PEOPLE ARE EVERYTHING

Or at least they should be!

One night last week, I opened my email and found multiple messages from a group emailing that smelled suspiciously of Mac "religion." Being in a rotten mood and having no better sense than to respond, I pounced: before it was all over, I was (rhetorically) tossing computers, Web sites, and cultists over the cliff with snarling abandon. A couple of correspondents made the point that Apple could go to hell because Mac users truly made the world go round. Despite my sharing Groucho Marx's predilection for avoiding any club that would have him for a member, the "blow up Cupertino" rap caught my attention and I had to give a listen. Later I went to bed feeling like I'd crashed my best friend's kid's birthday party and pissed all over the cake. . .

Much the same sort of dynamics are at work in the current phase of our New Mexico adventure. If you're a regular reader, you know the whole thing began a few years back on a cold and rainy February afternoon. There I was, in the throes of feeling hopeless, powerless, and wishing I'd never been born, when I had a singular vision: in the intuited presence of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and an eight-foot-tall Apache shaman (I kid you not), I was more or less "told" to buy a PowerMac 8600 on credit (woo-hoo!), move to New Mexico, and that everything would be all right. The rest, as they say, is history. In the months and years that followed, I took on the newswriting gig at Applelinks, parlayed this column into the world-famous (?!) Web presence it is today, and moved us to one of the most beautiful and stunning places on the face of the earth. Unfortunately though, in some important ways we're still adrift. For one thing, we seem to have landed here about a decade too late.

That's the thing about visions, of course. You might not actually grasp the time frame involved or even what "all right" really means. I took it to mean that this was THE PLACE for us and that my creative abilities would engender a blissful state of material security. Working at 8,000 feet with the world's finest computer and tapping into the astounding local spiritual energy field should have produced some fabuluous work by now, and in some ways it has. I ain't rich yet, though, or even remotely solvent. And on bad days I've begun to resemble the formerly middle-class zombies one encounters in Taos supermarkets, haunting the aisles with a faraway, desperate look in their eyes. Have I mentioned that I paid $4.69 for a gallon of milk not too long ago? (To be fair, that wasn't at Smith's, but you get the idea.)

The "ten years too late" factor mostly affects housing, which is ludicrously expensive. I realize that how you look at these things depends on where you come from, and that to many of you even the nicest places would seem like a bargain. (My wife met a woman who had just moved here from San Francisco, and she thinks she's died and gone to heaven!) What this means to me is that there isn't any future here for us unless I get rich quick, and even then there'd still be too much traffic and no place to shop for things you need except WalMart. If you moved here ten years ago and bought a place, you're probably happy now, thinking of what you could get for it -- but then if you sold it, where would you go? There is cheaper housing available in the outback, as it were, and that's where you'll find some very fine artists, intellectuals, and alternative lifestyle folks. But living in these places requires a level of self-sufficiency few of us can manage -- if you're not ready, you won't make it.

Meanwhile, back in the Southwestern Theme Park, a filthy rich carpetbagger moved into town not too long ago and started buying places up to "restore" them. His own obscenely huge adobe palace was almost finished when someone burned him out, but he's still going ahead with the construction of a new $500-a-night resort. I wonder if he knows there won't be any water soon? Just south of here down toward Albuquerque, the water table is dropping at a rate of 2 feet per year, according to what the authorities admit. . . The well's going dry on this property and the whole damn region's in denial about the onset of a decades-long dry period we may have entered. (During the past year we've only had two or three rains that actually produced puddles.) I'm scared shitless, to tell you the truth. I think God wants everyone to get the hell out, only most people don't pay attention to God. [whine, snivel]

And yet, and yet. . .

. . .the people are wonderful. Bizarrely, intensely, thrillingly wonderful. I'm not talking about the rich morons who think this is Trend Central Station, obviously. I'm talking about people like my neighbors in this mountain valley community. I'm talking about the Indians. I'm talking about all the spiritually and artistically-oriented folks who've come here and made themselves a home. I can truthfully say I've already experienced enough of the incredibly rich human culture here to change my life forever, no matter where we eventually end up. Life is hard here [see above three-paragraph rant! -- JHF], even for old-timers, but it is singularly unique. Someone who should know once described the area we're in as a "landlocked island," and that is no exaggeration.

But what about my vision, dammit? Are we going to be "all right" or aren't we? Well. . . (and here is where my wife and I part company with so-called sensible, security-minded types like dear ole Mom :-). . .if you don't believe in yourself, what have you got left? If you don't believe what's in your heart, how can you trust what you feel about anything? In other words, everything is fine. The 8600 purrs like it always has, I've produced a mountain of potentially saleable writing and graphics, we're not starving, and no matter how rich you are, if you die without seeing the strobing stars of a high desert night, I'll end up being wealthier no matter how poor I am. Much of this adventure is playing out exactly as predicted, so why have doubts? If I feel lost, I'm probably in too big a hurry or just paying attention to the wrong things.

Those would be, in no particular order, idiot developers, no water, sky-high rents, grayhairs & whitelegs (tourists), and so on. AAAGHHH! Oops, sorry -- I forgot. Missing old friends, too, that one really hurts. The other day we called during a birthday party, said hello to everyone, and after we hung up, I experienced the most abysmal, empty feeling I think I have ever felt. (Can you spell "opened up, gutted, and hung out to dry"?) A bear could have walked in, eaten my iBook, and pooped on my boots without raising a whimper. Thinking later about these same friends, a tiny intuitive flicker came out of nowhere to lighten the gloom: I remembered being pissed that not one of my Mac acolyte emaiI correspondents wanted to be deprogrammed. I remembered getting mad that no one back East wanted to follow me out here to play cowboy. I remembered that some of the happiest, most interesting people I've run into here are living on the same edge that scares me to death. Hmmm. By God, what we have here is a successful resistance of the urge to merge!

The wisdom of Pogo reigns triumphant ("we have met the enemy, and he is us"). El Problemo, c'est moi, dang it. Well, hell. Maybe being "all right" doesn't have anything to do with making money or finding the perfect place to live. Maybe the point of the adventure is self-knowledge!

And despite what the average mall ape or dot-com dodo may think, this is loads better than stock options or getting underwear for Christmas.

John H. Farr edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM and has some JPEG-laden weirdness going on at an fun project called Zoozone News (if you're lucky you'll find a different photo of New Mexico there every day).

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