OK, so the actual day, the infamous Ides, is not quite here. Don’t some people celebrate birthday weeks these days? I mean, why not just an endless string of festive events and nights out with friends and celebrations leading up to that special day?

Yeah, trying to get back to my fighting weight…

Well, maybe some people do. But as I look over the social calendar for this birthday week, I see…nada. Unless you count that thrice-weekly torture some people call my exercise class (meant to try to alleviate sciatic pain that has had me wincing for several months now, not to try to recapture the fitness of my youth. There was none, remember?). And no, I don’t count that. So what else is there? Maybe a movie, solo, one night. And in the one highlight, a trip to ABQ on Saturday to see a play, once again sans accompaniment. Then on Sunday, the special day in question? A birthday repast that I will prepare by myself, for myself alone.

Oh, boo hoo.

I stress the solitary nature of this year’s celebration because it’s really hitting me in the face as I confront this milestone (or semi, anyway; the ol’ double nickel). It will be the fourth birthday I’ve had here in Santa Fe, the second alone. It didn’t have to be alone, of course, if I had not ended my most recent relationship almost three months back, but staying in an ill-fated coupling just to have a date on your birthday (or Valentine’s or Christmas or Arbor Day, choose the special occasion of your preference) is plain wrong. Definitely worse than just sucking it up and spending the day alone.

I suppose, for this birthday, I could have put some effort into rounding up one or two of my friends here to do SOMETHING on or around the special day. But my heart just wasn’t into planning my own party, even something small scale. No, easier to wallow in self-pity, eh?

Of course, the worst thing about the impending birthday is not the thought of being alone. No, it’s that whole, you know, getting older thing. And being alone.

Yes, still living…

…in a place I love.

I try to think back to earlier decades. Did I imagine what my life would be at 55? And if so, was this it? Living in a place I love, yes, but so far from my closest friends and my family, struggling year to year to make a decent living, and facing these quickly passing middle-age years without someone by my side. Well, I’m sure there were times when I didn’t even think I’d be breathing at 55, let alone lamenting whatever sad state my life had taken. But in those more optimistic times spent contemplating my possible longevity, I didn’t think this birthday would find me feeling so isolated.

If you want to say it’s my own fault, because I couldn’t make past relationships work, or I don’t feel able to take the initiative now to cultivate more friendships, let alone a relationship—ok. And if you want to say, “Grow up, finally, Burgan, and accept the givens of aging, of approaching the inevitable end, and stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself,” say it and I will nod in agreement.

And if you say all that, and maybe throw in a little slap to the side of the head while sneering with disgust, I will not rebuke you. Maybe that’s what I need right now, more than a relationship, more than companionship, on my birthday. But I can’t help wondering: would having the latter help me frame the approaching birthday in a better way?

Moot point now, I reckon. The reality is that this is my fate on this birthday week. And I can either ratchet up the wallowing or I can take a higher road. I can pledge to make myself the best damned birthday meal ever (homemade spaghetti sauce over vegan raviolis, and homemade pecan pie for dessert—a repeat of my Christmas feast), and enjoy that play the night before, and maybe call all those friends I haven’t talked to in a while, rather than waiting to see if any will contact me on the 15th. Yeah, getting older and being alone does suck. But it still beats the alternative. And it might give me the needed impetus to make sure number 56 turns out a little better. My choice, right? Go ahead, say it. Just don’t slap me too hard on the side of the head.

The longer you live in a place, the more you see its different sides. I suppose that’s an obvious truism, but one that also rests on how much you throw yourself into various social strata and subcultures. Me, being basically a boring kind of guy, I’ve only immersed myself in a few, and the rest I just observe from the sidelines.

Last night I tasted two of those somewhat self-contained worlds, as I went from the rarefied air of academia, courtesy of St. John’s College, to the wild and wooly music-and-booze scene that is the Cowgirl on any weekend night. Over the past three-plus years, I’ve spent more time at the latter than the former, I must admit, but last night—most likely because I was flying solo—I felt more comfortable at the college.

Scenes from last year’s

Jazz on the Hill

St. John’s, our St. John’s, is an offshoot of the original that was founded in Annapolis more than 300 years ago. Its curriculum is built around the “Great Books” of Western Civilization; students read and intensely discuss (I imagine, since I’ve never sat in on a class) everything from Plato and Ptolemy to Kierkegaard and Schrodinger. Students also take ancient Greek and modern French. The emphasis, not surprisingly, is on critical thinking and the clear expression of ideas—the epitome of liberal arts education. It’s the anti-Scott Walker curriculum, and I’m glad we have a St. John’s here, even if I don’t take full advantage of the programs it offers the community (excluding the Jazz on the Hill concert series, which is a great way to spend a summer evening). And in a nod to Asia, the Santa Fe campus offers a master’s in Eastern Classics, an even more practical academic pursuit (and one I would love to take, though the part about learning Sanskrit, I don’t know…).

I went to the school last night to hear a talk about Abraham Lincoln, and yes, I know, that’s a mighty exciting way to spend a Friday night. Being single, poor, and a history nerd will do that to you. I hope to write about the talk itself on my other blog, over at my “professional” website.

