christmas in sante fe

in new mexico, everything is drenched in chile. green or red. if you get both it's called "christmas." i'm sitting here, borrowing amanda's laptop, in this adorable little restaurant right around the corner from where her and sarah-jane are staying, the same place i stayed when i came here last summer for their wedding. it was that place i brought cohdi to after the wedding party, it was that place where this whole thing kinda began. i ordered a breakfast burrito "christmas" style. so i could sit here and write this and reflect. things are kinda coming full circle.

i hadn't checked my myspace account in a few days. i got a message from my friend meghan saying when she realized it was feb. 11th she was looking at my name in her journal...the number 11, as a lot of people in my life know, has always been a good sign. and dita, my friend from double edge theatre, wrote me another "myspace comment" saying she woke up today at 11:11 and SHE thought of me. people are seeing 11 and thinking of me. cool. i feel like that's a good thing for sure. yep, i think i'm right where i need to be.

funny, not only am i staying with sarah-jane and amanda's friend kathy for a few days, just like my first trip here, i also got dropped off yesterday at the sante fe center for contemporary arts, to see a viewing of VOLVER a new film, i've been waiting to see, and that is the same location that they got married at! it's like i'm being re-introdced to the sante fe i first saw, not "cohdi's sante fe" whatever that place was for me...but now i'm seeing it again as i saw it before, and it's showing itself to me with all this new-found mystery, awe and inspiration. there was a strange art installation at the gallery attached to the movie theatre. there were hundreds of pig nipples on the wall. and fish heads on the floor. ceramic tails and heads and animal parts making shadows on the wall, and paths on the ground, walking trails made of hoofs, fins and eyeballs. the movie was a melodrama, beautifully filmed and acted, sad story. i sat outside afterwards, waiting for the girls to pick me up, sitting there in my melancholy, reading my peter pan book, which i've been slipping into my reality here since it all began, little folds and creases of magic and make believe, weaved into the chaos. a chapeter a week, not even. i let each sentance last a minute. it's like medicine.

they picked me up and we went to a potluck. there was a man there who was a ringling bros. clown professionally and he just got back working with "kids first" in the middle east as a clown ambassador. there are so many amazing contacts here in new mexico, new friends, projects that are really exciting, artists getting incredible funding...self-sustaining artists...creativity everywhere. new ideas...

at the potluck two woman spontaneously got up and did a reading of a play one of them just wrote, a little 5 minute scene. it was so cool to see adults and people who are established here doing this kind of thing, sharing their work, playing, lauging, i watched a video of children putting on a show in front of ruins somewhere on the other side of the world. there was a check mark on the wall behind their little make-shift stage...the check mark meant someone had checked it for landmines and hidden bombs...i guess the area they were in was cleared.

we came back home after the potluck and stayed up late talking and laughing.

some background: sarah-jane (dear friend from DELL'ARTE) and amanda (her honey) weren't planning on being back from brazil before we left for india, but sarah-jane's health wasn't so good, and so they left their project early (they were working with OPA, an organization that teaches physical theatre and circus arts to underpriviledged kids on the beaches of sunny brazil)...she's come back to "the land of healers" to get some advice from doctors she knows, and some alternative methods, whatever does the trick. funny thing is, she keeps calling her doctors she's worked with and trusted for years, and they are too sick to take calls or make appointments. still, they both agree it was the right idea to come back home. be around friends. something familiar. i hope she gets well soon. it's so great to see them. i love them both dearly.

i go back up the hill to penasco today. i have to buy some items for the trip (we're leaving on thursday!!!)...i have been down here in sante fe since sunday, and once again, it's been so refreshing to have some space, some time away.

things right now are exciting, fresh, i feel renewed, lucky to have friends near me, i'm gathering energy right now for the journey, re-fueling.

on the phone last night cohdi said he misses me, that it feels like i've been gone a long time and he loves me. that's the first time he's said that since i've gotten here. the timing felt right though, strangely. and hearing it was easy, and saying i love you too, was simple. there wasn't a lot of weight attached. it just happened. on it's own. love doesn't have to be heavy. it can roll off, wash over you like sunlight, you can bask in it, let it absorb. it doesn't have to hit you hard, you can
feel it on you, without taking the blow.

whatever. love. i have love. i have love for cohdi. and so many other wonderful people in my life. i can express it. i can house that love and share it. love is good.

there's a church nearby at chimayo (pronounced: chim-aye-oh) that has magic dirt. people come from all over to touch it, take a bit home, there's a hole in the floor in the sanctuary, and you just reach in, i guess. it heals you. a girl i met was telling me, the hole in the floor runs out, and so they just dig around behind the church to fill it back up. some worker does that each day, every morning, before visting hours begin. doesn't that mean all the dirt is magical? not just the dirt in the magic dirt hole? why aren't people rubbing their hands in the same stuff out in front of the post office?

magic dirt, and christmas burritos. clowns on planes to change the world. love and emotions and feelings and joy through a prism. light broken up, the image obscured.

we see what we can from where we are. we reach in a grab a handful and so the healing begins.

maybe the healing is in the reaching. it's not in what you grab.