellectually difficult, because you have to think before you do it. Which, of course, it totally unreasonable. But if you miss your timing one day, patience allows you to try again the next day. So, again--patience.

Today, for the third time, I began the great Atalaya adventure. First I parked, then I walked through the precious gated community that deigns to allow us lowly hikers access to the mountain. Then I hiked on up. It's reasonably steep, being a mountain and all, and I thought to myself-- when I get to the part where the sign says "easy trail this way, steep trail that way" I'll take the steep trail this time. I remember last time I took the easy trail and gave up, feeling like I just wasn't getting anywhere. So that's what I did. I took the steep trail. Wow. It's really steep. But what is difficulty anyway, except patience? So I patiently took the trail, one patient step at a time. Up and up and up I went, over roots and rocks and various sharp, jutting things. I got to some incredible scenic overlooks. You can see all of Santa Fe, lit up so beautifully, looking so Christmassy. And the sun began to set. Wow! The sky was orange, then pink, then purple. The colors reflected off the undersides of long, lean cumulous clouds without a thought of snow in their fluffy little heads. The great orb of fire descended behind the Sandia mountains like a radioactive blob of raspberry jelly dripping from the peanut butter sandwich of the world. And I looked at my watch and it was 5:30 which meant in half an hour it was liable to be pitch black dark. It was a good excuse to turn back. But I've hiked in the dark before. I mean if I want to get to the top of a damn mountain I'm not going to let a simple sunset get in my way. But I just didn't want to anymore. It's a long way up. I got further than I'd ever gotten before, but man, that mountaintop is a bitch. It's just way way up there. My dog sat patiently on the trail as I perched on a rock and wheezed. He knew I was making a decision. Wisely, he didn't try to influence me. My dog is a Buddha. He accepts what fate has in store with total and utter glee, no matter what it is. Every experience--from leaping into the car to pissing on a stump--holds the same fascination every time as it would for a newborn babe. He is the perfect example of a living being. He would not have played the oboe.

I decided I'd had enough. Visions of the last time I hiked in the dark (albeit a dark and stormy night in the middle of an unexpected downpour) flashed through my head-- the getting off the trail, the barking of the shins on the fallen logs, the blood running down the legs, the straggling along with hands in front of face like a blind baboon. I told myself I was headed back down because of the sunset and impending darkness, but it was a lie--this night there would be a moon and stars. The truth was, I was just sick of it. I lost my patience, my focus, and everything. I was vanquished by Atalaya for a third time today. But hell, if I'd got there, what would be left to aspire to? The mystery of the summit yet awaits.

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. You have to go there. If for no other reason, than just the name, people, I mean come on! I can't tell you why you have to go, simply because there is no actual overt reason. There are no attractions, there is no wilderness, there are no good restaurants to speak of, and you can't win big at casinos there. Its a town of beautiful nothingness. You'll meet a lot of old-timers out there gumming on bagels at the little bakery where the lady behind the counter wears a 3D reindeer sweater in gross anticipation of a Christmas season that hasn't even begun to show its sparkly little head. They'll be talking about feeding their mules and debating some issue of profound interest to mule owners. They'll discuss the various styles of chickadee they find at their feeders of a morning. It isn't interesting, but it IS. You see it IS because where else do you encounter this? This little bakery, and I'll give it a shameless plug here, its called the Happy Belly Deli. This place is a totally relaxed place where real dudes come who have absolutely nothing to do all day. How often do you meet people like that? Never! Come on, you never do, that's why the place is great. I made a friend there once, a fellow named Dale, another retired dude. Anyway, he says to me--"Hell, if it weren't for cinnamon rolls on Wednesdays, I wouldn't have anything to anchor my life around!"

And that, my friends is the attraction of Truth or Consequences. Its sheer and total nothingness. And the fact that people go there on purpose for its sheer lack of ambition, of beauty, of forward-thinking, of intensity. Its not a wilderness. It's less beautiful than a wilderness, and that makes it even more of a nothing space. There isn't even anything particularly compelling to look at. It's a no man's land. But there are these interesting people hiding out in the wilderness. People who just do whatever they want because their heads are completely clear of urban static.

In T or C, you'll also encounter innumberable tchotchke shops that sell tourist things, tacky memorabilia, and whatnot, which is particularly odd because there is nothing here to be a tourist about. But these shops have been there for ages. They've outlasted restaurants and diners and perfectly reasonable burrito joints. Of course, people go there for the hot springs. Strangely, the hotels charge real hotel rates, which is amazing, I mean truly amazing since you never see anyone on the street. It looks like a deserted ghost town where no one would want to come, much less pay full hotel rates, but they do! And the souvenir shops? No one is ever in them. Ever. I have spent days and days in this town and seen no one except the shop keepers. People ghostify when they get there. They appear in shops to buy things like chap stick and sunglasses and poof, they disappear. Its like a ghost town where all the shops are open. It makes no sense. That's what's great about it. Its the kind of shop where my mom would go around saying, "Looks like a front for the mafia," about every single store, because of the sheer improbability of staying in business. 

There is one thing to do in this town, and one place where you see actual people. Not locals, but other tourists. At the hot springs hotels. You can get a hot spring right in your own room, you can get a big communal one, you can rent one with a rope swing in it. Indoor hot springs, outdoor hot springs, you name it. I mean people come here and get stoned on the water and never go anywhere. Some hotels even have hot spring caves. Great underground bunkers like something from a 1950's bomb shelter, filled with steaming hot mineral water and gravel. You just go in there and erase your frickin' mind. It's like sensory deprivation. You have to be completely insane to go in there, but people do. Because they don't want it! IT! The whole world and all the thoughts that go along with it!

"Give me a bunker and a sandwich and let me be!" say the people. And that is why you must go to Truth or Consequences. By the way, the people are nice. Of course. They have no distractions. They can just be nice and not get worked up about anything. Feed their mules and watch their chickadees and that's it. Get erased! Come to Truth or Consequences, I'm telling you there is absolutely no reason to go there, which is why you MUST. You Must!