Durango

September 16, 2012

Crickets outside my window, in the close damp of the Southern before-morning. The last few days I had been in Colorado where there is no damp in the air, but cutting, sparkling clarity, so that every detail on the mountain half a mile away is clear. It was bracing. This is comforting, embracing. For this moment of my life, I prefer this.

Nevertheless, the sojourn in Durango was wondrous. For one thing, United got me there and back–with a reasonably complicated itinerary– without incident, every connection made. We were late enough to Chicago that I had to run flat-out from C Concourse to F Concourse, but it was possible to do, and the run was, after it was over, exhilarating. My powers of sleep astonish even me, so I don’t remember that much of the actual flights. Between Denver and Durango I was seated across from a family of over-articulate girls, who announced their every thought and desire in astonishingly loud, clear tones, as though they were in a play. I had a window seat then, and I must say I had never seen the like of what was visible a couple of thousand feet below: the mountains were torn, riven, tortured, sculpted, colossal, unending, easily the most sublime landscape I had ever seen. The Alps when I crossed them were pretty under blankets of snow, but the Rockies were harsh, bare except for the very highest peaks, a sort of pale taupe, but here and there dotted with green lakes, and many acres golden with-- I didn’t know what it was, but the deep, brilliant gold of some plant on the southern slopes. Rochelle told me when she picked me up at the airport that it was aspen, square miles of shivering golden aspen. At one point there was a round lake high on the flat top of a mountain. I imagined how spare and beautiful it must be to stand there, which I longed to do. I recognized one of my holy places, a pool on rock, a meeting of the elementals, air and water and light and stone, and I would be the soul observing, waiting for some kind of radiant Descent. I imagined myself lying down and dying in such a place, like a wild animal seeking out its last home.

Durango itself is a pretty, happy town, the people friendly and open even by Southern standards. I have not been around the Wild West idiom often, but I find it direct and sunny-- youthful, a little coarse, a little ignorant, very graceful, like the actual youths roaming the streets unabashedly in their enormous Stetsons. I stayed at the Rochester and drank at the Strater, a bit of Western Rococo famous enough to represent the whole town on the posters in the Denver airport. The barkeep at the Strater remembered my drink and made it for me every time after the first time. Generally I don’t drink the same thing twice in a row, but when a bartender remembers, it’s so charming I go through with the gesture. During the day I mostly shopped and poked my head into the various attractions set out for visitors. Friday I sat under the blazing light on a café terrace and wrote poetry. Then, I was happy. In my line of sight was a sunflower-and-petunia garden and a happy little street and the smoke of the narrow-gauge tourist train and a great neighborly smashed-face mountain upon which something had died, so there was a crown of circling vultures, and above all the eerily clear, weirdly stainless, dry blue sky.

Lunch with Rochelle and Joel. Joel is from Chagrin Falls, and we know people in common from International Academia. His sexiness at 75 instilled me with hope. I learned a whole lot about the town’s intermeshed and soap opera history, and the politics of the little college on the hill, which I never saw. So much about Durango reminds one of Asheville: the artiness, the entrepreneurial spirit, the abundance of excellent eateries, the progressive attitude in a state much less progressive all around it.  We have hippies. They have cowboys. It takes a certain kind of man to pull off high boots and a ten-gallon hat, and Durango had them. I bought a fish and a loon carved from bison horn, and a shirt for Daniel dyed with actual red Colorado dirt, and an Indian ring inlaid with onyx and jasper and opal. I don’t know what the symbols on the ring mean, but I think they mean the moon.

The Durango Arts Center was a block from my hotel. The theater there is really fine, the right shape, the right size, with a bar unabashedly taking up one corner. They mocked the East for having rules governing the consumption of alcohol. Theresa is the new Center director, and her style is very New York, direct, abrupt, time-saving, which I hope is setting well with the laconic westerners she governs. Her ideas are right, and she deserves to succeed. Thursday night was dress rehearsal. Alphie and Gretta was well, though the cast for Doppler had not yet settled in on an interpretation, and the two actors had very different acting styles. Opening night A&G was even better, and Doppler had settled in and was a success. The house was completely full. The crowd was among the most responsive I’ve ever had. You could see the actors stumbling over laughter, going back and repeating the lines which had never been interrupted by it before. I gave a little before-show talk and then a question-and-answer. I was showing off. I remember thinking, “hey, I’m really good at this.” I hope my inner monolog didn’t show that much. The only was to describe my reception by the people of Durango was lionization, both exhausting and very, very gratifying.

Theresa picked me up in the dark of the morning. On the way to the airport we saw a skunk scavenging a road kill deer, and then a bobcat crossing the road. These things were wonders.

Theater last night down by the railroad tracks. Pretty much exactly what one would expect. Sat with Lisa, whom I’d not met before. The cats didn’t have time to get pissed at me for my absence, so that was well. Home. My beloved before-morning dark.