Category: gratitude

Did you get healed?

Recently, driving around in the Jeep looking for something good to listen to on the radio, I began to think about a CD I own.

By thinking, I mean, wondering where it is. When The Good Man and I moved in together several years ago, I boxed up a lot of stuff and stored it away.

Over the years, occasionally I’ll remember something that I want or need and it’s a hell of a rodeo to find it.

So I put the thought out of mind. Whatever. It’s just a CD. I can probably find it on iTunes or at the library or something.

I tried to dismiss it.

But this thought came with a long strip of Velcro, and wouldn’t let go.

A voice in my mind kept asking, “Where is that CD? You need to listen to it.”

When you get a voice that adamant, it’s kind of hard to ignore.

But I tried.

And tried.

And failed.

Resigned to satisfying that damn voice so it would shut up, I suited up. Our storage is under the place we rent, and that happened to be a very cold and very rainy day.

Determined, under the house I went, poking around in boxes and bags, knocking stuff over and getting lost on that long winding lane called Memory.

Finally, I did find a very heavy box that had a bunch of CD’s, and also most of my VHS movies, that I’d packed away.

I heaved, grunted and lurched the box upstairs and started picking through it.

A lot of heavy memory stuff burbled to the top, clamoring for my attention, which I gave.

But nothing quieted the voice. I kept digging and finally, yes, I found the CD I was looking for.

Best of the Blues, Vol. 1

Yeah. A “best of” compilation. Forgive me ye Gods of the Blues.

I bought this CD back in 1997. I’d just moved to the Bay Area and some good friends (also New Mexico transplants) had introduced me to the thriving blues scene in San Francisco.

I only tangentially knew the music. I’d listened to some B.B. King, some Muddy Waters and some John Lee Hooker in my time. The popular stuff. The stuff everyone knows.

But back then, San Francisco was steeped in the old ways.

During the course of the next decade, I received what can only be called a Blues Education.

I watched some of the not only best blues musicians, but best musicians period, play in craptastic bars like the old Grant & Green (the remodel took the soul out of it) and of course The Saloon, the oldest continually operating bar in the beautiful City of San Francisco. It dates back to the 1861, which means it survived both the ‘quake of 1906 and Prohibition.

There were nights it was too cramped and too hot (and back then, too smoky) in The Saloon for my tastes, so I would step outside the front door. I was dating a musician at the time, so the dyspeptic doorman had to be nice to me. He would let me sit on his stool by the front door where he collected the cover charge.

I’d take his chivalrous gesture and lean back against the battered wood door. I could feel the driving beat in my spine, and I’d watch the fog roll over the tops of the buildings in North Beach.

I learned about the three Kings (B.B., Freddy and Albert).

I learned about Chicago blues, Delta blues and the just plain blues blues.

I heard a thousand different versions of “Matchbox” and “Shotgun” and I watched guys try to be both Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King. I began to understand why some songs grab you by the gut and sometimes a song that should grab your gut doesn’t (hint: it has a lot to do with the drummer).

Today, I’m a suburban girl with a quiet, happy life. No regrets here. But sometimes I miss the family I made back then who took me in, protected me and helped me learn the old ways.

You know, they call it stormy Monday…but Tuesday’s just as bad.

This one musician, a hell of guitar player, used to tear it up for four hours, and at the end of the night, he’d ask the frenzied crowd, “Did you get healed?”

And he’d get crazy, drunken, full-throated hollers in return. The music mattered. It got us on a cellular level. We got healed.

I may need to see about a Saturday in North Beach soon, because something feels amiss. It may be time to go back and find if it’s possible to get healed.

Until then, I’ll take the ministrations from that ol’ CD found at the bottom of a moving box.

Image of Ron Hacker, arguably the best slide guitar man in SF and maybe even the world, onstage at The Saloon. (No, he’s not the guy I dated, I’m just a massive fan.)

Photo by Scott Palmer

We all have to remember in our own way

A tree stands in the median on I-25, north of Las Cruces, not quite to Radium Springs.

It’s a scrubby little tree, maybe a mesquite or a juniper. You know, the kind of hardy tree you see out there in the New Mexico desert. Something tenacious.

This particular tree stands out because it’s festooned with tinsel and garland.

