Two Weeks In and a Beginning

You know...my actual birthday is July 13th...but I am looking at July 1 as my 59th birthday because that is when it changed...the day I returned from New Mexico.  Since then, I've been grading...but also reading and revisiting.    Fighting to keep fit.  Riding 4 days-a-week. To pull back, claw back that which I never really had.  I will admit that I started this about 6-7 weeks ago before Santa Fe.

Santa Fe...the workshop with the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Me...an American History instructor from a community college there in Georgia O'Keeffe's refuge...the land which was her soul.  A journey meant to illuminate one of the more creative spirits of the last century...a remarkable woman who discovered that the greatest loss for her  was to compromise artistic vision  on the altar of the critics' views.  She shed it all...the New York determinism...Stieglitz' monumental disloyalty which sapped her strength...and came to New Mexico where the horizon is closer to heaven.

I came away with a different sense of my time and place, with the belief that there are corners I have yet to turn and sights I've yet to see.

And maybe that's the message of Santa Fe for me.  What has been need not always be.  That this year is one of change, of transition.  The face I see in the mirror is a veil draped over something yet to be carved from tat timber I have spent 59 years growing.  This year will take me from where I have been rooted for too many years into higher meadows where the shadows are crisper, the colors stronger and my own place becomes more defined.