Down and Out in Santa Fe

I met a friend earlier.  Robert.  A writer.  We had food and drinks and talked women and books and an idea a friend of mine has for a Beatnik art pad in a deserted corner gallery in this depressed old queen of a town.  

He got inspired and so did I.  

Later I sat with friends - the kind of bar friends you make night after night - and they talked and I listened.  Snow bands came and went and the heavy ones made the Plaza magical and not lonely and empty and longing for even the birds that tramp its morning grass.

I walked home on slick snow-melt streets and breathed out white smoke winter breath and listened to Peter Gabriel sing a song called Mirrorball.  He didn’t write it.

“Everything has changed…dear/Everything has changed.”

The magical touch of a special woman.  I smiled and I walked down the streets, just getting slick with the plunging thermometer and I smiled more and thought of someone from a while ago.

“We kissed like we invented it.”

God, will I ever kiss someone on a train or in a car or on a wet slick streetlamp street again?

We fall back tonight.  This morning we plunge into winter.  The sun did not rise today.  It laid down in a bed of thick gray clouds dousing Santa Fe with an icy rain that wants to be snow but can’t because of layers upon layers of warm and cold.

I am on a second pot of coffee.  Rare for me.  But it is one of those days.  Coffee in bed. Wondering how to get the stray phone back left at a friend’s house overnight.  A long, cold walk.  Too much time to think.

I look out my window now and see giant flakes fo snow mixing with the ice rain.  A terrible beauty.

This is a day for being in love and in bed and letting her pick the movie.

We got the first drips of snow and a long rain in Santa Fe last night.  The mountains, already capped by fresh snow yesterday, are probably covered this morning.

I have not ventured out of my little San Francisco Street studio to look yet.  

This is the time of year where I wonder if I can truly write again - ever.  I feel the urge, even the need, but there is a block in my mind and a nagging pain in my shoulder that say, “Why bother?”

Why not bother?