It’s been that way for several years. I’ve seen it, driven past it several times, actually.

The first time I saw it, the time of year wasn’t much past Christmas, so I figured it was a leftover holiday decoration.

But when I saw it again a few years later, I realized it wasn’t just leftover holiday decorations, but something more serious. I knew it was a roadside shrine often found in our fair New Mexico.

The roadside shrine is a memorial located where someone has lost their life out there on the roads. It’s a pretty common sight in New Mexico.

It’s a tradition I grew up with and so it’s never occurred to me to question it. I find outside the borders of my homestate, it’s questioned. A lot.

Questions of taste and decency, actually. Whether it’s appropriate, or not, to put one’s grief so garishly on display.

See, I think we in our American culture have really weird and uptight ideas about death and dying. Ok, it’s probably because I grew up in the cultures of New Mexico that I feel that way.

But I’ve always really appreciated the Hispanic and Latino cultures celebrating and remembering their loved ones who have moved on. I appreciate the ability to show grief openly without remorse or embarrassment.

Dia de los Muertos offrendas and roadside shrines are simply the outward display of deeply held cultural beliefs. Beliefs such as that the dead have moved on to another world, but a world that is not so far away from our own.

A woman is comforted, perhaps, by knowing that her child, while not in her arms, is not that far away. While she remembers with a keening loss the child who was taken away, she can still bake bread and place sweets on an offrenda, and it helps her cope.

A mourning wife can drive to the spot where her husband met his end, and remember him. She refreshes the shiny bits of paper, and can feel her husband not so far away.

I think this is healthy, personally, and I don’t find it to be weird. I find it to be beautiful.

Those roadside shrines are called descansos. They aren’t just tacky plastic crosses and brightly shining tinsel. For the family that constructed the shrine, they are an essential part of the grieving process.

The garlanded tree located in I-25 highway median is a descanso to honor the memory of a child.

The shrine in the photo at the end of this post honors two kids who rolled their ATV by the irrigation banks on the Bosque in Los Lunas.

When someone you truly love dies, the grief never goes away. It tends to ebb and flow, welling up sometimes, overwhelming. Other times, the volume is turned down and you can almost, but not quite, forget.

I think we all have to find our own way of grieving.

No one can say who is right or wrong.

Source: Las Cruces Sun News

Ah, Spring

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

– Alfred Lord Tennyson

Yes, yes, it’s inevitable that the famous Tennyson quote will be trotted out when the weather turns warm. Especially after the winter we’ve had.

But is that true? Does a young man’s fancy lightly turn to thoughts of love?

Is it love? Or more like “damn, baby, it’s been a long cold winter.”

And if young men turn to thoughts of love, what about the thoughts of young ladies?

Well, I may not be young and I’m no lady, so what do my thoughts lightly turn to?

Well. Those cute little strappy sandals. You know the ones, with the heel, not to high, but high enough to make my legs look nice?

Oh, and if I’m wearing those, then I totally need a mani-pedi.

*ahem* Excuse me. Totally girled out there for a minute. Bringing it back to center….

My thoughts lightly turn to…

Margaritas on the patio of my favorite restaurant while nomming guacamole and hearing light mariachi music in the background.

Iced tea. Preferably made by the sun.

Liberating my legs from the tyranny of pants. (oops, better shave ’em. It *has* been a long winter!)

Apricots ripening in the side yard.

Farmer’s Markets with all of the rest of the produce that arrives with spring including nectarines, peaches and artichokes.

Daffodils on the dining room table. Followed by tulips. Followed by a cacophony of all the flowers of Spring and Summer.

Achoo! Sneezes. Because god knows all those fabulous flowers bring not so fabulous pollen.

Longer days and fabulous sunsets.

Riding my bike! (getting it tuned up today!)

Stepping outside and turning my face to the sun like an over ripened sunflower because oh-my-am-I happy to have that big fireball back in the sky where it’s visible. My vitamin D-cell batteries are running low!

Photo from: Kimberly Clark… time out, tired of Flickr!‘s photo stream.

Come tip a glass with me!

Yes, tis time to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day again. The wearin’ of the green. The drinking, and the pinching (not necessarily in that order).

But St. Paddy’s Day means something different here on ol’ Oh Fair New Mexico.

