In The Vortex

I am sitting in a bar, the Cowgirl Bar, talking with a half-Persian, half-Native American young man named  Dakota.  He is trying to explain to me why he can’t seem to leave Santa Fe even though he wants to. We are in Santa Fe, a city where he has lived for five years and can’t seem to get away from. He tells me that there is a vortex here, a pull that keeps you and you just have to give into it until its ready to let you go.  He would like to travel, he really wants to get to Korea but until Santa Fe lets him go he will just have to relax and go with it. Swirl in the vortex. I get that.

Adobe curves...

I have been to Santa Fe six times in the last twenty years.  The City Different as it calls itself grabbed me from the get go. Everything about it is different from the area I live in. The elevation to start with, its at about 7000 feet and I live at sea level. Its all different up there! The rough dusky adobe buildings with their sensuous, rounded curves stand in painterly contrast to the huge deep blue sky that seems so much more intense than the insipid pale blue I gaze at out my window at home… when the blue is even there. The air is dry and smells of pine needles and dust, pinon fires and cooking chilis, both green and red.

Every time I am in Santa Fe wandering in and out of jewelry and clothing stores, staring at gorgeous art in the galleries, or in a bar sipping a green chili infused margarita, I always wonder whether I was an Indian or a cowboy in a previous life.  I am so drawn to the whole culture yet have no connection to it in my actual family history and daily life. I’ve been on a horse five or six times and own a pair of cowboy boots that I rarely wear.  That’s about it for the western lifestyle.  I’m leaning more towards the Native American side mostly because I love the jewelry! I could drape myself in rows of silver beads and turquoise of every shade and happily stagger around under its weight, rings on every finger, earlobes dragging with the weight of the beautiful stones.  Much more appealing to me than a cowboy hat and belt buckle.

My trinkets...

Or maybe it’s just the vortex, as my new friend Dakota says, that keeps pulling me back, trying to get me to stay. It's power reaching out to me through the richly veined stones and silver beads, the bright colours of the hand woven blankets and intricately tooled concha belts. Perhaps it’s not the things themselves, perhaps the pull is from somewhere deeper, the earth itself, the sapphire sky, the scent of the air. All I know is that I will be back and just maybe Dakota will still be there, swirling.