Estrangeiro

I attended a second go round of the "Free Association Writing" meetup yesterday, and people talked to me.  Maybe that is the trick in Santa Fe.  Keep showing up, keep smiling, keep being myself.  We wrote to five or six prompts for various time frames, and shared if we felt like it.  I almost always feel like sharing.  Not just to hear my own voice, my own words, spoken into the atmosphere, but because I've learned a thing or two from my years in Al-Anon.

One of the most important tidbits I've gleaned from this 12-step program is that everyone's voice holds weight.  All opinions count.  It is the great equalizer to hear people from every walk of life, all socio-economic strata's, and various education levels reveal their thoughts and inner hurts; their humanness.  When people don't share, it is the group that misses out on the experience, strength and hope of each individual.  Oftentimes, it is the person who I 'don't like' or who 'irritates me' that imparts the greatest wisdom or common sense, a nugget that I can employ in my own life.

This morning I awoke at around four am.  The typewriter was clacking in my brain.  Not a computer keyboard, or an IBM Selectric, but a good old fashioned Remington or Underwood.  Clack, clack, ding. Click, clack, ding.  Key stuck, help it along, manual carriage return.  This is how it is for me, as a writer.  Thoughts and inspiration come on their own terms, in their own time. I can either jump out of bed and honor the untimely arrival of the muse, or ignore her completely and return to slumber.  This morning I went back to sleep, and I lament knowing that whatever was on my mind is now forever in the ether.  Perhaps something in my travels today will spark that memory, and I will have to stop whatever I am doing and take out my constant companion of pad and pen, and scribble away until the freight train of inventiveness passes through my station.

Maybe I was pondering the comments of my fellow writers yesterday.  Two ladies with lovely British accents flanked me at the table, and when we were through I took the opportunity to ask them some questions.  Why New Mexico?  The younger gal answered that living in Espanola was like living in Brazil, except it wasn't.  The other lady, who lives on five acres on the edge of  'The Wilderness' in an Earthship answered that living in New Mexico was like living in a foreign country, but she still lives in the United States.  These open, honest comments certainly give me a new lens to view New Mexico through.  Is the Land Of Enchantment so different than the Centennial State?

I was planning to travel to Madrid today.  It is an artsy town about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fe.  Just a nice drive, with different views, interesting light.  A few people have said that the light in New Mexico is amazing, and it is one of the elements that call artists here.  I am a sky-gazer so paying attention to the nuances will come naturally.  Perhaps the blues and yellows and oranges of the sky, especially at twilight, will tickle my pen into a poem.

It seems that Espanola is calling to me instead.  Brazil?  Madrid?  Maybe I really am in a foreign land on US soil.  First I am going to a different writers group that meets for coffee.  This group is more poetry focused, so I am excited to go and share and listen.  After a cup or two, I'll see which my car goes.  I'm open to any direction.