BACK TO THE BEGINNING

I just got back from doing errands with PQ. With only one car errands have to be planned. We are simplifying, downsizing, going basic. Corey, PQ’s oldest son is going even more basic by living in the family’s ancestral pueblo house entirely without modern conveniences except the cell phone and tablet that he recharges at our town house while doing laundry.  It’s almost impossible to live completely like the ancestors.  Presently he relies on PQ for a ride to work, so there will be no out of town adventures for a while for any of us. No running off to Arizona, or anywhere else. Even a trip to Santa Fe is a rare treat. Our rope is shorter than it has ever been since we got together. The gate out of Taos seems to have shut quickly and firmly. I suspect we have unfinished business here. It may be as simple as sorting through the clutter in the garage so that we can paint there. Then again the process may be about confronting the mysteries settled to the bottom layer of said garage. Unfortunately I've looked at those boxes and all the things impeding a direct approach and decided to postpone the project too many times. Now the weather is mild and not too hot. No more excuses.

Two days of rain and summer is born

On one of the now frequent trips to the old village, I notice things I haven’t thought about for a long time. On the Rez, wild irises are in bloom all over the greening fields. Three days of rainy weather did wonders. The leaves on most trees are as fresh as spring and the chokecherries and plums are in full bloom. Some of the horses brought down from winter pasture now have shiny coats and the lean ribs of winter’s sparceness are gradually disappearing. Just when I most wanted to get away, Taos has me/us corralled. It brings up memories as only the tactile elemental world can. Also, the aging of familiar people we cross paths with at the grocery store and post office, remind me that despite the fact that the light and air feel the same, much time has passed since I first came to Taos, yet there is only one spring, it just comes and goes like a revolving door.  However, it is truly the trips to the Pueblo that remind me that the more things change, the more they stay in place. Those tan dirt walls and sagging wooden fences weathered grey with age are outside of time. There is truly no past or future, just elemental shifting the way pebbles in a creek move about as the water rises or falls. 

 

It sounds contradictory but spring takes me back in time, yet this isn’t exactly about remembering times past but about what never went away. Even such memories as PQ’s parents, Joe J. and Frances, are about their presence overlaying the present like a double exposure. The anthropologists say that many peoples don’t experience time the way Europeans and Americans do, and I think I’m beginning to move out of that one directional view of time.

 

What if we are born, live and pass through life without moving forward, but instead shift from one layer to another.  There is no way to express it in linear words because I’m visualizing change as a way of vertically stacking experience. Events can move on and off  layers to other layers sometimes making long ago closer than yesterday.

 

We each are a collection of many times and ancestors. It used to grieve me that I could never know an ancestor who lived a few hundred years ago and that those who follow us a hundred years from now will never know us personally. The thought that I owe my existence to beings I can never meet used to seem unfair. PQ could verify that I am almost obsessive about the past. He finds it amusing and sometimes irritating. I love period dramas and they must be as faithful as possible to the style of the era.  I once wanted to be a paleontologist or anthropologist because I didn’t like being confined to one time and one culture. 

 

We try to discourage him but Shadow likes him.

Here is an amusing example. When I moved to this house eight years ago, I had two feline soul mates.  One was a male tabby and the other a black long haired female. As you know, a black long haired female that PQ named Shadow adopted us last year. Right now, there is a young short haired male tabby that is trying to force his way into the family. Presently, Shadow is lying on the bed and he is lying on the floor beneath the bed to avoid the thunderstorm outside. Of course, choice comes into the equation. We don’t want two cats. The black one is very easy and travels well, the tabby is young and boisterous although very friendly.  Anyway, I believe he has a home he just likes this one better. We call him squeaky because his voice sounds like a rusty hinge. Is this a coincidence, or an empty pattern waiting for fulfillment? The mind holds holographic patterns and it seems that they circulate around in time and unless someone intentionally changes the pattern, it keeps circulating. 

 

Of course, we don’t always recognize one of these circulating patterns. Life is full of surprises partly because we frequently don’t recognize our own reflection because it comes up behind us but it holds the realities we don't see in a mirror.