The 18th
We call this The Summerhouse.
There were plans for this large building on a mesa in northeast New Mexico.
This porch rewards anyone a huge panorama of High Desert landscape that
is never the same as before. This day becomes the only day when one is up there. One sucks in one’s breath!
And the time of day brings change.
Today it is supposed to be wet. Anyone who knows New Mexico this winter knows that rain is “to die for.” We are in a drought. Just an inch or so, or even less rain than that would feed every field’s grass and weeds so the green could begin.
Then as the day moves down below freezing, snow is forecast. Snow is made of water, of course, and so that would be a gift. Shortlived. The dry air here some 7000 feet up, will pull the water out of snow very quickly. A snow does green things up a bit, if it is sufficient, but the evaporation takes place so fast that not much finds its way down into the parched clay soil.
Pretty? Oh yes. YES! And remote from all the necessary masking of this COVID-19 era. We go out in the usual cold-weather clothes to do chores in the barn and birdfeeders. Layers of coats and a wool cap pulled down with a farmer’s broad brimmed hat on top to mask out the glare of the merciless sun as one does in the early light. No watering in this season. The tough plants and flowers of summer stand stiff and parched in the garden. Most are mashed down by wind and footsteps and gopher holes and tractor marks.
We are renaming the Summerhouse. Where it ONCE SERVED as a headquarters for the ambitious land-rehabilitation and water-capture project on these acres, it also has served, from time to time, as a quiet place for a Buddhist group to retreat for weeks at a time, and as a dormitory and living space for people needing a place to shelter and sleep for short periods, it now has stood empty of life…the fascinating soil research books and rare antique books of all sorts getting dusty in the many bookcases and shelves.
Guests have feasted on the view, and the extended family of friends and relatives and their friends and relatives have enjoyed good times inside where the top floor has vast hardwood floors and a wood stove and kitchen and table and couch and chairs to relax in. On the bottom floor (vast concrete slabs) there have been plant experiments, and soccer games and roller skating! Big big floor.
I’ve been here pretty much two years. This year we are purposefully quarantining from the really dangerous pandemic. We’ve been here pretty nearly since March of 2020 when health issues had popped up (stroke issues) … hospital stays, just as COVID began to hobble New Mexico and overload the hospital beds. I spent about a month in and out of hospital and recuperating in Santa Fe, nearer the city conveniences. Then, in the spring we felt safe to move operations to this great remote farm. What a year 2020 was!
Not to mention the tragic political upheavals that have grown to epic proportions by now…we are on the 18th of January and in two days we will have a new president in place and a lot of loose-cannon issues in our country generated by severe attacks on our democracy.
President Lincoln would understand this kind of civic environment.. its dangers and vulnerability.
Yes, it is the 18th of January 2021, and courthouses in our states are geared up for civil war threats. We have a seething and overtly insane outgoing president who seems in every way bent on retribution for his unsuccessful stab at re-election. He will fly off in Air Force 1 to wherever he will be settling…if one can say he is, in fact, ever “settling.” Will Florida be able to house a person like our outgoing president?
And on the twentieth our new leader will say his promises and become oath-bound to serve us, protect and defend us, and represent us in the tippy spin of the rest of the world. If he lives through it.
What am I doing today? I am sitting in a hideout called my Art Studio, at the back corner of this farmhouse on the flat prairie below the summerhouse. I am wrestling with the internet tangles of beginning a sane, civilized, effort to turn the summerhouse into a museum of sorts. My art studio has paid out a lot of effort to get the art-emanations of 2020’s chaos into frames so other people can see them displayed. Much art. Art about fear, grief, disappointment, confusion, disappointment, aberration of the normal. There are some pieces that are representative of recognizable THINGS/PLACES. But many are aberrations of normal. The forms are “off”: displaced from expectations, puzzling in arrangement, dark.
When will this exhibition be seen? It remains to be seen! Like the art itself, the calendar is not orderly because there are key events that are unsteady and perhaps untenable! Will we keep safe from spreading Coronavirus if we have groups come to see the paintings? Or do we insist on small groups all safely and cooperatively masked up, and have them come only by appointment?
Can we all sit down on the comfortable furniture and contemplate things together, about art, about reclamation of soil, about life in general?
Do we need to buy insurance to entertain such events? Insurance in case someone wants to take us to court about catching germs?????
If the exhibit were on that roomy porch, it would be easier…but that is outside, where gale force winds, and blistering sun, and monsoons, and dust storms, flash floods, and wild animals can enter the scene at any time! No, this is no place for an outdoor viewing of indoor art.
This porch is for sitting in awe at the shocking reality of nature: The beauty, the vulnerability, and the temporal nature of natural ART. It is a place that will need umbrellas and waterproof outerwear.and possibly bear-spray to be at the ready!
Los Alamos is not that far away. Arroyos have already eaten into the stubborn lime and iron and shale of our hills. Trees have been shredded by wind storms and heavy hail. The skies are beginning to have contrails in them again, and the people in Washington are talking about shale drilling. Planes are so functional with digitized gismos they are falling out of the sky because of glitches in the programming. Temporary. That’s what this chaos is about.
Will it leave us with a future? Does anyone want to bother with art? Are we still singing songs?
Or just looking at our laptops for what might get us through to the next chance?
DIY is not necessarily the easy way to create a gallery space. But we are challenged each day and learning a lot about houses on mesas.
© SGHolland Published April 6 2021
