La Joya in the Rearview
La Joya in the Rearview
I used proceeds from the sale to buy a comfortable condo on Alameda Street, just east of downtown Santa Fe, across the street from the beautiful Santa Fe River. Several people had asked me if I wouldn’t miss the beautiful place in La Joya, and I just answered, “I’m taking it with me.” And I have. I can bring up the luminous mental images at will and draw fresh energy from them.
But I still miss its presence, sometimes badly. When I drive by it on the way to Dixon or Taos, I feel strong pangs to go back in there, but don’t feel comfortable doing that because of the way it ended with Pete and Vicki. So, practically speaking, the part of the journey in La Joya is a closed chapter, but I still draw energy and meaning from reflections on the experience.
In giving in to the feeling that I needed to leave that place, was I acknowledging that the decision to buy it and move there was as strange as some friends, colleagues, and family seemed to think it was? It’s easy to infer from the outcome that it was, and from a materialist point of view, that’s a reasonable interpretation. But my conclusion here isn’t based on materialist thinking, and I reject that interpretation completely.
The energy and meaning I draw from the experience – which is sustenance for mind, spirit, and even body -- is what I take with me. I managed somehow to internalize access channels to this energy that kick in when I reflect on the wonderful house, the magical light, the mandala ripples on the river, and sunrises and sunsets over the mesa. But I do miss the physical presence, even as the memories nourish me still.
That was the first home I knew in New Mexico, and in many ways it gave me the opportunities for discovery and the rich natural experience I bargained for. I didn’t want to be in the city; I wanted a multi-cultural experience in a beautiful country home, and I certainly got that, along with some of the roughness that living in the country might entail.
Certainly I was naïve about possibilities for trouble in the rural setting, and I hadn’t done due diligence research. If I had, I might have passed it up, but I felt the vibration of the place when a happening over lunch one day sent me out there to look. I had an epiphany while there and bought it without thinking much further about it. I think maybe I needed to do that to get to know a place in me that corresponded to and vibrated with the rhythm of that special place, as I now do. It’s a beautiful, vital part of my constitution that I wear with pride. And I’m surely the better for it.
These chapters coming out of the memory have been a way to articulate this realization to myself, as well as to the kind reader. They are testament to an important, even formative, time in my life, the beginning of retirement, a new and exciting chapter. Getting acquainted with and nurturing new concepts, friendships, and facets of self in radically new circumstances. In that regard, it has been unequivocally a great experience.
At this stage of life, aging casts a shadow of uncertainty over future prospects, especially for those of us living alone. Are random aches and mistakes symptoms of deterioration? Will we have the support we need? The love? At some level of consciousness, I must have mulled these questions every day. I decided to make a radical change from the circumstances of my working and family life and started over in most every respect. I wanted to explore my consciousness through a close connection with nature, in a manner analogous to Thoreau’s retreat at Walden or Jung’s path to individuation. I didn’t think much consciously about these analogies, but I believe they were probably guiding me. And I believe the result has been wholesome maturation into productive retirement and better understanding of self and my place in the universe. And of course of my place in New Mexico.
The resolution of the La Joya experience has returned me to city living. I have condo homes in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque and come and go between them as something calls or the spirit moves. I bought the Albuquerque place, near the Rio Grande bosque, just south of Ranchos de Albuquerque, the first winter I lived in La Joya. I felt I needed a getaway place in town for when things get very slow in the winter up there in the Rio Arriba countryside. I bought the place cheaply and fixed it up.
And I got lucky with it. I only discovered the fantastic walking trails around the place after I bought it. The unit itself is adobe with the full New Mexican colonial treatment of stripped pine vigas, wood ceiling, and brick floors. With a comfortable new place in Santa Fe now, I can no longer claim any practical need of another place just sixty miles away. But I love the place so much I can’t bring myself to consider selling it. I don’t want to rent it either – because it’s just too much mine, in every rustic detail. So, I just keep coming and going when something calls or the spirit moves. Although the beauty and spirit of the place have a more pastoral character than the east side of Santa Fe, I imbibe the same kind of palpable energy from it as I did from La Joya, and as I also do from the new place in Santa Fe, across the street from the Santa Fe River.
Though I had not originally desired to be in the city, I’m heartily glad to be there now. What incredibly beautiful surroundings I have in Santa Fe, both right in town and for a large radius around it. The art and intellectual culture is almost as great as the scenery, and there are interesting people of all stripes all around. The condo is suitable and comfortable, and I feel like I’m good to go the distance here, whatever that distance may turn out to be.
Many Anglo arrivals in Santa Fe lack much awareness of the larger context of New Mexico. That mindset is nowhere near where I’m coming from. I do love Santa Fe, but there is so much beyond it that moves me just as much. I’m glad that my first home in the state gave me a broader perspective and appreciation of this context than I otherwise would have had. But Santa Fe makes a good home base for me. I couldn’t have ended up in another any better for my purposes. I have all I need and breathe the energy of the most beautiful desert in the world daily. How blessed am I for that!
