Skip to main content

Shadow Reality

There is a kind of shadow reality in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

There is what one sees, if not really on the surface, then what we have been trained to see, something like the building here:  "Pueblo architecture!", we say.  "New Mexico!  I recognize it!"

But it is not even half what we see:  it is what is shadowed.  And what is shadowed is . . . yeah . . . how deep are those shadows?

Santa Fe is a kind of Fritz Scholder Indian.  It is what we see, and what is shadowed.  It is like saying that Santa Fe was founded in 1610.  "La Villa Real de las Santa Fe de San Franciso de Asis":  (the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi).  Except that there had been people living there--right there!--perhaps already for seven hundred years.  You can see them clearly in the shadows.

Mari and I had lunch in The Alley Cantina--formerly, El Patio, in nearby Taos, and were told that one of the kitchen walls entitled it to be the oldest building in Taos, at 400 years of age.  Except that we had just been to the pueblo outside of town.  People have been living there for nearly a thousand years.

Fritz Scholder, a most interesting and important American artist, spent some time in Santa Fe, producing a number of works, such as Santa Fe Indian #2 (here) that show two sides, two parts, two realities of Native American life.  One side is plain to see, the other is a shadow, something like what is publicly seen, and what is hidden and personal and culturally private.

Then Mari sent me a photo that brought all of that to mind.  It is of Jao and me, two years ago, about to hang a bird feeder.

There are shadow realities in that photo, too.  First, the Desert Southwest sun is evident; so evident that Mari, who took the picture, and who is behind the lens, is there--her shadow-self--as are Jao and I.

The old man, and the young boy, are two sides of a reality, also.  Neither of us is complete without the other.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more