Enchantment with the Mysteries of the Mesas

Expect to be mesmerized when in New Mexico, Land of Enchantment.

I first passed through New Mexico on the way from Virginia to Coronado, California in October of 1965. The Rambler my dad was driving ran out of gas 40 miles east of Albuquerque next to an ethereal windmill that clanked and shuddered as it pumped water in the wind. I will always remember the haunting sense of the mesas and the sound of the creaking pump that accompanied the feeling while the sun went down. I still have the picture I took of it.

Resourceful kid that I was, I dipped a glass into the gas tank under the hood of the Karmann Ghia my dad was towing behind the Rambler, and we limped into a lonely gas station owned by a family of Native Americans. Kachinas for sale lined the shelves. I was just a 13 years old and had no money. The attendant's wife was nursing their child in the back. I felt bad I couldn't buy anything in their store.

Once in Coronado I became a recluse in my parent's rented house, smitten, especially, by the high mesas of New Mexico. I curled up on a sofa in the den, surrounded by books about the national parks in the West, particularly Mesa Verde.

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado y Luján and the members of his party of Conquistadors were the first white men to visit New Mexico. They sought a fancied city of great wealth called Cibola, thought to be made of gold and sitting high on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Since that time, their Latino descendants from Mexico and white conquerors from Europe have struck an uneasy truce with the resident descendants of their prehistoric pueblo ancestors who lived in the high canyons of the Mesa Verde.

Taos Pueblo, continuously occupied for over a thousand years

The event that celebrated the 400^th year of this truce, the Coronado Cuarto Centennial, was held in 1940. I bought the official brochure for the event “400 years in the making” on eBay for $5.

The state got Washington's Bureau of Printing and Engraving to make promotional postage stamps, which commemorated "Coronado and his captains," heads of the military aspect of his "conquest," but the vignette also depicts a friar wielding the weapon of a new ideology, Catholicism.

First day cover with plate block of Scott 898; cachet by Torkel Gundel

Entradas took place all over, which means "a grand entrance into a new land." It seemed as though every town had something special: rodeos, pioneer days, Indian ceremonies- although I question what Native Americans really thought about all this, especially Zuni and Tiguex, descendants of those who suffered either war or privation due to the demands for food that Coronado levied on their fragile economies.

Perhaps the most successful invaders in the state’s long history were the chambers of commerce who jumped on the bandwagon during that celebratory year. To accommodate the throngs of expected tourists with consumer dollars in their pockets, Albuquerque set out to open as many motels as it could. One reporter thought people might have to resort to sleeping in bedrolls and would hand down tales about "roughing it in the wilds of New Mexico." But with Route 66 just rerouted down Central Street and all the motels advertising, along with the brand new 1939 Hilton, its doubtful there was much sleeping under the stars. The El Vado, now in danger of demolition, advertised its tile showers and its "soundproof, fireproof" rooms.

Not to be left out, Santa Fe designed and published its own envelope to be used as first day covers on the commemorative postage stamp’s first day of issue, September 7th. Since the US Postal service  had designated only Albuquerque the official first day city, Santa Fe officials must have raced like the Pony Express back with stamps to put on them before the day ended. Today they’re worth more.

First day cover with plate block of Scott 898; cachet by city of Santa Fe

My father met my mother in Albuquerque in 1949. He was stationed there to learn about bomb delivery protocols for the Navy. She was enrolled at the University of New Mexico in a Counseling PhD program. They got married there.

In December of 1972 I headed to the east coast for Christmas, again passing through New Mexico. I drove with Harry Rockwell, a follower of the psychic Edgar Cayce, in his huge, white Chevy Impala two-door, nicknamed The White Whale. I persuaded him to veer off Interstate 40 in Gallup and head to Mesa Verde, the enchanted Green Table, permeated by the ghosts of the prehistoric Anasazi, a term given them by modern Navajo, which means "Ancient Ones," who built the cliff dwellings there.

First day cover hand-drawn by Georges Laffert with block of Scott 759

The vignette of the stamps on another first day cover in my collection, part of the 1935 National Parks series of imperforate issues, shows the queen of cliff dwellings, Cliff Palace. Hand-drawn by Georges Laffert in limited number, the first day covers for this series are rare and command a very high price.