I walked in the student center and saw two guys playing chess, which I know happens at UConn and other state schools all the time on the weekends. Tying into the emphasis on classics, there were Greek sayings on the walls, and even Greek numerals on the clocks. Outside the lecture hall, coffee and tea was available for anyone who wanted it (hey, why not, when undergraduate tuition comes in at a little over $47k). Inside the hall, the audience seemed to be mostly faculty and students, though there may have been a few other townies. When the guest lecturer walked in, the folks who know the ritual stood up, as a sign of respect. Not wanting to be the rube, I followed suit, and we repeated the gesture at the conclusion as well.

Sitting in the hall of this pretty exclusive private college, I couldn’t help but think: Santa Fe has some of the greatest intellectual resources you could imagine for a city of 80,000 people plopped into the high desert with no “major” university in site. It’s the home of the Santa Fe Institute, which attracts scholars from around the world, and the almost-equally powerhouse School of Advanced Research. And with the Los Alamos National Laboratory a major employer for the region, an impressive array of research scientists live and retire in the region.

But then, you step back and look at the attitude toward and success with local public education, and you shake your head. The state, by some accounts, ranks dead last in education, a product of, this newcomer believes, deep poverty and a general attitude among parts of the population that education is not that important. Throw in the difficulties kids from different backgrounds—Hispanic, Native American—have in a system that has trouble meeting their needs, and you have the reality that Santa Fe represents in a microcosm—well-educated pockets of people side-by-side with lots of folks who never even graduated high school (not surprising when the functional illiteracy rate is almost 50%!).

Thinking about this educational divide, I remembered conversations I’d had with people—Anglos—who had been here longer than I had. Santa Fe is a small city, more like a town, and certain social and cultural classes never really cross over. You have visual artists and the wealthy people who patronize them. Rich Anglos who come here to retire, art patrons or not. Classical musical folk, Americana folk, folk folk. The Hispanos whose roots go back hundreds of years and who still shape local politics and recent Central American immigrants who keep the expensive, I mean NYC-prices expensive, restaurants humming. Real cowboys, wannabe cowboys, aging hippies, next-generation hippies, New Agers and body practitioners of every stripe. Working artists, artists who work at other jobs, hobby artists, and every thing in between. And don’t forget the fairly large gay and lesbian population.

Farolitos

Zozobra

Now, is it fair to say that all these classes of people never overlap? Of course not. But the events at which you see people of all ages and ethnicities and personal interests rubbing shoulders, at least from my admittedly limited experience, is not large. Maybe Zozobra, our annual burning of a moaning giant puppet, or the farolito stroll on Christmas Eve, but not a lot else.

Which brings me to the Cowgirl, where I ended up after the lecture. I won’t say it transcends all the local divisions, but the contrast between the scene there—live music, booze and conversation flowing, people dancing—and the staid lecture hall was pretty stark. The Cowgirl is sorta funky, sorta kitschy, but there’s music every night and lots of beer—albeit overpriced—on tap. Hippies come, bikers come, music fans come, families come, tourists come. Anglos, Hispanics, and Indians come, and I recently brought some gay friends from out of town. No one feels out of place, and there are certainly no airs. It has some of the “anybody can fit in” ethos that I think attracts so many different people to Santa Fe, for a visit or a lifetime. Me, I’ll be doing something in between, while trying to figure out which of the many “tribes” I can comfortably call my own while I’m here.

Yes, just as the undead know the proper moment when to arise from their graves, and film producers know they have a small window of opportunity to make money on a sequel of their mediocre movie, I realize the time has come to resurrect Crisis? What Crisis?

Look for: pictures of Santa Fe!

The reasons are myriad. For one, I can no longer post to the blog I created when I moved to Santa Fe a little over three years ago, thanks to some quirk in my WordPress account that I can’t figure out. And the new blog I can post to, I’m reserving for serious-minded (relatively speaking) work-related posts, since it’s part of my “professional” website. Perhaps most important, the time is right for this resuscitation because I am once again in crisis and need an outlet to explore the nuances of my neuroses, anxieties, and often-bizarre thoughts (yeah, it’s cheaper than therapy, though I still have that too…). Though some things have changed. My stereo is way better, with the addition of new speakers and a receiver to go with the turntable I bought a few years ago. I own my home. And I struggle to survive as a freelancer like I never did before–another source of current insecurities.

As the loyal readers of C?WC? will recall (all six of you), my initial virtual musings started more than six years ago, when I was living in Chicago, happily — more or less — married, and facing an impending move back to my home state of CT, largely against my will. On top of that, I was experiencing in various ways a midlife crisis, though one devoid of extramarital affairs, overpriced, overpowered cars, or male cosmetic surgery. As midlife crises go, it was pretty tame and mostly internal.

