Nearly a month ago now, Madeleine and I journeyed to Santa Fe searching for epiphanies, free donkeys, unparalleled breakfast burritos, and work. We were only successful on one front (I'll let you puzzle out which), which presented somewhat of an obstacle to writing. How, after all, do you convey the feeling of a failed quest without failing in the writing of it?
We prayed to Bertha, our über-androgynous patron saint (frozen, photographically, in 1893, and placed on our dashboard)- but to no avail. Traditional prose would not help us, not when we had canyons like Mars, wild horses, mirages with which to contend! At last, however, we found that a list, a modest enumeration of the portions of the trip which resonated uncomfortably with our (collective) state of mind, kept most of the angst at bay. The original text is as follows:
a list, a list that never stops, not even when it appears to:
1. trees that emit a cheesy garbage smell
2. light-up maps of africa
3. v. accommodating drivers.
4. black sheep that become white with age (proof that one cannot always remain a black sheep, despite one's best attempts to)
5. a convergence of chalk farms
6. women who claim to be six months pregnant, but who probably aren't
7. day old pastries (sweet for 99¢, savory for $1…maybe)
8. oil men (slick) who search and rescue (stick)
9. soup from china (maybe?)
10. vicarious eating
11. cartography
12. Yellow mustache's woman
13. apartments that are far too big for the six bugs that inhabit them
13. a foot in need of surgery (in albuquerque)
14. dissatisfaction
15. five distinct editions of Augustine's Confessions
16. murdered plums
17. upstairs jails
18. "art in public places"
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