 Author mesmerized by the mystery of Cliff Palace, the true golden city

While Rockwell stood across from Cliff Palace that windy December day, I scampered down to where the picture was taken for the vignette. He and I had slept in a pedestrian tunnel the night before during a blizzard. The snow was hard to get through to see the Palace, and I had to jump the fence, since it was officially closed for the winter. But I felt called by the enchantment of the ruins. Alone during those silent moments softened by the snow, I felt the powerful mystery of the mesas.

My girl friend back in Corvallis, Oregon, named Debra, ran off with Rockewell to California the next year. My heart had wandered. I’ll blame it on New Mexico.

While cleaning out some files last week, I found rules for using grammar properly, which date back to the English term paper I wrote as a high school freshman in Coronado. It was about the national parks, especially Mesa Verde. I had written it while that enchanted recluse, steeped in the mesa’s mysteries. I sent the rules to Marissa, star pupil in my freshman science class this past year. She’s an aspiring writer. She’s already written mystical poetry about blood passing through the veins of the bony winter landscape. The mysteries of New Mexico’s mesas and all other sacred landscapes must be transposed from one generation to the next.

On a trip once from Florida to Oregon, I attempted to cross the high valley of the Rio Grand. I had totaled my first Fiat in Florida visiting my brother. He lent me money for my second Fiat. The transmission blew on the ascent of the Sangre de Cristo’s, the Blood of Christ. I limped into Colorado Springs, borrowed money from an uncle to get it fixed, and got to Oregon by way of Wyoming. I crossed that high valley successfully on another trip in the same Fiat after a woman I chased for five years named Kaaren gave me the final boot in Urbana, IL. One must pay dues before entering the Land of Enchantment. I remember that the feeling I got in the valley was palpable.

That same feeling must have infected Georgia O’Keefe as she gazed out the window of her studio at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico in 1930.

And it gave to Ansel Adams one of his most mystical photographs, taken in 1941, of a moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico.

There is just something about wide open, dry expanses a mile high in that land of New Mexico. It got my parents married, without which there wouldn’t be me. And since then that high altitude air over those mesas just seems to mystify my soul every time I breathe it while passing through.

 At the bottom of an ocean of autumn air that’s driving a mill a mile high on the short grass prairie, fresh and wind-washed, east of Albuquerque

The Power of Esme

For more about Esme go to Lux Aeterna;  also In Loving Memory of Esme Kenney

Journal writing is usually based on thought that is not refined. The words flow directly from the mind and heart. They are not contemplated beforehand, written carefully, or edited. It is possible then for the words to ring true like the shrill clanging of a bell. My journal states, “Esme commands a power that she herself probably did not realize she had.” Her story indeed commands a power, one involving the collision between a talented, kind, and gentle young girl who goes jogging along the woods near her home and a sinister man who then strangles her to death after attempting to rape her. But does Esme herself command a power today? If so, exactly what is this power and Esme’s role in its ability to cause powerful and ongoing effects in others?

I believe God’s love inhabited this young girl and can live on in the aftermath of her passing if we let it. We need a face to put on God who is unknown, according to Kierkegaard. In Esme’s face, words, manner, intentions, interactions with others, work, and art was the love of God. She responded to its presence quite naturally, without hesitation or examination. That is the power in question. It rings true like the shrill clanging of a bell.

Esme apparently had chosen to call it Christianity. Raised ecumenically Unitarian, she wore the symbol of Christianity around her neck, such as in the picture above. This means that she had personally chosen to identify with the suffering and triumph of Jesus.

I believe what Kierkegaard says, that one can transition from a life comprised primarily of aesthetic experiences through a time of ethical resolve in the recognition of the infinite and arrive at the religious, which is suffering. Esme was too young to know this third critical element. So I believe God allowed it to be given to her. She experienced the passion of suffering on a day otherwise filled with family and fun, including emailing, sunbathing, playing Frisbee, and then the jogging that cost Esme her life. She died because of who she was, an innocent girl living her life to the fullest…and able to be overpowered in the physical sense and brutally and painfully taken advantage of.

