Travels to Another Planet

Two weeks into my sojourn in northern New Mexico, I was having an over-priced plate of blue cornmeal calamari and a prickly pear margarita at the Anaconda Bar, while listening to live country music and watching couples do the two-step. In my all-black garb, sitting alone with my travel notebook, a overwhelming sense of being an outsider washed over me. I felt like a foreign correspondent just off the plane from, say, London or San Francisco, or maybe another planet, assigned to report on local color.

The next morning, when I mentioned my culture shock to friends at my favorite café, Dave the owner piped up with, “You are on another planet. Welcome to New Mexico.”

At the time, I attributed my feeling of alienation to having been snowed in at a friend’s place in Santa Fe one night, followed by being snowed out of the place I was staying in Nambé the next, caught without a change of clothing, but fortunately with my pug dog and laptop in tow.

But now that I’ve returned to “Californicate,” as they call it, I feel torn between a desire to return to the enchanted vistas of New Mexico, where I was incredibly productive, and the sense that I’ve woken up from a dream into my real life.

In the three weeks I spent in New Mexico, I felt like I connected with more than half a dozen people on a more than superficial level. I signed my first gallery contract for 10 pieces of art that I produced during that visit. I got more writing down than in any other equivalent period of time. I even had that strange but flattering feeling when locals assume that you are one of them, And perhaps because I was not a local, a window opened for me into another world, or should I say worlds.

Taos is country town, where everyone has a truck to deal with the rutted dirt roads, a town where poverty is apparent in the multitude of trailer homes, and wealth in the plethora of art galleries. A town full of singles at the base of ski destination Taos mountain, a heart chakra mountain of whom people say, Move to Taos, lose a spouse A place that is said to be a karmic accelerator, where the newcomer quickly sees both the up and the down sides of small town living, where people’s characters are quickly revealed, both their weaknesses and their strengths. A town where the Anglos are the newcomers, the Hispanics the landed gentry, and the Native Americans have been living for 1200 years in the oldest continually-inhabited settlement in the United States. A town that is home to healers, artists, ski bums, vets, tourists and outlaws.

Maybe it was just dumb luck that I found a café with free wireless to work in, potential friends to socialize with, good food to eat, art supplies that inspired me, a gallery owner who was moved by my work, and three offers of places to stay when I return. Maybe I could not keep up that level of output, or find that level of support and inspiration if I had the distractions of my everyday life to deal with. Maybe the small town gossiping, the country-western music, the dramatic weather, or the mountain herself would push me away if I tried to stay longer.

One of my last days in Taos, I had my tarot cards read. The reading was entirely positive, filled with abundance, not only of money but also of love, all kinds, including a dharma mate to share my life’s purpose with. When I specifically asked if I should move to Taos, the psychic replied, enigmatically, “There is an opening for you here, but you have free will.”

Maybe it was all a dream. And yet, after having my karma accelerated and my heart opened, I’m now back in Silicon Valley, which seems more banal and plastic, in a social environment where my connections feel more tenuous and shallow than I remember—and I’m no longer sure that this is home.

So, the question for this big city girl, who thrives on the diversity of the Bay Area and having friends who are brilliant, who loves redwoods and fancy restaurants, who wants to be a fulltime artist but also would like to someday own her own home, is whether moving to Taos is a good bet or just a fantasy, a really bad idea or only one of many possibilities? For now, I’m waiting for the answer and living with the question.