Now, with 55 rapidly approaching, I can no longer refer to a midlife crisis; hell, I am not even middle aged. I am on the downward slide, baby, ain’t no denying it. Yet, crises remain. At times they even become magnified and multiply. I am not one of those lucky people who, through their faith or therapy or New Age beliefs, have come to peace with aging and dreams unrealized and impending death. No, I am, still, an adolescent in adult’s clothing, a writer with little faith in his talents, a male unable to fully comprehend the women I choose as partners.

The original C?WC? took an unexpected turn about 18 months in when it became the chronicle of a marriage dissolution unforetold, though perhaps, in hindsight, an inescapable one. And as much as that unwanted divorce reduced me to tears and stirred fears and conjured up all forms of grief, it did lead to some good blog posts, if I say so myself. I mostly avoided diatribes against the ex and managed to find humor, and perhaps even poignancy at times. At least I like to think so (the Alaska blogs, from the Cruise from Hell, were particularly memorable; here’s a sample).

Given that past, I doubt anyone will be surprised to read that part two of the online explorations of an aging writer’s angst once again reflects relationship troubles. The second of my post-divorce relationships has recently ended, though not without real effort to keep it going. In the end, the too-frequent conflicts outweighed, for me, the love we did share in calmer moments. I have a hunch future efforts to secure another relationship, or the frustrations encountered while attempting same, will come under scrutiny here at C?WC? 2.0. And surely provide chuckles for all those lucky enough to be my age and happily involved and free from the demands of dating when your years are running out.

And pictures of my travels!

One downside of that recently ended relationship was my not devoting as much time as I would have liked to my personal writing. Hell, I didn’t even write one post on my incredible trip to Iceland, or other excursions both near and far. Now, I have the time for those posts and ones on myriad other subjects. They will be personal, as C?WC? has always been, they will reflect my fears and doubts, but I hope they will not be too bleak. And maybe they will even offer some levity—to me at least, if not my readers.

Does the world need this iteration of that original blog? Did the world need 29 different Godzilla movies? OK, that’s hubris on my part, thinking I can match the entertainment value of even the worst of the Godzilla movies (perhaps Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, the 2002 version?). Of course the world does not need this blog or my random thoughts. Luckily for me, the world has no say in it. But I will strive to provide something of interest as the new crisis unfolds.

I don’t know what to call her, this grandmother I never knew. If she had lived, would my sisters and I have used some of the more common names—Grandma, Nana, Gram—or would there have been something more idiosyncratic, something based on her name or her family’s Alsatian roots? Of course, far more important is the answer to the question, who was she? What were her hopes for her only son, my father, for her own life, ended when she was 35 years (and six months and seven days) old. What was it like marrying one man who left her and her son, and then marrying another, the man who became my father’s stepfather, the man I never heard Dad talk about. Ever. Did that silence speak to this second husband’s character, and perhaps explain what happened on April 24, 1932?

And if I had thought to ask my father more about his mother, my grandmother, would he have been able to tell me much? What does a nine-year-old—all right, almost 10—really know about his mother’s wants and fears and character? What does he take away from the fact that she left him, left the world, when he was so young? What did he think and feel in the days and months and years after someone—the never-mentioned stepfather? His grandparents?—told him that his mother was found dead at Indianapolis’s Occidental Hotel, a bottle of carbolic acid by her side?

For some reason, I had always thought she had drowned, Charlotte Waller Burgan Niswanger. I thought my sister, who uncovered much of the little we know about the Wallers and Burgans doing genealogical research, had told me that. Or maybe I imagined it, along with the embellishment that she had thrown herself in a well. I know I searched online for newspaper articles that might spell out the sordid details; I mean, doesn’t drowning in that very deliberate way merit some press? But there was nothing about a young woman killing herself that way. Or poisoning herself in some hotel room. But after all, Indianapolis is a big city, and suicides during the Depression must have been pretty common. What’s another dead mother leaving behind a confused and fatherless, for all intents and purposes, son?

I was 18 when I learned that my grandmother had committed suicide. And it’s not like my father ached to share the information. I was filling out a health form for college, and when it came to the part about family history and mental illness and suicide—well, Dad had to fess up. But there were no details, and not a lot of emotion. Now, my father was not one to shy away from showing emotions of all kinds. But maybe by that time, some 45 years after the fact, he had simply shut off the feelings around her death that were once there.

Carbolic acid, I’ve learned in the short time since my sister shared with me the death certificate she found online, is a potent substance. The sweet-smelling liquid, also called phenol, turns up in many products, from perfumes to dyes, from disinfectants to lubricating oils. It is, as one government web site states, “highly toxic; corrosive to the skin.” You can see that corrosive quality in any number of pictures online that show the aftereffects of people who’ve ingested it (I’ll spare you those images here). In the body, it can create a wealth of problems, including severe stomach pain, bloody stools and vomit, convulsions, and a coma.

