New Mexico Light

The first thing you hear in the Albuquerque airport is the silence, the loud, noisy, implacable silence which persists everywhere you go in New Mexico, in restaurants, galleries, the open road through desert vegetation, tribal dances.

The silence clings to everything like the Christmas wreaths that wrap around every tree and post and wall, the Christmas lights that fill the plazas, a festive symphony you only see in Union Square in San Francisco.

And that, more than anything, is the image I took away most from our trip to New Mexico: a full-hearted embrace of Christmas. Perhaps it is the heavy Catholic influence in the history of New Mexico, but Christmas is a big deal. There is Las Posadas, the procession around the Santa Fe Plaza, re-enacting Joseph and Mary's quest for shelter and their dismissal by red-clothed devil-figures who hammed up their refusals which drew hisses and boos from the crowd, all illuminated by the lanterns of candles held by sand or stone in brown bags that are called alternately luminarias, farolitos, or--tongue-in-cheek by some locals--bagolitos.



There are the Christmas lights wrapped around crosses at an old sanctuary, the lights looking quite remarkably like thorns. You may or may not believe in the pageantry and tenets of religion, but they are undeniably powerful images.






There are the town squares decorated to the nines, including in the small town of Taos, with a lovely little tree, and the plaza in Santa Fe with the covered walkways in front of the busy stores, all glittering in lights and slanted sun and greenery.




And of course, there was the artsy town of Madrid--pronounced MAD-rid--the resurrected coal-mining town with a Santa Claus walking up and down the twilit street, greeting one and all, Clydesdale-driven wagon-rides, strings of lights across the street, and, most importantly of all, a stuffed bison head wearing a Santa hat.



If there is anything more festive for Christmas than a bison wearing a Santa hat, I don't know what it is.

It isn't to say that Christmas is not important in San Francisco. There are lovely light displays to be found, but overall, the spirit seems more diluted, and perhaps even a bit lost. I am not a religious man, but I have to say I felt dissatisfied ever since we returned from the desert, a feeling like Christmas was not actually upon us. It was a feeling I didn't really shake until I took the train to Sacramento on Christmas Eve and drove around the neighborhoods with Marina and her mom, looking at the elaborate decorations and light displays, much as I used to do with Dad and Rosie while Mom was home creating a Christmas Eve treasure hunt.

After that, I felt fully in the Christmas spirit, especially once I received some lovely gifts, including two volumes of the complete Peanuts collections. Honestly, I realized that one of the reasons I still love Peanuts is that it represents a piece of the American mythos that I can still embrace without reservation. It is innocence, but not naive innocence; a celebration of baseball and childhood and Christmas without viewing childhood through rose-colored glasses. There is a poignancy to the Peanuts comics that allow them to transcend the medium and avoid becoming preachy or trite, at least for the most part.

There is a simple, empty and clear place you can come to in your thoughts as you read Peanuts, which is similar to the quiet I felt at times in New Mexico.

Epiphany or not, though, I don't intend to move to either New Mexico or Sacramento. Too far away from the ocean, both of them. Lovely light, and lovely memories, but that is enough.

Random Thoughts On A Rainy Saturday Before Setting Up A Christmas Tree

In living up to the random nature of the title, a collection of loosely-connected thoughts, connected by the fact that I thought them.

1) For a surprising kick to a cup of coffee, open the fridge, look at the creamer, grab it, pour some in to your coffee, then realize you grabbed a bottle of picante sauce instead. You don't even have to be drunk to do this, regardless of the quantity of egg nog and brandy consumed the previous night.

2) Russia and Qatar get the 2018 and 2022 World Cups instead of England and the US? Weird. Kind of cool that Qatar got it, I guess, but regardless of the sour grapes nature of the snide remarks by the British announcers during Chelsea-Everton's televised match, and leaving aside the cloud of corruption overshadowing FIFA's voting process, it seems odd that England only got two votes, and Russia, with all the corruption and scary elements, gets to host it. Oh well.

3) Facebook is an unusual world. Not to question the spirit behind it, but what is the point of the latest trend, changing your icon to a cartoon character to oppose child abuse? Did I miss a notice from Facebook that if enough users change their icon, Facebook police will go out and arrest all child abusers (not that it's implausible that Facebook might know who child abusers are). And is it really necessary for people to change their Facebook icon so that the world knows they are opposed to child abuse? Don't we assume that most people are opposed to child abuse?

Raising the issue of child abuse is all well and good, but I fail to see how changing your Facebook icon does that. Surely there is a better, more useful forum for that in the non-cyber world. I am familiar with the arguments for a new media, but I just don't buy it in this case. Having cartoon icons is fun, absolutely, but it seems more like entertainment with a veneer of saving the world, rather than an actual force for change.

I'm willing to be proven wrong if anyone can point out tangible evidence of a Facebook trend like this having a beneficial effect on the world.

4) Speaking of Facebook, they are trying to trademark the word "Face." This is absurd. I suppose it only applies to the word being used in the names of online services, but still. You can't help but picture thousands of lawsuits against individual users, ala the RIAA lawsuits but without the mitigating question of intellectual property rights--most faces can't be considered intellectual property, I wouldn't think. It certainly doesn't help diminish the Orwellian overtones to Facebook.

More stories like this and I might be tempted to quit Facebook and try to save the Post Office by reverting to letters and postcards.

I say "might", of course, because I would most likely act hypocritically and continue to use Facebook.

5) From the San Francisco Chronicle this morning: Sacramento-bound lame-duck mayor Gavin Newsom appointed a woman named Leona Bridges to fill a vacancy on the Municipal Transportation Agency board. Newsom's statement about the appointment brought out the crankiness in me: "She may not be a City Hall insider or professional activist, but she's a regular bus rider, churchgoer and longtime San Francisco resident." The perspective of a regular bus rider and longtime San Francisco resident are undeniably useful, but what does going to church have to do with it?

6) To alleviate the crankiness, now that I've had my coffee, let me just say there is very little more satisfying than a Saturday morning breakfast of scrambled eggs, a doughnut, orange juice, coffee, and another doughnut, eaten while reading the paper and watching Premier League soccer.