Sunday, August 16, 2015

LATER IN SUMMER

PQ has been painting, "18 drum $350 if  you are interested
This drum has a greaat sound.
Taos is now  lush in a maximum display of gorgeousness just as the sun is beginning to distance itself from us. The effect is a love affair barely one day beyond its prime.   Fall is sneaking in and with it is that intense tickle in the heart that is ecstasy mixed with pain of anticipated loss.  There is something unique about Taos summers and this summer especially takes me back to the summers of my first years in Taos.

Sometimes it seems that Taos is the Garden of Eden right after the fall. In the valley are overgrown willows, tall grass and late summer flowers of gold and purple. In my garden, the grasshoppers are eating our flowers as fast as they bloom. Every afternoon the mountain displays itself in back-lit jade, azure shadows, with touches of lavender and mauve resembling a piece of Art Deco.  It is the perfect movie set for all the human soap operas churning in its shadow.

I think Taos works on people like a honey-dipped flytrap. Even though most of us don’t have the resources to get ourselves out of this trap, there is plenty of entertainment while we anticipate the next episode in our story, the one that just might bring resolution. But, experience says the story will run through numerous seasons. Really, most of us get addicted to the drama and forget that we are victims of our projected hopes and fears.  

Medicine Bird, "22X"48, $2,100 (Acrylic)
We are stuck here for a while (notice the refusal to accept defeat) and are making the best of it. Actually, I’ve uncovered some of my original feelings about this place. A divorce drama that seems it will never end has snagged PQ’s youngest son, Jay. Thus, we often have his three girls while he attempts to find a job and a vehicle that will last. It has been a corkscrew roller coaster ride but things are looking better at the moment. On the upside, he and his daughters have discovered the Pueblo.  Could it be this is the most important reason we have been stuck in Taos these past two years?  Both of PQ’s sons have now lived in the ancestral pueblo house. Being a bridge between the world of his traditional parents and their grandsons may be PQ’s most important work at this time. I often feel that we have failed to stay on track concerning PQ’s medicine heritage, but I’ve got the beginning of an inkling that the real medicine is just being available for how spirit chooses to use us.

PQ has had increased physical challenges after experiencing that first intense exacerbation of his Pulmonary Fibrosis last spring. My wish was to get him to Arizona as soon as possible, but our life contract had writ a different agenda. His health has leveled off some since it plunged in June and is now holding steady.  I have settled into the present and find that it stretches and contracts as needed.

Recent life has been ordinary but something extraordinary is growing in the background. It isn’t visible out front yet is changing everything from the inside out. Sometime this month I gave up worrying about money. I’ve noticed that the more I try to control it, the more likely it is to jump over the fence. I ought to know by now that thinking smaller and smaller makes the need larger and larger. There is a trickster element involved and when I’m thinking caution, appliances breakdown, relatives need help, and the Taos Pueblo clinic quits carrying one of  PQ’s  more expensive meds.  I’ve given up. The unknown is uncontrollable. This doesn’t mean I throw all reason out with the drifting leaves, but I now acknowledge that the real issue is self-confidence and belief in my own path. Will I be loyal to the life I chose with PQ, or try to appease an old demon? That is the real issue.