When she went into the Occidental Hotel, Charlotte was in good company, as far as committing suicide by carbolic acid goes. Many sites online discuss how it was a preferred poison, especially for women, during the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The headline from a 1904 article from the St. Paul Globe put it succinctly: “Carbolic Acid the Favorite Poison of the Despondent Ones.” The article said that part of its appeal was the ease of getting it. But that ease did not mean it led to an easy death. On the contrary. Dr. Arthur Miller, a local coroner, said, “Certainly there is nothing pleasant about the manner in which it sips the vital spark from the human body, for the agonies it inflicts are probably the most acute that can be endured by a human being.” In low doses, in the accidental swallowings that I suppose led to many of the pictures online, it burns the mouth and the throat. In larger doses, taken deliberately by the despondent ones, it shuts down the heart.

I try not to picture Gram Charlotte enduring those agonies in the last minutes of her life. I do wonder, even more than before, what led her to her despondent state.

I’ve speculated about the second husband. More pointedly, since it could have some bearing on me, I wonder if she battled depression or another mental illness. Because while my father never showed any signs of that kind of anguish, I have struggled with bouts of depression and anxiety and fears for my own sanity that may or may not go beyond what most people feel. If Charlotte had an illness, could that tendency have been passed on?

After Charlotte, after the Waddells.

In the years since my father reluctantly told me about the family skeleton, I’ve wondered a lot about Charlotte. About how the almost-ten-year-old Bernie took the news when he heard it that Sunday in April. Or did he get the news the next day, after she died, when he came home from school? I’ve written several plays about this, taking the few facts I knew and extrapolating, trying to understand what he might have felt, as his mother’s death left him with a stepfather who didn’t want him, with grandparents who couldn’t or wouldn’t take him in, sending him into foster homes before he finally found a family that gave him the stability and love he craved.

After my father died, I found a carefully folded piece of paper that he had kept for some 70 years. I don’t know if it was a school assignment or something he had written for himself, typed out in four short paragraphs. The title was, “I Adopt A Family.” The self-described orphan wrote that he could only “sit on the side lines and listen” when other kids talked about their families. Then, he had a realization: If adults could adopt children, why couldn’t he adopt a family? And so he did, spending time with the family of his friend Bill Waddell, whom he had met at camp. At the time, he was staying with some women he didn’t name, but it was clear he preferred his time with the Waddells, and eventually they took him in. All in all, he wrote, the Waddells were a “swell” family. He closed with this line: “I think if more people took more interest in orphans there would be more happy families.” Then, with a closing that makes me laugh through the tears that always come as I reread this, he typed his name as Bernard Bugan (further proof that everyone needs an editor).

I want to write more about Charlotte, even if it’s all from my imagination. I want to understand, in whatever limited way I can, how her death and what followed shaped my father, which in turn shaped me. I already know, or assume, that what he endured led to the love and caring he showed with everyone in our family. I have an idea for a novel that touches on all this. But even if it is never written, the story will always be in my head.

Granted, this grand, long-planned trip from ABQ to LA and then down to San Diego started with some foul ups that were not Amtrak’s fault. I forgot my Red Sox cap (a major reason for taking this trip is to see them play the Padres); my Uber app did not work so I had to pay for an exorbitant taxi ride from the ABQ airport to the train station; I packed all my food in my checked bag and so was reduced to eating overly salted peanuts for dinner. But the three-hour delay leaving ABQ, that was all on Amtrak,

And of course there was no explanation for the delay (though a passenger near me who had boarded the Southwest Chief at its start, in Chicago, told me one unplanned stop came when they had to put an unruly couple off the train after a “domestic dispute”), and the conductor did not assure me that we would make up some of the time along the way. So, the plan of taking photos as the sun set by NM’s red rocks in the northwest corner of the state—poof, gone. Well, maybe there will be some sunrise photos as we pass through Nevada. (No, California, actually, as you can see here.)

Once on board, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of room in my coach seat, while less impressed with the beer selection; all the good craft brews were gone, leaving Bud, Bud Light, and Corona. Uh, I’ll take the overprice wine, please. And the sightseeing lounge car seems like it would offer some nice views of the desert southwest—if it weren’t 8:30 and the frickin’ sun hadn’t set an hour ago! But even with the inconveniences, there is something about the sway of the train and the freedom to roam from car to car that would make this a preferred mode of transportation for me, if it were feasible.

And here, in the expanse of the West, it is not. It’s more so in the Northeast, where I rode my first Amtrak train in 1972, going from Hartford to NYC on my way to visit friends on Staten Island. That fueled my love of train travel, I think, along with the ride I took when I was about 4 in upstate NY on a staged “train robbery” at some faux Wild West town (in upstate NY?). Then came the weeks of train travel in Europe on my two trips there. That impressed on me how efficient trains can be, if there is a commitment to them. And even my last European train adventure, documented here, did not dissuade me from thinking that all in all, the rest of the major industrialized nations have it right when it comes to rail travel, and we are barely better than some third world countries.

Of course, we were once the world’s railroad king, with hundreds of thousands of miles of track and opulent private cars for the wealthy. We even had some of the fastest locomotives, though today’s high-speed marvels of Europe, Japan, and China have long shamed us there. By the time Amtrak was founded (which I wrote about here), the nation’s commitment to the car meant our trains had seen their heyday, and Amtrak has to fight repeated Republican attempts to put it out of business.

