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I worry too much. No, really. [ducks] What’s new is that I realized that worrying is pretty much all I do.

I worry in the bathtub. I worry in my sleep. And mostly, I worry about things that haven’t happened yet, which seems to be the essence of it. Worry, worry, worry, worry. Right now I’m worried about whether there will be too much snow or mud for my wood guy to deliver when we run out about ten days from now. I’ve been very worried about finding another affordable place to live that doesn’t make me want to shoot myself. I was even worried about the snow until it stopped, and look, the sun is shining. (This is New Mexico, you idiot, the sun shines all the time.)

For whatever reasons, I’ve always been this way. I’m lucky that I’m still alive, considering the strain that places on your body and your mind. I could worry about dying, too, but my late sister told me dying was “perfectly safe,” and I have no doubt she made it. Wherever she is now, I know Teresa’s having fun! And do you know why? Because she never worried about a thing. She had the capacity to worry and sometimes got depressed, but she knew how to refocus her attention on things that made her smile.

She was an amazing artist but never had much money. The circumstances of her life, however, never seemed to get her down. She once lived at the top of a steep hill in Austin, a couple of blocks up from a busy street below. One typical warm, sunny day a neighbor found her sitting by the curb outside her apartment with a fishing rod and asked what she was doing. “Cat fishing!” she replied, probably hoping someone would stop and ask her that. What she’d done was attach a weight and a piece of ribbon to her fishing line. She was casting down the hill and slowly retrieving the “lure” in hopes of attracting neighborhood cats, and of course it worked.

Another time that I remember, a bunch of us were having barbecued shrimp and beer at a table set up in the front yard at this same location. Present were Teresa and her boyfriend (my future brother-in-law), another couple, my wife and me, and maybe someone else. My wife and I had just completed the next-to-the-last leg of an epic summer journey that had taken us and Lady the Wonder Dog (a white German shepherd) from Maryland to Iowa and then all the way down to San Miguel de Allende and back in her ’65 Volkswagen Beetle. They don’t make road trips like that any more, and if you never did, you’re out of luck. Too bad!

Since we’d just returned from south of the border, everyone was drinking Tecate in those nifty red aluminum cans. After a while, there was quite a group of empties in the center of the table. I don’t know how it happened, but at one point someone was talking about the litter problem on the highways. Suddenly Teresa got this funny glint in her eye and threw her empty beer can over her head onto the lawn! This was so hilarious, it quickly spread, and soon everybody was throwing beer cans in the air and even paper plates. I’m sure the dog was barking, too. The yard was quickly filled with red Tecate cans, and some rolled into the street. We picked them up, of course, but to this day, it was one of the funniest things I ever experienced.

Having only just now seen how many years I’ve made more difficult, what did all the worrying ever get me, anyway? I’m still here, regardless, and could have had a better time along the way. I didn’t set out to write about my sister, either, but this is how it went.

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Man, do we have the birds. (I know, there’s just this one here.) This afternoon there must have been two dozen bushtits on that same suet feeder; it reminded me of those old African nature movies where you see a hundred giant vultures strip a zebra carcass. Hmm. Actually, I think you have to be like 150 years old to remember those from black & white TV, or newsreels at the matinee. My God, I remember newsreels! Ack!

Don’t everybody jump in here all at once, now.

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An early morning mist of wood-fire smoke hangs over Taos Valley; the scent of profit tickles realtors and pols awake to send them roaming in the chilly air. Another day in paradise, perhaps. I feel the power rising in my words. This year we will move or hit the road—either one a happy thought—and we will have a home.

My dreams tell me I can no longer afford to luxuriate in negativity. My skill at pointing out what’s wrong with everything has chained me to a drain where all the good stuff disappears, but I’ve learned to recognize those thoughts and give myself a chance. Accordingly, there wasn’t any flinching when my wife declared, “Heavy is out!” before we drove off to see another house.

The neighborhood was okay if you like that sort of thing—a rambling hodge-podge of what agents call “nice” homes (read: Anglo-occupied) on narrow roads above a sea of trailers lower down. I hated it immediately, of course. Out of curiosity, I walked around the house ($263k) and saw it needed work: a gate hung crooked from a busted hinge, here and there a broken board or ugly places in the stucco, overlapping panels on the metal roof where nails and caulk showed inexpert repairs. There were well-established aspens in the front, but they’d had their tops slashed off the way some people do who think that trees are like asparagus. I’ll never understand that, especially in a land where tall leafy trees are such a blessing from the gods. Not good enough for me, at any rate, not for going into debt again. I just won’t buy a house without intrinsic value, something solid that we both adore. New Mexico is gorgeous, but the notion that just “because it’s Taos” makes a difference is for those who don’t grow wiser over time.

Meanwhile, my brother called again last night; no doubt he wonders where his unwritten check has vanished. I didn’t talk to him because I had my phone on mute, so I wouldn’t have to talk to him, of course. Unfortunately for him, this latest struggle is concurrent with the re-appearance of the mud [above], a horror that reminds me of how my pleading with the county resulted in a suggestion that if I made a “contribution,” perhaps a grader might appear. (Yes, that really happened, though I can never prove a thing.) My anger with the one is conflated with the other, and neither of them does me any good.

Explaining to my wife why I hadn’t returned the call resulted in my recollecting the infamous Ukulele Incident a few years ago in Tucson: I was standing with my brother outside our mother’s double-wide next to the industrial dumpster I’d rented for cleaning out the house, showing him our father’s 1930s Gibson round-bodied ukulele he’d picked up in occupied Japan in ’49. “I don’t know what to do with this,” I said. “It’s kind of beat-up, but it isn’t broken…”

And with that he snatched it—high on meth—examined the ukulele for a moment, then smashed it against the heavy metal dumpster! “It is now,” he chortled, “hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!” and I chased him off the property in a white-hot fury. Remembering this last night, I broke into a sob, thinking of the old man happily plunking away on silly little tunes when I was ten years old. My appreciation for John Farr, Sr. has increased in recent weeks, and the memory of my brother’s violent act has much more impact, even relevance. I know the path I’m on is fair. One does the things that must be done.

You might not think that any of this amounts to “moving toward the light.” But sympathy for my long-departed father, holding my brother at a distance with less rancor, focusing on “home” regardless of conditions or my prejudices, and hearing hints of thunder as I type are all fine new developments! The anger seems to dissipate. I even feel better about the mud.

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The post that previously occupied this spot did not withstand the test of time! (Like the last ninety minutes, say.) Nonetheless, enjoy this photo of the famous Llano Quemado water towers and the mud the mail lady turns around in.

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