OUTSMARTED

JuanStream One

I am the Juan. T-shirt by Kelly Moore.

Beginning a new series of short spontaneous pieces (“JuanStream”) for your reading pleasure…

SO I DECIDED TO WALK and left the house after 6:00 p.m. It had rained off and on for much of the afternoon. The air was cool, not cold, and soft with moisture. It helped to get out of the house. My late wife tolerated the rustic old adobe for a home of sorts because she had her modern piano studio a short distance away. (I often joked that we should move in there instead.) I tolerate the neighborhood dogs and weirdness because it’s cheap and quiet and I’m just 10 minutes from where you see me above.

The 2001 4WD Dodge Dakota has 108k miles on the odometer, barely broken in by truck standards. The 4.7 liter overhead cam V-8 gets 18 mpg on the highway and the glass pack muffler with fake dual exhausts sounds like my teenage self always wanted—only took 60+ years! I paid $5k for it in 2018 and have spent at least that much since. Recent work includes new tires, rebuilt AC, tie rod ends, sway bar bushings, and Bilstein shocks. If that name means anything to you, congratulations. The thing rides like the proverbial dream and the steering won’t come apart while I’m driving down the road. It has the towing package, auto trans, tracks straight and true, doesn’t look like a damn Mad Max war wagon, and cuts the air like a swan. Have you ever lived with wild swans flying like we did on the Eastern Shore? They don’t exist here although just north and south of Taos you might encounter sandhill cranes.

Well the swans they flew over
they were the first of the fall
The swans they flew over
and nobody saw
They were out shopping
all down at the mall
the swans they flew over
and that wasn't all...

I expected some mud but found none. The normally hard baked clay soil on the trail had absorbed enough rain to darken and soften it just enough to make me feel like I was walking on a carpet, with occasional rocks. Every few steps I marveled at this. So welcoming. There was no one else around, as if I were strolling in my own back yard. A helluva big one with a tectonic rift, a gorge, the Rio Grande, and scattered quiet volcanoes, but still. Did I mention this is 10 minutes down the road from my hovel? Do you get that I was all alone in the Terrible High Desert™ last night?

My cup runneth over. All this is free.

Which did get me to thinking… For all the whining, bitching, conjecture, and self-criticism I’ve spewed over the years of my life, look how it’s gone so far. We all have to go sometime and no, I’m not dead yet, but Jesus, it’s fine! I’m lucky I got here. If I had all the money in the world, I’d want to buy a place to live in a beautiful spot with few people and that’s just where I am. In other words, for all my kvetching about “home,” I outsmarted myself. The River of Life carried me here with no real work of my own.

I never had to be rich, it just happened.

Like floating in the ocean when the water holds you up.

Like breathing and heartbeats.

Like love.