I understand the ideology that underpins those efforts, while chuckling at the hypocrisy of the train foes. Because the government doesn’t subsidize air and road travel in any way, does it? And I would think the conservatives—hell, anyone—would appreciate the social benefits of train travel. People from all regions and all walks of life meet each other and interact, putting aside political and geographic differences and getting to know each other, even if only in the time it takes to go from one stop to another. In this country especially, where train travel is not exactly convenient, the passengers are also drawn together because they have chosen this more leisurely and at times perhaps more mercurial mode of travel. I have fond memories of the chats with fellow passengers on the train from New Haven to Montreal, which I took several times. And on European trains, conversations struck up on board could lead to companionship off the train as well (there was this Norwegian chick in Spain traveling with her buddy Jack Daniels… and no, not that kind of companionship).

So, as I sit here in the dark lounge car (a conductor told someone else they couldn’t tell why the lights were off…), I fantasize about what could be if this country ever really committed itself to modern train travel. Ah, haha, how funny you are, Burgan! And while I do love this mode of transportation, indulging in the romance of the past and admiring the technological advancements of the present—everywhere but here, that is—I’m kinda glad I’m flying home.

I’ve been thinking about that word a lot this week, on this cruise vacation that I anticipated so much, for the chance to get away if not for the excitement of cruising itself. While I don’t do it enough to say taking a cruise is routine—not like for some of the passengers you usually meet, retired, wealthy, who take several cruises a year—I have taken my share. Here at C?WC?, I’ve documented memories of some of the ones I took as a kid, the ones that offered freedom on the high seas away from my parents, as I explored the ship and had the opportunity to meet people from other places, people older than me, more experienced, different in good ways from the friends I had in school or the neighborhood kids I played with.

Leaving New Jersey

I’ve also blogged about the more recent cruises in real time: the last cruise, a short solo trip in 2015 after a breakup, and the one five years ago with my sister and niece, which we’re duplicating this trip (hey, we shared a tiny cabin and didn’t kill each other, so why not do it again?) This time, though, my niece has five years of college under her belt, so she’s a drinking bud and a person to happily converse with, when we happen to run into each other. And the three of us have shared some rousing games of Bingo and strolls through the local towns.

Then, of course, there was the Cruise from Hell, the one I documented in minute, painstaking, and painful detail. Not a lot to say about that one now, except that the feeling I had then remains: I might not cruise much again after this one—more on that later—but I would like to cruise to Alaska again, this time with someone who actually wants to be with me.

As on that cruise, and the solo one, I feel an acute longing to share the cruising experiences, the routines good and bad, with a significant other. Not that we would have to be together every moment; I like my alone time to read, write, take pictures, or just merely sit and stare at the sea. Even more so now as a desert dweller, I find great comfort and contentment just gazing out at the horizon, watching that line where the ocean and sky meet, with clouds at times hovering above, or the setting sun illuminating both.

But this cruise, with too much time alone even while traveling with two other people, I think about the meaning of routine. There’s the sense of doing the same thing in the same way at the same time. At home, the routines are obvious: the morning email check, exercise, meditation, work, cooking dinner, going to bed, repeat. Almost daily. And in the first few days of the cruise, leaving behind those routines felt relaxing, and freeing. Not the kind of freedom I found on ships as a kid—that was too great a departure from the norm to be recreated now. And maybe the self-imposed routines of an adult take deeper root than any imposed on us as children. But there was freedom this time in stepping out of the Santa Fe routines, at least in the beginning.

But soon I found myself getting into routines here, too. The food I ate and when I ate it, when I exercised (though not as diligently as at home), going to this bar at this time for that drink. And while the cruise is supposed to be FUN!, the vacation routines took on some of the same monotony as the home ones—but without the sense of comforting regularity those latter routines can bring.

Comforting regularity. Is that just a nice way of saying “fucking boring life?” And as I contemplated that possibility this week, I thought about other meanings of routine. Average. Dull. Nondescript. And as I felt moments of acute loneliness even as I sat amidst 2,500 vacationing revelers—or more likely because I sat amidst them—I thought about living a routine life. Existential angst cut through the Bermudian sun, the onboard frivolity, the momentary relief of fleeing the usual at-home routines.

I look at all this and laugh. Yeah, I’m sure most of my fellow passengers have been spending the week ruminating on existential angst. Or worrying about the emails and work building up during this time away, which must soon be dealt with again. A huge part of the usual routine. Or thinking about cruising or taking another extravagant vacation without the buoy of an emotional attachment and asserting, never again. Because while some of the routines of cruising can still be satisfying, overall the experience feels empty without that special someone by my side. I go sit in a lounge just to be around others, hoping being near strangers, overhearing their conversations, can make me feel connected. And then, on the rare occasions when I share a few words with these couples and families luxuriating in each other’s company, when they let me into their worlds for even just a few minutes, I come alive as I realize I have a voice besides the one in my head. That vitality soon passes.

