The east and west halves of New Mexico have always been divided by the Rio Grande rift, and now scientists say the fault line is expanding, making the drive across the state that much… slower.

To stretch out our trip to Santa Fe to visit mom even more, we took a drive through the lowlands of southern New Mexico, where the landscape and the affinity for southwestern-style clothing is quite different from Santa Fe, otherwise known as the Center-for-Real-Indian-Stuff.

Down there, “New Mexican” is a geographical location, not a style. The food, often labelled as “Mexican” or “local,” is truly New Mexican (flat enchiladas, non-fried fish tacos, sopapillas, etc.), but it’s not edged in silver tassels and driblets of turquoise.

Also interesting is that in the south, cactus stands in as the token vegetable, and only as you start climbing north does guacamole start making an appearance. Carne adovada *anything*, however, makes its disappearance wherever you are in the state.

At White Sands National Monument we had a rare sighting of the famous Desert Clown,

did some missile testing,

and stopped to visit some Hatch chile farmers. The roasting season is over and what’s left are the dried husks that get sent away to have their color extracted. Apparently the coloring will be used for things like Gatorade, and then the fully denuded remnants used in some other food form. (Plurine anyone?)

Rift or no rift, the idea of scale in New Mexico is always fluctuating and weird. Near and far become two drastically different states of mind.

some time ago, we used to be invited every year by a friend from college for Xmas Eve dinner. his boyfriend was French so the feast (stuffed tenderloin, green beans, Burgundy wines etc.) was fabulous. however, one year his boyfriend became bored when a small group of us started discussing art, philosophy, and other “intellectual and fussy” topics incongruous with the Jingle Bell CD on perma-loop in the background. we were never invited back.
so, this Thanksgiving holiday after a hike with the dogs,

we stayed home and had a friend over for crispy skinned duck, brussell sprouts, and sour cream apple pie. oy.

our friend is about to enter just about the worst divorce situation ever, and i can’t give out the details, but it’s wretched. Lies! Fake photographs! Loaded guns! she got so worked up her face turned pink and puffy, and the dogs, who can read emotional distress as accurately as an unsupervised block of gruyère, were all up in arms with her. Woof.
all i can say is thank god she’s got the lawyer charging an iPad an hour and he’s managed to find himself a shyster—who’s got quality topics on his blog: “Am I Crazy? – No, just dealing with a narcissistic personality,” and “Use a Condom and Pay Child Support Anyway,” which the husband must have read before hiring the guy, as he recently called our friend a “Psychotic Narcissist.” upon which we had to pull out the big gun to look up exactly what that meant.

turns out, we also needed google’s help. according to the Internet, you can’t actually be a Psychotic and a Narcissist, because the Narcissist depends on having an audience, and can’t afford to shut out the world because it’s the world that gives them self-worth, whereas the Psychotic ignores everything that isn’t in their world view, eventually retreating into the “inner recesses of their tormented mind.” (isn’t google great?)

we felt a little stumped, because we all know this husband, and he just wouldn’t use words unless he knew their precise meanings, and he would never, even in a rage, take a compound noun lightly. we pondered LaPlanche and Pontalis further and decided that our friend misremembered the epithet, and that he must have called her a Pathological Narcissist. BINGO. that’s what it was.

why all the fuss? because whatever he calls her is exactly what he is. her role is that of Narcissus’ pond, the reflection. plus he’s got the Peter Pan complex, which, in a joyful coincidence, is called Puer Aeternus in Latin (meaning Eternal Boy), and there we were drinking Puer A-teapot.

ooh! and you can see my reflection. <3 <3 <3

incidentally, our friend told us that schools can now tell when a child has been eating too much saturated fat simply by looking at their ears. i guess that means i’m going to wear earmuffs from now on.

so welcome to dinner at our house. no dumb, fussy conversations here. just more pie, please.

on a hot afternoon after visiting the lovely city of Sintra, Portugal, after discovering a delicious drink called Amarguinha (almond liquor served with lots of fresh squeezed lemon and ice), after discovering that the dessert the Portuguese call “Byronian” was—in one word—a cracker, some pals and i took a long, winding bus ride to the Western-most point of Continental Europe.
[See post to watch QuickTime movie]
to pass the time we had some fun with languages, since between the four of us we had English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian covered. we were all a little brain dead, so mostly it consisted of trying to pronounce the Chinese and the Russian words, and noticing similarities between the Latin languages. and then someone suggested “mushroom.” now what a silly word. there’s some debate as to the origin of the word mushroom, most likely from the French word mousseron (to mean moss), but some argue it goes back to the Greek work for mucus (mykes, from where we get “mycology”). (on a side note, back in those days, a candle snuff was called a “snot”). in any case, there we were, with “Mushroom,” “Grib,” “Mógu,” “Cogumelo,” “Champignon,” and “Funghi.” the only one missing was the Spanish. no matter how we stared and blinked at each other, no one could remember. we tried ordering a pizza in Spanish, we tried imagining a can of mushrooms in Costa Rica (sadly, the label said “Champignons”) we tried thinking of all the Mexican dishes that had mushrooms featured (er… none), we tried hating mushrooms, and collectively not caring what the freaking word for mushroom was in Spanish, but still it eluded us, for hours. damn hongos.

to keep from going crazy we went back to things we knew, like the English alphabet, and played a game of “what so-and-so has up his bum tonight.” it’s a daunting task for a non-native speaker trying to remember unfamiliar words, such as Kleptomaniac’s birth control, or Suzanne Somers, and so this is very impressive.
[See post to watch QuickTime movie]
and this, is in honor of “a laundry.”

nice purple!

this black and white cuteness…

did this:

nice purple!

Jacques Pepin has a great show on television called Fast Food My Way, where he prepares a three course dinner in a hour, from start to finish. the details are lovely to watch, if you’re not too busy drooling: the way he slices an onion, or spreads jam on poundcake. one of my favorite things is whenever he uses eggs or chickens, he talks about how if he were on a deserted island he would be perfectly happy if there were nothing on the entire island but eggs. but then his sentence always seems to drag on, and he adds to that island a few chickens, a bottle of wine, some fresh peas…a couple of sausages… but really…just a couple of eggs…

a month ago the folks at Chamber Four started a series called Desert Isle Books, where writers were asked to discuss the one book they would bring with them to a deserted island. they didn’t make any restrictions on food, so i figured i’d get to bring my one book, plus all the eggs, chickens and bottles of wine i wanted.

here’s the piece i wrote, and happy cooking.

which pretty much says: “By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure.”
we suggested that it also pretty much says: “See yourself in others,” and that perhaps that snippet could be a nice English counterpart to go on the back of the t-shirt. like most philosophical texts written in old languages, there’s a lot of room for translation and interpretation, but our little idea got taken down hard by the tight-ass end (fundraising chair), who didn’t want people to think that was what it meant. i guess pretty much is pretty much only some of the time.

to compromise, i’ve decided to see myself in pretty much anything.
in turkey wraps (friendliness):

in traffic (compassion):

in coffee ice cream (gladness): (how can you not see the entire universe in this?)

and in shadows (indifference):

joy also comes in the form of salted caramel ice cream. the recipe calls for 5 egg yolks and a shitload of milk/butter/cream. turn the orphaned egg whites into pizza dough, top with salami, avocado and fall tomatoes and pretty much the day is done.

here then, is my self-portrait in caramel, and yes, that’s a really thick layer of caramel. i’m working on the technique, obviously, but the ice cream? it’s really intense and absolutely amazing. plus a little goes a long way, which goes with the current trend of “doing more with less”, or “more with the same” type of corporate-speak.

with headless thing in the background