artisanal thinking

The role of prodigal blogger is not a new one for me, but the reason I’ve again been silent for a period is due to my experimentations as the prodigal son. After letting the idea ferment for years, I decided that I don’t want to return to my ancestral home for some time—I already know what that place looks like! I want travel to introduce me to new ideas and new scenery, so this winter I stuffed my backpack and set out to meet two friends in Albuquerque, walk a little and see the desert-y part of the world.

A Short Travelogue

We chose the Southwest because South America was too expensive and we wanted to retreat from winter. However, the numb-screams from our toes in the 12F cold outside of Winslow, AZ on the second night quickly led to altered expectations. All the more reason, then, to descend a vertical mile from the South Rim into the inner Grand Canyon where temperatures are 25F higher on average than the high desert. We came woefully unprepared, so for about the same amount one can buy a good chocolate melangeur, we outfitted ourselves with tent, backpacks, sleeping bags, stove and water filter, and lbs and then kgs of…oatmeal. We spent four days in the canyon, when because of winter, few others make the trip—leading to, midway on the hike down, a peaceful sunset and solitary trek through the star and moon-sliver lit night.

On the third day, I enjoyed a relatively flat walk up the north side to Ribbon Falls. An extremely cold shower and mud bath were my reward, then I read some passages of Walden aloud to my companion. I felt compelled by Thoreau to front only the essential facts of life, and so took advantage again of the winter solitude to execute these experiences in the most primitive clothing possible.

After thus wearing out our legs, we made tracks on Christmas Eve for Phoenix to rest with a very old friend of mine. Christmas Day, I walked to an art neighborhood of Phoenix, Roosevelt Row and saw 4 shipping containers in the form of a house, made by Upcycle Living. We relaxed in a clothing-art-library-coffee shop, Conspire where while snacking on canyon leftovers—dried apricots dipped in almond butter, I discovered a combination that must be expressed in a chocolate bar. There was a bike coop whose dirt front lawn was turned into a hangout area with couches and coffee tables and later that night we heard hip-hop at gallery-bar, The Lost Leaf. Surprisingly, all of these commercial establishments were converted single-family houses!

Leaving Phoenix, we lost one friend to Berkeley, and so the two remaining travelers set out to return to New Mexico. During our egress, we stopped at the desert botanical gardens and saw tons of hummingbirds and a surprising amount of cacti that looked like underwater sea creatures. That night we slept on the edge of eastern Arizona in a frigid dried up lake-bed near the semi-ghost town, Cochise, AZ. On our way to Cochise, through the magnificent Karst Topography of Texas Canyon, AZ, we passed about 30 miles of billboards for a ‘canonical tourist trap’ known as The Thing. Advertising 24-hr gas, Dairy Queen and unspecified but singular rarities, we were obliged to stop.

To enter the freakshow of The Thing, one must first brave the gift shop filled with all manner of knick-knacks and people with mythically bad hairdos. We each paid our $1 entrance fee and exited the gift shop through a surprisingly flimsy and unguarded painted door to a U of three warehouses surrounding what seemed to be a trailer park. Under fluorescent light, we saw old tractors, a car which transported Adolf Hitler and a stray cat (was this The Thing?). In the following outbuilding, we marveled at typewriters, figures in town-scenes carved entirely from solid blocks of wood—by a single artisan, guns dating from 1654 AD. We were shocked by the fact that the rarest item on earth was protected only by flimsy glass in southeastern AZ. Finally we stumbled into the ultimate room, the ceilings decorated by grotesque animal figures with winding, spindles for arms and legs fashioned from whole pieces of driftwood, though we knew not what desert river they drifted from. Immediately we were confronted by a mummy under glass that in the end was our best guess for The…Thing we sought. The tour gracefully wound down on a lighter note with and exhibit of a ladies side saddle that dated to 1842 B.B (before bikinis).

The stretch of I-10 through southern New Mexico (or perhaps, any highway) turns out not to intersect quaint, uncommon towns of high culture, so my initial unwillingness towards taking ‘out-of-the-way’ side trips was overpowered, as I learned that in a road-trip without a way, nothing was out of it. We followed the brown road signs to Gila National Forest, by way of a town, Silver City, which claimed to have 30+ art galleries. On the Sunday we came, only Blue Dome Gallery was open, but the large art quilt featuring a can of Bud, a woman and text beginning, “I hate you motherfucker” made the trip worthwhile. I left with a bowl made by this same artist and her husband.