On this, the last day, I have a feeling I didn’t have as a cruising kid, or even on the Cruise from Hell. I’m ready to go home. Get back to the old routines. Deal with my existential angst with my cat by my side, waiting for her next puking session, with the mountains outside the window that bring a soothing inner calm, just like the meeting of the sea and sky. Until, of course, I feel that need again to break away and anticipate that next vacation and its routines

I leave for San Diego in less than two weeks. We’ll see what that brings…

I was somewhere near Carrizozo on the edge of the high plains when the misgivings began to kick in. The nagging feeling that I had forgotten something on this, my first-ever solo camping trip. What was it, what was—wait: could it be the pump for the queen-sized air mattress I planned to sleep on the next two nights? (Hey, I said a camping trip, not an exercise in material deprivation.) Or was it…the air mattress itself? And what about the sleeping bag I thought I would use in lieu of a blanket to keep me warm? As I sped along Rt. 380 on the way to Ruidoso, the sinking feeling grew deeper. I could picture myself loading the car with many essentials—except for the bag, the pump, and the mattress.

Well, every adventure, even one as tame as this, needs a few challenges, I reckoned. And reaching Ruidoso, I found a sporting goods store, bought the cheapest sleeping bag and pad I could find, and figured if that was the only calamity on this trip, I’d be doing good. I’m happy to report that it was, and the rest of my short getaway was filled with natural beauty, good weather, and mostly peaceful and welcome solitude.

And Texans, Lots of Texans.

Mostly green, except for the thousands of acres of forest burned four years ago…

Ruidoso, surrounded by mountains, is an oasis of green in the mostly brown and empty southeast corner of New Mexico. At least empty by my standards. There are a few other towns between there and the Texas border, but none I’d be eager to spend much time in. But Ruidoso, with its Santa Fe-like elevation, moderate temperatures, and proximity to the country’s most southerly ski resort of any size, attracts visitors year-round for its myriad outdoor activities.

Texans, it seems, have turned the Ruidoso area into an extension of the Lone Star State. Their license plates seemed to outnumber New Mexico ones at my campground by a long shot, and their behemoth trucks and SUVs filled the streets. I felt like everywhere I went, I was surrounded by gun-toting, Bible-thumping, Trump-voting Texans. It was a queasy sensation. But the three Texas ladies next to me at the campground were nice enough, and for the duration, there was no reviving of the Civil War or even anything like a skirmish. And after all, we New Mexicans have come to appreciate the money Texans leave here, whether as tourists or owners of second homes. If only they could drive a little better…

Anyway, with my just-purchased supplies in hand, I set up my new tent, my own behemoth that would ensure plenty of space for that huge air mattress I forgot to bring and almost allow me to stand up. (I think I’ve developed a touch of claustrophobia to go along with arthritis as I rocket my way through middle age.) Before I left, I did a test run, setting the tent up at a local park so I would know what I was doing. Not that I hadn’t set up tents before, mind you, but in the past there was always someone more experienced taking the lead. And considering I had only camped twice in the last 30-plus years, I wanted to know what the hell I was doing, as much as possible, before I entered the wild.

Of course, “wild” is relative. The privately owned campground I had chosen caters mostly to RVs and has showers—very nice showers, as it turned out, and probably the cleanest bathrooms I’ve ever encountered at a campground. My tent site was near Rio Bonito, which cuts through the grounds. More a stream than a rio, but natural running water nonetheless.

After I set up the tent, I relaxed with a beer, chatted briefly with my neighbors, then pulled out my little propane grill to cook dinner. I planned on a mellow evening—the food, some tunes on the radio, a bit of reading by my new lantern. Dinner went as planned, but the radio didn’t work and the lantern was not really bright enough to read by, so I sat outside, drank more beer, and waited for the sky to darken. I wanted to see the stars, I had told myself before I left, and peering up through the canopy of trees over my site as the night deepened, I saw them. There was little if any light pollution, much less than in Santa Fe, and the stars filled my view while the setting filled me with the peace I had sought before heading out. So this is why people like to camp, I thought. I can dig this.

Up early the next morning for a drive to Ski Apache, the ski slope on Sierra Blanca, a peak that tops out at just under 12,000 feet. The name of the slope is fitting, as the Mescalero Apaches—one of two Apache tribes in the state—have owned and operated it since the 1960s.

I got out at the base, which is above 9,500 feet, and hiked through some Alpine meadows and forest that seemed more fitting for The Sound of Music than the Land of Enchantment. On the trail I saw some fresh scat and thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool to photograph a bear or a big cat in the wild!” Which was immediately followed by, “Wow, wouldn’t it suck to be mauled by a bear or big cat in the wild?” But no animal encounters out there in the wilderness. The animal tally for the whole weekend was scant: two deer, one coyote, and a chipmunk at the campground. Lots of birds of course, which I couldn’t identify except for the ravens; you get familiar with the ravens pretty quick here. And one hawk, which sat on a fence post on my drive down, through some of the emptiest landscape I’ve ever seen since I came here.

