In between the time I write this
and when it’s published, I’ll turn 35 years old. Also, my driver’s license
expires, something I realized just before I was about to get out of town, and
back to climbing in the desert.
As I was walking into the DMV I suddenly
remembered what I’d done to my hair two days before: replicated my favorite 90s
pop hero MC Hammer’s hairdo. The bottom layer of my hair has three distinct
lines shaven into it, and the top is a white boy’s attempt at a flat top. Why
did I do this? Well, each year for Thanksgiving my crew of friends unites in
the desert to climb, party and feast, and of course as any proud Durangatang
would, I show up in costume, and this year, well, let’s just say its going to
be Hammertime.
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| Photo by Mike A Shaw |
So, with this
decision, I’ve extended my immaturity for the next ten years, sealed in my
driver’s license photo, which is fitting because I get carded regularly, and
most people when they ask are surprised by my age. And, I must say if I’m going
to extend my Peter Pan complex into my mid-forties, there’s not a better place
than Durango. Well, at least for someone who loves costumes.
Three years ago I
moved to Durango on a whim, a yearning for a change of direction in life. I was
becoming too serious, spending too much time in an office, and tired of the
politics that accompany such lifestyles. I wanted to be broke again, to write
like a broke writer does, to explore once and for all if I had what it took to
become an artist, and not simply one who eats by the copy he writes. I’d yet to
have a family to support, and been close enough to love to know that such
things come into a person’s life along with love. If I was going to try, and
really fly with it, it had to be then, or never. A writer must build his house of
words over years, decades, a lifetime.
So here I am three
years later, and, well, I’m writing. I haven’t written my masterpiece, though
at moments its been sketched in a journal at a coffeeshop, or told through
whispering sweet nothings to a ladyfriend at a dimly lit bar when both of us
had just enough to drink. A dream is only a dream until it is told to a lover,
then it has been born. It is up to the dreamer to keep it alive. It is up to
the writer to not spend too much time drinking and dreaming, just enough. And
the love holds it all together.
As part of my morning
routine I always check the website of two newspapers: the Durango Herald, and the New
York Times. I get the facts, but what I’m looking for is some soul, someone
who has a way with words to tell me a story. Then, in the Times, I came across, “The Long Goodbye” an article documenting
fifty years of writers saying so long to New York, usually leaving with dreams
unfulfilled. It compared the romantic vision being a writer in the city, with
the reality. And then I realized, the town I chose to live out my early thirty
something writing dreams has not only fulfilled those dreams, but it has become
home.
Home. A writer needs
adventure, and just as much he needs a home. And, when did this transition
occur? Was it in the early morning light, on the rocks, with my tribe of
people, the climbers, all searching together for the same damn thing, that
thing that transforms us where the rock and climber weave and dance. Was it
through art, where people, faces from the town become names, friends, and we tell
our stories to one another; the medium where I went from being “vanilla rooibos tea guy” to my name to the
baristas at my favorite coffeeshop. The joy of discovery to learn that nearly
every waitress is not merely a waitress, there is often an artist and a dream
that lies beneath the apron.
This junction of mountain and desert, as I try to write about it now I’m
getting too close, its time to get out in the fresh air, and experience it. Why
this is home is beyond me. It was left up to the stars and the moons years ago,
and I suppose I’m reuniting, instead of creating. The stars of the night have
their answers, don’t they? Human will versus destiny, it has to be a flow and
not a fight.
So am I Peter Pan, MC
Hammer, or a portrait of an artist as a young man? A piece of each I assume,
though I suspect for the next ten years my Colorado identification will scream “Stop…Hammertime”.
I can only hope I’ll continue to get carded.