We took many hikes in Gila, then in Spring Canyon State Park near Deming and in Elephant Butte State Park near Truth-or-Consequences. During these hikes, we realized that an appropriate symbol for the trip would be a snow-covered cactus…laughing, we summited mountains and looked down on snow clouds, we crossed frozen ponds whose frost reminded us of that from our breath that formed each night on the inside windows of our car, where we now slept, trying to appease our toes. We also started interacting with the authorities more…while cooking eggs on the side of the highway, a well-intentioned sheriff checked to see that I was in fact crouching over a backpacking stove, and not an unconscious man. Settling into my sleeping bag while stopped off the side of another highway, we learned directions to and the proper pronunciation of Elephant Butt park (bee-you-t)…where we were intending to camp all along.

From New Mexico quickly came Texas; El Paso, which seemed dilapidated and unremarkable, then Juarez which with its crowded joie de vivre, unconcerned litter and petrol smell reminded my companion of his ancestral home in Lahore, and surprised me with the fact that artificial borders really can restrict cultural osmosis. I don’t know if this is because of the rules changing last June, but contrary to what I heard, a drivers license is not sufficient, one does need a passport to reenter the US, even from Juarez. We got yelled at by the Customs and Border Protection officer, who made me admit my naïveté, and gave me an info sheet so that I will remember that I am noncompliant, though I’d rather say, nonconformist.

After hiking El Paso’s mountains, we made our way to marvelous Marfa, TX—a town I was hotly anticipating, yes because of an nyt article I read. But in the middle of the night, barreling down 90 just outside of Valentine, I was intrigued by an approaching square of yellow-green light, and squealed as I caught a glimpse of designer high heels in this exiled one-room outbuilding. Shit!, there is a shoe-store in the middle of the desert, I yelled, waking my sleeping companion. Turning around, we confirmed that what we saw was Prada Marfa, an experimental art installation, with unopenable door, housing 6 handbags and a gaggle of left-foot heels…god bless you, Marfa.

For a town with about 2,500 residents, the density of cool things in Marfa is incomprehensible. We visited: an art book shop with experimental poetry installation, a gallery featuring art by my favorite photog, Hiroshi Sugimoto, a vintage cowboy boot shoppe, a gas station turned pizza parlor, sardonically titled pizza foundation because of the abundance of artistic non-profits in Marfa, a screening of silent movie The Wind with live musical accompaniment (!) at local community art theatre, the Goode Crowley, with opening act by a cowboy poet (!!), and an open bar, and it was completely free (!!!), a lunch cafe run by a swiss woman whose family makes chocolates (I think not bean-to-bar) under the name, Vollenweider, finally (not really, but space….), we toured the sensational, spectacular, silvery, Chinati Foundation, which houses art by minimalist artist, Donald Judd, and his buds.

The story of artistic Marfa goes back to the 1970s when Judd, already a famous artist in NYC moved here and started purchasing old spaces, rebuilding them and filling them with world-class art. Eventually he died, and two foundations, Chinati and Judd preserve his art installations and living/work spaces respectively. The centerpiece of the Chinati tour is Judd’s 100 works in milled aluminum, two concrete artillery sheds, lined with floor to ceiling windows and filled in a checker-like pattern with 52 and then 48 boxes of equal exterior dimension but differing partitions of interior space. Of course, there is the interaction of light reflecting off the surfaces of the aluminum, but most interestingly to me were the acoustics of these spaces. Standing on one end of the shed, the conversations of our other tour participants melted into a pâté of mutterings, freeing the conversation of the arthritic boxes—slowly being heated by the morning sun, expanding and settling, they let out adagio tics and cracks elevating the inanimate almost to the plane of living beings.

From our two days in steeped in art and fine food, we drove through the night to Austin, once again making fine friends with The Man. Ask me for this story in person, but after an hour standing in the cold, receiving a warning for 72mph in night-time speed limit 65 zone, getting a sobriety test (BAC: .000 !), refusing a search and having dogs come and sniff our car, we were back on the road, cuff-less. Not one hour after that, the ominous red & blue lights flashing again, we were stopped once more, by the insane, but patriotic, border patrol. Not speeding, not anything, just driving through West Texas at 1am warrants proving your allegiance to the ol’ Uncle S, and because we’d had enough, letting them check your trunk for those dastardly and exploitative migrant laborers who villainousnessly pick our fruit to keep the economy humming…who but, the Mexicanos. The scent of guacamole in the back made them suspicious, but we were free and on the long road again to humble Illinois.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city.
Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
—Albert Camus