Saturday night, I left the campground for civilization: dinner and a play at a funky coffee shop/restaurant/performance space in the center of Ruidoso. I talked beer with the owner and theater with the woman selling tickets. My kind of conversations.

I got up early Sunday for the drive back home, taking a longer route through Capitan—famous as the site where the real Smokey Bear (no “the”) was discovered before serving as the inspiration for the fictional bear we knew so well as children—and through a lava field called Valley of the Fires. Instead of coming from an erupting volcano, this lava bubbled up through vents in Earth’s surface several thousand years ago, creating a field of black rock in an otherwise mostly bleak landscape (except for the mountains in the distance. Almost always it seems, there are mountains in the distance).

Sierra Blanca, the second time around.

Before I started out on this little excursion, I wasn’t so sure how I felt about going alone. I’ve traveled plenty of times solo, but this was different, this back-to-nature thing. Still, even before heading north, I was planning my next solo camping trip. Alone, I could stop wherever and whenever I wanted to take pictures, and go back to some remote spot to see how Sierra Blanca looked when the light was different (better). I could keep NPR on the radio, playing obscure shows almost the whole trip. I could go see a play by a community group, not caring too much about the quality, just wanting to support the folks who try to keep theater alive in a tourist town that doesn’t have “cultural hot spot” written all over it. I don’t mind the compromise and joint decisions that come with traveling with someone else, especially a significant other. But sometimes it’s good to be alone. And this weekend was one of them.

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2016. As you, my faithful readers, know, it’s been quite a while since the last post here at C?WC?—a little more than six months, in fact. It’s not that the crisis times went on hiatus; far from it, as I tried to navigate another…challenging relationship, though with conflicts and tumult unlike any previously (which made me think today of paraphrasing Tolstoy: All happy relationships are alike; each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way. We had the unhappiness sharply honed far too much for my liking.)

Christmas Eve–vegan pizza for everybody!

By the Connecticut River

In the midst of that emotional turmoil, I went back to CT in October, and then again over the recent holidays, once the relationship was clearly over. As much as I love Santa Fe—and my pronouncement of the City Different’s charms has led at least one friend to threaten to push me off a cliff—I realized that in times of crisis, going “home” to see friends and family has decided pluses. And for the first time on a return trip to the Land of Steady Habits (doesn’t that make you just want to stop whatever you’re doing and move to Connecticut RIGHT NOW?), I actually felt a little homesick. The comfort of turning up that last stretch of Matson Hill and seeing the orchards, strolling through the Wadsworth Atheneum, taking the train to Manhattan for a day of wandering and seeing old friends, spending Christmas Eve with the nieces and nephews—it all felt good.

Now, those feelings might not have translated into a little wistful longing for the past and stirred thoughts—albeit fleeting—of coming back to CT if things had been hunky dory here. And when I got back to Santa Fe after this last trip, it only took a few seconds of gazing out at the snow-capped mountains on three sides around the city to reaffirm what I’ve thought many times over the past four years—this is where I want to be. I just wish, at times, that I could transport my loved ones here, and maybe a small corner of Matson Hill. Or at least get my friends and family to visit.

I have fairly high hopes for making that wish come true in the New Year. One friend has my promised to come down this way while on a Colorado ski trip; another said May is a likely time for a first visit. And maybe a few people will surprise me.

In the meantime, I’m trying to do some things differently in 2016. Truly let go of the old relationship. Spend more time doing things I enjoy—especially writing. And taking the advice of an old friend who has something of an intuitive streak. She said she could see me opening up my home this year, inviting people over for meals or conversation—something I did too rarely during the Troubled Times of the past two years. And though she didn’t say it, I think a metaphorical opening will be just as potent. Opening myself up to new experiences and, more importantly, new people. Opening my heart to all the positives I want to feel.

As the Crisis has reminded me again and again these past seven years, I ain’t getting any younger. But I can get happier. I think it may start with valuing the old, as I did on those two trips home, while taking in all I can that’s new.

I know the calendar says each New Year starts on January 1, and like most people, I celebrate that day. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve found other days scattered across the months that, to me, feel like the start of something new—if not exactly a year, than a period during which I can hopefully change a negative mindset and undertake new beginnings. Yes, yes, I know that technically I could do that any and every day, but life sometimes makes that feel daunting. Putting aside a few significant days seems to give me more motivation to affect that change (in theory).

First day of school ever!

So what are these other New Year’s? Well, one is right around the corner, which is prompting this post. Even though it’s been more than 25 years since I attended school on the academic-year calendar, the coming of September always brings me back to my youth and the excitement that came with a new school year. (Yes, I was a nerd, thank you very much, and also lived several miles from my best baseball buddies). So, even though most school systems have pushed back the first day of school, to me this is when that year begins, and I still get that sense that new discoveries await me, new opportunities. And the start of the school year also signals that fall is approaching, and that, no matter where I live, is my favorite time of year.

