AUTUMN COMES AGAIN

Velarde Valley on Saturday

Autumn is coming full on and it’s shocking how fast the year has gone by. Life is like an unfolding TV series episode by episode but I’m not particularly in a hurry to find out how the story ends. I’m becoming patient and enjoy each segment on its own. The last two nights we have had rain and that must be due to global warming. PQ and I compare notes, and we agree that in the years of our youth by this time of year the leaves would be gone and any precipitation would probably be white. As a child, I went trick or treating a number of times in a blizzard but in those days life for children was different. The neighbors were trustworthy and we children went out on our own Halloween night. The neighborhood was semi-rural and we sometimes walked for miles. Being out in the dark and the weather was part of the fun. I enjoyed the costumes and often people would invite us into their homes so that everyone could see our costumes and try to guess who we were. I had a marvelous witch costume. The mask was very realistic and seemed like real skin. The only problem was with the eye holes. They weren’t big enough to see anything but straight ahead. I usually fell off at least one porch and tripped over a few bushes.


We went to the screening of a segment of Awakening in Taos, the film about Mabel Dodge Luhan and Tony Lujan a week ago. Then yesterday we took another drive to Santa Fe to buy a pressure cooker on sale at Bed Bath and Beyond. It was a good excuse to take a drive down the canyon and enjoy the brilliant cottonwoods lining the Rio Grande. We had a quiet dinner with Awakening in Taos producer and dear friend Mark Gordon and this morning we had coffee on the patio for the first time in several days. It was great fun but all the talking was hard on PQ’s oxygen level. He is sticking with the couch and TV today.

Shadow on Her Favorite Perch

We have a cat. We can't live in denial anymore. After being pet-free for a number of years this black furry creature has made it through all the pet filters. From being a feral feline, she is now quite at home and very affectionate. Even PQ is trying to think of ways we can travel with her. Watching her change has been a lesson in basic psychology. Not only was she afraid of people, she was afraid of all the other cats, and they beat her up whenever they got a chance. She lived by being alert and fast. Now she feels quite confident that this is her territory and yesterday she chased off the cat that injured her badly last month. This morning she chased off miss Fluffy Tail who tries to dominate all the other cats. They all start growling and hissing at this one whenever she saunters over whipping her magnificent tail back and forth like queen of the neighborhood. Her people put a collar with a bell on it. I suppose this is to protect the birds but it protects all of us. She is very pretty and has an innocent, “who me?” face but mischief is her game. Watching cats and birds is a good way to keep the human drama in perspective. Humans are inclined to think that they are what the world is all about. Everything else on the planet is just resources and decoration. Yet all the other beings are living out their own dramas, goals, successes, and failures.