Should I Stay or Should I Go?
The answer to that question has never been difficult for me to answer. The answer has generally been go. The last couple of days I've been trying to do the math - if it's been a gain or a loss. Clearly if I had stuck it out in one or the other places I would have more security than I currently enjoy, but in other ways I'd be poorer. Poorer for all the people I would never have met, the different cultures who let me in and in some cases embraced me.
Yesterday AC, an old friend of mine in Santa Fe, sent me two Cuban cigars. He and his wife had recently been down there and he was able to smuggle out a couple of boxes. He thought I might enjoy one. AC is something like 5th generation New Mexican whose family traces its roots back to Spain. We became friends when we worked together at The College of Santa Fe and
he and EG showed me the deep Spanish side of Northern New Mexico that I never would have found on my own.
Later I became close to an Indian from San Ildefonso Pueblo and because I was close to her I got closer to her people than most Anglos are allowed. I spent Christmas and Thanksgiving on the pueblo where we ate turkey and posole and green chile stew.
To a lesser degree the same was true of people I met in Northern California when I lived there. It was the natives (and in California they are harder to find) that I wanted to know. To know what they know. An 80 year old woman who worked for me became my friend under the pretense of inviting me over to help her with her computer. What she really was was lonely and she soon had me over for dinner. We ate in her dining room from where we could look out the windows and see across to San Francisco and out the others to the hills of the East Bay.
I guess writing this down is my way of doing the math. One of these days - maybe when it gets cold again, I'll light up one of those cigars AC sent me. I'm hoping the smoke will smell as sweet as the pinon that perfumes New Mexico's winter nights.
Yesterday AC, an old friend of mine in Santa Fe, sent me two Cuban cigars. He and his wife had recently been down there and he was able to smuggle out a couple of boxes. He thought I might enjoy one. AC is something like 5th generation New Mexican whose family traces its roots back to Spain. We became friends when we worked together at The College of Santa Fe and
he and EG showed me the deep Spanish side of Northern New Mexico that I never would have found on my own.
Later I became close to an Indian from San Ildefonso Pueblo and because I was close to her I got closer to her people than most Anglos are allowed. I spent Christmas and Thanksgiving on the pueblo where we ate turkey and posole and green chile stew.
To a lesser degree the same was true of people I met in Northern California when I lived there. It was the natives (and in California they are harder to find) that I wanted to know. To know what they know. An 80 year old woman who worked for me became my friend under the pretense of inviting me over to help her with her computer. What she really was was lonely and she soon had me over for dinner. We ate in her dining room from where we could look out the windows and see across to San Francisco and out the others to the hills of the East Bay.
I guess writing this down is my way of doing the math. One of these days - maybe when it gets cold again, I'll light up one of those cigars AC sent me. I'm hoping the smoke will smell as sweet as the pinon that perfumes New Mexico's winter nights.
posted by Philip Dean Brown at 12:21 PM
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