New Mexico is a place of mysteries, messages and miracles. I lived there for some time- both in Albuquerque and a small artistic enclave ghost town called Madrid. I’m sure both are still there, but in some sense, they don’t exist in time. Not just for me, but for real. I used to drive out from North Carolina to New Mexico-17 hours or until you saw a white wolf by the road; once, upon crossing the border, i even saw a native american ghost; i knew he was a ghost, but still turned around to make sure-and sure enough this hitching ghost had vanished in the time that i passed.

When you enter New Mexico you have the feeling of driving on an ancient fleck of gold dust and rust which never actually rusts. It’s one of those ancient out of time places on the earth.

I do not even remember how long I lived there. There were dessert roses, and out door drive in’s and the rest, all barely clinging to time and space.

I remember people’s faces mostly and their families, and hot springs and native americans and burritos. But, people’s faces mainly–weathered wise inquisitive but with no ambition to move elsewhere. There is a settled quality to life in New Mexico. It’s not about being stuck, but about being satiated with being to the point that there is no point of going elsewhere. You have arrived at the mystic mountain, it has slowly through osmosis revealed its secrets, and you are resting in those secrets–that’s the sense. The trouble is, nobody outside of that state is in the same frequency. When you leave, you realize every other rhythm is not in sync with New Mexico’s.

Even California as floating dream as it is; still is somehow connected and forced to interface with states outside its way; but not so with New Mexico. You really do become the dream there.

In Madrid, I lived in a trailer on the edge of town. There was a girl who looked like Uma Thurman who would sing to me at the bar, and there was a tender guy who ran an art gallery and would give my friends work when they visited. We had a community center and I sometimes did art therapy stuff there. There was only one bridge in town, and many cars had strangely disappeared off the edge of its wooden rails. Madrid also had abandoned mines and the distinct smell of sulphur. It was a town on the way to other towns, but which had its own ghost guards for police. People would be haunted into staying or leaving, but no one really chose to be there. It chose them-it was just one of those towns, you find yourself in. Still, it really did have true magic.

The children in that town made up their own complex games with the elements and had their own inner spiritual logic and math to follow. The dogs could turn on you, but there was a horse named strawberry who kept the whole town grounded. It was a remarkable place to live really.

New Mexico gave me the gift of mystery. That there were still places where things trailed off into an unknown, and that it was possible to live in that state forever. The kind of place where limbs would grow back on people, and then disappear again. A place of mystery. Not always good mysteries, but definitely mystery.

Richmond was much more like a magnolia. The scent was tobacco, magnolia, and wet moss. There was a train buried beneath Church hill. There were many confederate soldier ghosts, and then there was Edgar Allen Poe to contend with. A lovely porch town–a gothic love song maybe even a lullaby. I went to college there and lived there for ten years. Mostly with an argentinian artist who had a tree in the center of his home.

I lived eventually all over town in many types of songs. Oregan hill with her old southern beside Hollywood cemetery sense. And the fan, more sophisticated blue blood monumented streets. Church Hill with its historical focus. And further out where Richmond trailed off into old Virginia nostagias. Great town really, but not easy to leave. Richmond taught me dignity with mystery. And how to leave a place, and still carry it in your heart.