New Mexico

I don’t know why I stopped. I just twitched slightly on the wheel and quickly extricated myself from the hypnotic pull of the highway. At the small stand I bought a Kachina doll and a handful of arrowheads. The Indian who sold them to me wore a large cowboy hat with a bent brim. The hat had turned an unpleasant shade of yellow from the sweat and the strong sun. He handed me the change and eyed me suspiciously. I could not tell him. I could not rationalize why I had stopped here, in the middle of nowhere, to buy these things from him. Guilt, probably. For something. He watched me all the way back to the car. When I got in I felt eerily out of place. I felt ashamed at driving the Karmann Ghia. I should have explained myself. He might have understood. I wasn’t an American. I had nothing to do with the history of this country. I had nothing to do with his people. I did not believe in trucks. They all drove trucks. But I did not believe in them. The hell with their trucks. The Ghia was the car of an old friend who had re-patriated himself in Austria to study music for the double-bass. I had bought it for three hundred and fifty dollars. I should have explained myself to the Indian. I wasn’t even really a white man.

I despised Albuquerque. When I sliced through, it had just snowed, then the whole mess turned to sleet. The pellets came down hard on the car and I felt like I was being shot with invisible BBs by invisible children. Rushing through and out of that city I could only think of one thing: Neil Patrick Harris. He was born and grew up there. That’s all I could come up with. Not Georgia O’Keefe, not Rebecca Salsbury James, not Olive Rush, Laura Gilpin, Agi Sims, Gene Kloss, Pablita Velarde, or any of the other artists who had worked and lived in New Mexico. None of them. Doogie Howser was all I could muster.

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