Now Esme is a saint proclaimed. Her life is a finished work. It is a triumph. We can examine our own lives through examining it. This I believe is Esme’s role, her ability to cause powerful and ongoing effects in others. The journal’s words continue. “You can sense this power as you read testimonies made by others about Esme. You can feel it when you study her pictures.”

And it is especially powerful because it now includes the critical element of suffering. The journal entry finishes, “And you can know (her power) when praying, now that she is most assuredly in God’s hands.” God allowed the suffering and death of an innocent son, so says the Scriptures, and has also allowed the same of an innocent daughter, Esme.

It may take a leap of faith that Esme has control of this power, but I believe she does in a way that involves a paradox. A paradox is contrary things that belong together in a state of creative tension. Esme died but is not dead. She lives on in a godly love called agape love. This love is selfless and giving. She exhibited it when alive. If the fully funded school in Myanmar is any indication, then she will continue to do so.

God loves this precious child, and God loves us too. So speak to Esme. She is listening. God’s love reaches out to us through her. When anything is going well in life, think of her joy. When anything is not going well, think of her pain. The power of Esme is experienced through identification with the triumph of her joy and love and the passion of her pain and suffering.

The saint with the cross around her neck

Like a Stamp Collection

Teachers teach the goals and standards established by the states in which they teach. A goal in most states is to condition students to the prospect of “life-long learning,” the idea that learning never stops. Teachers are the best practitioners of it. That’s because they have to keep going to school to maintain certification. The album of transcripts citing the undergraduate and graduate credits I’ve collected over the years while a teacher looks like the album that stores my collection of my pre-1940 plate number block “FDC’s” or first day covers. That’s right. I’m a stamp collector. An FDC, by the way, is an envelope franked with a block of U.S. stamps along with selvage that has the number of the engraving plate used to print the stamps and which is cancelled on the first day of issue.

I can’t decide which of the two collections is more valuable.

Much of my eclectic schooling took place in a small town called Corvallis, Oregon, “Cornvalley,” to the locals. Oregon State got its start in the nineteenth century as one of the many land grant colleges, meaning that the government gave land to states to set up colleges to train farmers and prepare school teachers. It started out as an “aggie” college. Agrarian arts curricula over the years gave way to research in the pure life sciences, and that’s what I wanted to learn in the ‘70’s.

It didn’t start out that way. With nothing more than a vague notion about living the life of a forest ranger, I left high school in Virginia to learn forestry in the misty coniferous timber lands of Oregon.

But industrial forestry, figuring out how to grow lots of trees so that they could be cut down, was not in keeping with my nascent environmentalism, freshly minted by Earth Day 1970, the year I graduated from high school. I just couldn’t stomach forest mensuration, the math of acre board feet while still on the stump, and aerial photointerpretation, visualizing those board feet from above.

I began dropping the tree chopping courses and picking up the mushroom, fern, liverwort, and hornwort biology courses. I wanted to learn especially forest floor fungal ecology. I wanted to mesh with the mist permeating the ancient temperate rain forests of the Cascade and Coast Ranges. I wanted to go on field trips to gather moss and lichen, and look under dissecting microscopes at the Lilliputian world of these little green and brown creatures. So I became a botany major.

Botany attracted a strange brew of alternative types, such as a lady friend named Sue who in 1975 ran away with The Two, otherwise known as Bo and Peep, the leaders of the Gnostic new age UFO flying saucer cult called Heaven’s Gate. In 1997 when the Hale Bopp comet appeared in the sky, she was the last of the 39 members of the cult to die by poison as they prepared to leave the fallen Earth and transcend to the Next Level, brought to bear by the comet.

Of a more conventional type of alternative, there was a long-haired fellow who I remember snuck some pot he was growing into lab one day to admire under magnification the flower buds dripping with potent resin. He said that marijuana, Cannabis sativa, is a dioecious species, with separate male and female plants. He told me that the flower buds of the female plant produce the greatest concentration of tetrahydrocannibanol, the active ingredient.

But I was more interested in liverworts, primitive plants that have genomes almost sixteen times larger than humans. This extra DNA grants liverworts many unique powers including the ability to sing a cappala in a pinch and bake cookies.

The things I learned as a botany major!

