Revealed Truth on the Road to Raton II

Returning from Raton

I have scored some awesome pictures on the road to Raton - antelope and buffalo - but they are gifts. Normally between Cimarron and Raton it is just straight highway with distant vistas and here and there a windmill. Windshield time or two lane meditation.

I was not in the mood to drive to Raton yesterday. Too much to do at home, but when you must you must. So buckle up, amp the tunes, and cruise. If you are lucky you can reach a satori - a Buddhist term for awakening, comprehension, and understanding. Or has the comedian Shelley Bergman put it - "you know the sound of two hands clapping - what is the sound of one hand clapping." In Buddhist tradition satori arrives from kensho or seeing into ones true nature.

For me the road to Raton can be as much about the pictures I have not taken as those I have. Capturing the vast emptiness of this part of the high plains is far more elusive than the ultimate picture of buffalo. I keep telling myself it is because I do not have the right equipment. The wide angle gets the scope but not the beauty of the horizon. The long lens abbreviates it all too much. Rather a metaphor on life. Never seem to have the right perspective.

At the beginning of this trip I had a short conversation with an old friend. She has a new boyfriend so our conversations have become less frequent, much shorter, and sadly often shared with the boyfriend. Aaah the evil speaker phones do. Anyway in the short conversation on the long road yesterday we lapsed into our long history with men. Oddly my friend had the short view. She had forgotten about the husband that held her hostage at gun point for two days, the live in significant other that did drugs and beat her, the contractor turned boyfriend (never sleep with your contractor) that turned stalker, or the short and wild affair with the con man that stole her van among other things, of even the 20 year affair with the married man that kept trying to lure her into a menage a trois. All of which makes me cringe when she says she has a new boyfriend.

But maybe shortsightedness is a survival skill rather like denial. My list of abusive men is shorter and less dramatic only in that nobody held me at gun point for two days. And I have never believed any man enough to get totally conned. I am not sure that Dianne's ability to believe again is a plus or a minus. I frankly do not want the drama of another alcoholic in my life ever again. Life is just too short or too long.

Which brings me to an interesting point I discovered yesterday. It took me 20 less minutes to get back from Raton than to get there. And the only stop I made was to take the photo above on the way back.

Getting closer to capturing the emptiness. And the black & white treatment says a lot about the drought conditions. And a lot about my life really. After all the twists and curves of the canyon of my earlier life I am trying to straighten out the bumps. Satori in a photograph.