Twas St. Paddy’s Day 2007 that my little blog was begun.

Three years and 860 posts later, it’s still going strong.

Look, three years ago, I didn’t know if I had a year’s worth of content in me, but I was willing to try. It was The Good Man’s idea to start a blog and damnit, I guess I have to admit he was right.

He really is, you know, a good man. Smart too. Dashing, handsome…but I digress.

My meager three years don’t come anywhere near the longevity and volume of blog friend, NewMexiKen. He just celebrated six years at his own url and is closer to seven years blogging and still getting ten to fifteen posts a day. I am humbled in his sheer blogging presence.

But my three years still beats the heck out of a lot of blogs I’ve seen rise and fall since I got my start.

Cheers! To Oh Fair New Mexico and another year of random acts of bloggery.

And Happy St. Patrick’s Day! To celebrate I took my new (to me) camera and snapped the prolific clover in the backyard.

I think it’s beautiful. My landlord curses at it.

And so goes the ways of my world.

(I don’t see any four leafers in there, do you?)

Making Our Own List

Recently, while flipping around my no-cable-havin’ television choices, I landed on the “Tavis Smiley Show.”

I’ve watched his show a couple times before, but what stopped me this time was his guest, Rosanne Cash, a talented singer songwriter. I’m a big fan.

It was a fun interview. Rosanne was feeling a bit more expansive than usual, which was nice. The central theme for the interview was Rosanne’s new album called “The List.”

The story goes something like this: When Rosanne was just out of high school, she went on the road with her dad, Johnny Cash. While on the road, all the various musicians she toured with taught her how to play guitar.

At one point, her father noted her deep lack of musical knowledge, and sat down with a pad of yellow paper and wrote up a list of songs that she should learn and know.

It was a gift of a father’s deep love and respect for musical history that he wrote out line by line on that page.

Over the years, Rosanne kept that sheet of paper, and learned most of the songs.

Well, finally, after having surgery on a benign tumor in her brain and coming through the recovery, she and her husband decided to make an album of songs that were included on the original list.

Over the years, Rosanne has been reluctant to show people the actual list, and keeps it tucked away somewhere safe. Her album gives you a taste of the songs that Johnny felt were key to his own daughter’s musical education.

This whole concept intrigued me, so I ran out and got the CD. I’m not on board with every arrangement on the album (call me a purist…or something), but deeply I respect the new interpretation of these classic songs.

So I got another copy and sent it to my best friend, mother of my two goddaughters. She and her husband are doing an excellent job in passing along a musical education to their children.

But for my best friend and me, music is everything. It’s the stitches that hold tight the tapestry of our lives, our memories and our friendship.

So included in the package with the CD, I sent a letter with my idea: Our own list.

I feel that we need to make a list of our own musical legacy for her kids just as Johnny did for Rosanne.

Well, my friend took to this idea with gusto, and our list making began.

I began jotting songs as they came to me in my notebook and it quickly grew to four pages front and back. I realized…this is going to be a really long list, so I began to think of how we could sort it out to make it easier to take in.

Over this past weekend, she arrived for a fun visit, and came toting a CD she’d burned of her own first volume of The List (and two bags of roasted green chile in her suitcase).

Her idea for sorting the songs is by category. Her first volume is “Songs You Wanna Dance To.”

There will be a “Songs You Wanna Drink Beer and Cry To.”

There will probably be a “Songs You Wanna Get Frisky To.”

And then, perhaps just a, “If You’re Gonna Be My Kid, You’d Better Know These Songs” CD as well.

We’re still working on the categories, but work is underway.

Over the weekend, The Good Man and I were both pleased and honored to have yet another friend from back in my college days visiting, too.

Friday night the four of us got together at my place. My best friend made rellenos and Spanish rice. I whipped up a batch of green chile chicken enchiladas and a pot of savory pinto beans.

There were margaritas, guacamole and a LOT of conversation about the list. Our friend, an Edgewood boy now living in Oklahoma, is like a long lost brother to me. He brought many excellent suggestions for the list to the table.

We cussed. We discussed. And together we’re creating something meaningful for my two godkids. In this music they will know their mom, and their godmom, our families, our history and our love.

Ooops, hold on a sec…just thought of another song I need to jot down…