The Willamette Valley is still filled with alternative types of folks today. Pictured above is a scene from the recently concluded gypsy carnival held each year in a wooded area near Veneta, OR thirteen miles west of Eugene. I like the vintage VW microbus campers that parked there. I do remember that it was the pot dealer guy who told me about another botany major who also ran The Rainbow Repair, a garage in which I had my first Fiat fixed when it began to leak oil out the rear main seal onto the exhaust manifold, frying it and sending it up like smoke from a bong. But that’s another story.

Abandoned Man

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is that word again, inexplicable, applied as usual to us. I found it after stumbling into the Dittmar Gallery on the campus of Northwestern University and finding myself surrounded by the photographs of Matt Friel.

 

Friel’s “Abandoned Archives” exhibition depicts interiors of neglected industrial facilities and institutions, including factories, power plants, asylums, hospitals and schools. He himself says of it, “Humanity is inexplicably broken and ruined with the occasional burst of white light.”

 

My initial reaction was wonderment with the availability of his subject matter. Are there really bustling centers for commercial and social intercourse left bereft of humanity as if a neutron bomb silenced them, leaving them completely intact and left to age?

 

Plaster and chipped paint have fallen on wooden fold up seats in lecture halls. Stained rugs line crusty corridors of hospitals past, littered with old-fashioned wheelchairs and rusty cabinets. A woman with a freshly dried coif has gotten out of a chair in a beauty parlor, leaving the chair abandoned forever.

 

These crumbling interiors do not mean humankind is broken and ruined. Actually, they mean that humans go on doing what they have always done: improve technology with which to carry on the same old pursuits: transform energy, make hair beautiful, wheel around sick people, and train students for future endeavors. The inventions of man break and end up ruined. The bursts of white light are improved inventions. Technology continues to evolve and, in turn, aids the evolution of man.

 

These photographs illustrate something else about technology that can be considered inexplicable: how modern technology is succeeding in making man truly different from his ancestral past. Today's technology helps individuals to place themselves above the collective in importance. Today's technology causes collectives to quickly and efficiently replace the traditions of the past with an ever improving future, to make the past obsolete. Today's technology, such as modern forms of birth control, helps individuals and collectives to liberate themselves completely from the constraints of the past.

 

If Friel is at all correct regarding what his photographs illustrate, it has to do with the speed of change. Technology has evolved so rapidly that most individuals have no idea how it all works. It’s too abstract. Can anyone explain how even a toaster works, let alone the Hubble telescope? Finally, today's technology causes us to cease even asking such questions. We just know it’s supposed to work, that’s all. Technology is God. The truly inexplicable nail on man’s new, improved coffin, that broken and ruined state he allegedly is in, is the tendency of technology to secularize the entirety of human experience. We no longer believe that there is a power greater than our own.

Waves of Brick in a Sea of Chicago Housing

“Watch out for the bees, man,” said the chimney guy on his way up the ladder past my door. He and another were inspecting brick along the roof through which rain had leaked, ruining books and other things in my apartment.

Outside my landlady was standing by. Looking up with her, I couldn’t help recognize brick, lots of it. Much of aging Chicago is made of brick. After the great fire of 1871, fireproof brick replaced the norm of wooden-framed buildings.

And all of it must be periodically tuck-pointed. That’s because the grout between bricks eventually erodes. If you ride the L through Chicago, which gives you an uninterrupted opportunity to look, all that Chicago brick has been tuck pointed. The two-flat in which I live is no exception, and I mentioned that to my landlady.

“Keep that up, and the brick lasts forever,” she said.

“Tuck pointing Chicago must be one the greatest engineering projects in the history of the world,” I replied.

“Good for the next eight centuries,” I added.

That’s because the Anasazi pueblo people of the Colorado Plateau were laying brick, shaped into rectangles from sedimentary rock, for their housing in the twelfth century. These primitive masons glued together their cliff dwellings with plaster of mud, chinked with smaller stones, an ancient form of tuck pointing. Cliff dwellings from Mesa Verde to Hovenweep astound people to this day for their endurance.

Before tuck pointing

After tuck pointing

Cliff Palace in Mesa Verdi in 1891

After excavation and tuck pointed in the ancient manner