The other New Year’s Day is actually the Half Year Day. For awhile now, July 1 has felt like a turning point in the year; I can reassess how well, or not, I’ve stuck to the resolutions of January 1 and see what modifications I should make for the six months to come. I think 7/1 took on added importance during my time in Chicago. I arrived there in 2004 on July 1, on a beautiful, cool day for summertime (I soon learned what summers there were really like), and headed back to CT on the same day in 2009. And nothing of significance happened between those bookend days…

The highlight of my birthday, 2013

The last of the faux New Year’s is my birthday, the Ides of March. Of course a birthday is important for anyone, and I’m sure I’m not the only person to mark it as a New Year’s Day. That one, though, has taken on a sadder cast of late, as the passing of time marked on that day just makes me feel old. And spending the last two out of three of them alone, perhaps more alone than on any birthdays before them, was truly depressing.

But I won’t let the bleak memory of that New Year’s Day spoil the one I’m celebrating this week. While I have not met all my expectations and resolutions from the real New Year’s Day of 2015 and the other two after it this year, this New Academic Year provides yet another chance to make changes. Life has not been pleasant of late, largely from my own doing. I hope to alter that over the rest of this year, and the ones to come. So, no party hats and streamers for this current New Year’s Day. Just the realization that I have the power to set goals and work toward them. Yes, any and every day.

A phrase popped into my head today, one I associate with my parents, particularly my father, and my childhood: “Can’t you leave well enough alone?” I never really thought about what the words mean. I guess literally they say, “You’ve got something good, don’t mess it up by trying to make it better.” But for my parents, I think the phrase usually meant, “You should have kept your grubby paws off of whatever it was you just broke, or not done that thing that just screwed up something else that now I have to fix.”

Visiting Block Island, another favorite place…

That phrase from my youth has been in a mind a bit this week as I reflected on my recent trip back to CT. You can go home again, of course, but odds are it’s just not going to be how you would like it to be. (Impermanence rears its inevitable head, eh Gautama B?) Things change, sometimes by our own actions, sometimes despite them. Some of the changes I experienced: People grow old. Objects deteriorate. Your hometown expands in ways you might not like. Sick friends seem a bit sicker than when you last saw them. And relationships with people close to you invariably alter.

was also part of this Northeast swing.

It was relationships I was thinking about, mostly, this week. I saw people I had not seen in ages. Some now newly married or about to be, some in new jobs or homes. Some seemingly happy to see me after so long. One who felt the need to call me a shit. Ah, life.

Then there was one person from the past whom I saw for only the second time in several years, after a long and sometimes challenging relationship. We reconnected a few months ago, which I wrote about here. The reconnection has not always been easy for either of us, but especially for me. And after this visit, I wondered how deeply it should continue–should, for my sake, because as much as there has been laughter and feelings that needed to be expressed, there has been pain too. Maybe the distance we had before served a purpose. Maybe I should have left well enough alone.

So was a trip to Fenway (they lost).

But I can’t take back the rapprochement and wouldn’t if I could. Trotting out a cliche, things happen for a reason. So I accept that the positives that have come out of the last six months were truly good and necessary. And some good could still come from this thing of ours (I hesitate to call it a friendship but never really know what to call it). But contemplating the sadness that filled me this week, I know the connection will once again take a different shape.

Connection: I’ve often said my plays are about connection, characters trying to find meaning in their lives by reaching out to others or else dealing with the pain of connections broken. We all experience that; maybe I just dwell upon it more than most, especially now when I’m without a significant other, physically distant from my closest friends and my family, and struggling, still, to have the sense of community I would like to feel in this place I love. Because natural beauty and culture and history and all the other things I love about Santa Fe, as great as they are, can’t replace human connection.

The day after I saw my renewed friend, I had this experience (those of you who read my Facebook posts have already seen this): I was getting into my car at the local CVS tonight when I saw a mother and her daughter approaching the store. The girl was about 11-12 and was obviously crying. She was holding her mother’s hand. The mother, it seemed, was trying to distract her: “Remember when we came here and…” The playwright in me imagined all sorts of back stories to this moment in time–until the two stopped, and the child hugged the mother. Intensely. Or perhaps it was the other way around. And I thought about all the times I wanted the hug of a loved one to make me feel better, and the healing power of that contact. And the times I actually got it, and the ones when I didn’t. Writing a play about the moment seemed less important. But s few people have encouraged me to try, and perhaps I will.

The next two days, on several occasions, I broke into spontaneous tears. Was it because of what I witnessed at the CVS and the thoughts it stirred? Because I felt so lonely even as I spent time with loved ones on my trip back home? Because I wanted to have a hug whenever I needed it and knew that was impossible, at least for now? Because I knew the relationship revived over the last few months could never give me what I wanted and was bound to change again?

Yes.

Now, back home, I’ve returned to my routines and taken some comfort in them. A friend is coming to visit me for the holiday weekend, and while I might not get hugs, I will get connection. Things will change with my renewed friend back in CT, because that’s what things do, and sometimes it’s for the best. OK, sometimes we should leave well enough alone. But maybe at times we know in our gut that the well enough isn’t really right. It isn’t well at all. I’m just trying to figure out which is which, and not break the good things with my grubby paws.