Everyone wants a piece of the sky….

The Pueblo Indians call Taos Valley and Sacred Mountain the top of the world. No wonder. Their goddesses (Blue Corn and White Corn Mothers) and life itself emerged from Blue Lake on the top of the mountain (see the last entry on the Return of Blue Lake).  The sky is conscious of its blessed role and flares with drama at all times of day. Watching the sky is superb theater. Everyone wants a piece of the sky.

Taos is as open as the sky that protects it.  Vastly spiritual, the community hosts multiple traditions and seems capable of holding conflicting beliefs in hand while honoring and respecting all. As one local goddess put it: “we don’t deal in either/or.”  Buddha shares the stage with the Corn Mothers, Jesus, the God of Sephardic Jews, Sufis and richly assorted gurus.  Perhaps the religious dualism of the Indians make such enlightened thinking possible.

As a visiting writer, this already open world revealed itself quickly.  Museum curators and Pueblo Indians, off-the-grid settlers and Spanish families of early origin, playwriters and artists, archeologists and attorneys, politicians and mountain men, weavers and carvers…all willing to talk about their lives and their histories.

It is said there are four cultures here: Indian, Spanish, Anglo and Tourist (we are trying to avoid the latter). What rich terrain for a writer.

Yesterday we visited friends “off the grid” on a land beyond the Rio Grande where a house and third of an acre can be bought for $49,000.  He a nurse from Israel, she an artist and musician. Today, we are going out to the Pueblo again today for San Geronimo Day (St. Jerome in English).   I am closing in on the third novel in the Cairo Diary trilogy, but am not there yet.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 30th, 2010 at 5:49 am and is filed under Fiction, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.