It’s a fine day here in Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A.

The wind is only gusting to high subsonic speeds, and less than a bushel of elm seeds has made it under the screen door into the living room. At the back door, the ants are pouring into the bedroom. Theirs is only a brief invasion, however, for I will visit WallyMart this afternoon and purchase a fine bottle of industrial waste to spray around the building. Life is tolerable, if not exactly satisfying.

The oral surgery I underwent on Monday requires I stick to mostly liquid food for several days. I’ve discovered that this is tantamount to starvation and pine for starch and grease. Last night I went to Albertson’s and came home with a box of instant mashed potatoes, which clearly saved my life. Right now I’m eating jalapeño cheddar flavored cheese dip with a spoon. Oddly, this concoction isn’t mentioned in the list the doctor gave me.

The Taos News just called to ask if it was I who sent the emailed letter to the editor yesterday about a stupid real estate development set to destroy a nearby watershed. I allowed as how I was, but told the lady to delete the message. Every place I’ve ever lived has been ruined by the locals, and Taos is no exception, so I decided to let them wreck Miranda Canyon in peace. It isn’t for lack of letters to the editor that enraged mobs haven’t hanged the developers from the nearest cottonwood, after all. (Lack of something else, perhaps, but I’ve just gone through my pockets, and it isn’t there.) The Taos News enforcer was thoughtful enough to berate me for changing my mind — “This is the second time you’ve sent and cancelled a letter, so maybe you want to think this over more carefully in the future!” — and I hung up without exploding.

(Out of little miracles, a space is cleared…)

The local housing market continues to offer up rentals fit for meth freaks and the blind. A nice lady at the north end of town has a home she wants to rent: $1,200/mo. for a contemporary structure (High Nondescript style) surrounded by an acre of dirt, all the more jarring because that part of Taos County is mostly fabulously green and wonderful. I’ve never understood the sensibility that values the interior of a house over what one sees around it, but there you go. I know I should be careful, but just seeing “3 bdrms, 2 bath” in a classified ad has me reaching for a glass of Drano. I don’t want 1100 square feet chopped up into useless bits, I want an open floor plan in a setting that reminds me why I chose to be born a human being on the planet Earth. As I write this, the breeze through the open door briefly stirs the giant wind chime we have hanging in the living room, and ethereal tones are shimmering in the air… This matters because we bought it as a magical act to help us find a home, and it doesn’t go outside until we have one!

When I was a boy, I was always attracted to ponds. Living ponds, filled with tadpoles and bluegills. Two days ago we walked along a flooded field in the late afternoon and listened to a thousand frogs. I can’t believe how long it’s been since I heard amphibians croaking unmolested. I also can’t believe how any complete person, whole in body, mind, and spirit, can ever take any action that diminishes the flowering of nature in this world. It is the world, after all, yet I so often feel as if I’m the last of the goddamn Mohicans or something. As a species, we are apparently the necessary agent of our world’s destruction and inevitable rebirth without us. Even if this makes a kind of sense, why does it hurt so much? I often say I feel as if I’m from another planet (THIS ONE!), but shouldn’t there be more people on the bus? What happened to them, and where did they go??

Perhaps I will go easier on the ants and use boiling water instead.

(Organic calamities beat artificial ones, every time.)