Seemingly Perfect

The last four years have been tough. What irony. I’m living most of each year in the place I claim I’ve always wanted to be. The truth, however, is that except for the innocent impressions I have of a brief and hurried family trip in 1952 to visit my daddy’s older brother and his family in Santa Fe—the only real vacation our family ever took while my sisters and I were growing up—New Mexico had been, for all the years since I was nine, a seed lying dormant in my soul. I returned as a young adult and then missed another 20 years before returning again. All through that time, the west called me. For a while it was Colorado, where I had spent only a few days on a business trip in the 70s. There goes my life. What irony.

What I really knew of New Mexico before the year 2007 was limited to landing at the Albuquerque airport—either renting a car (or taking the shuttle)—and then heading to Santa Fe. For many of those years starting around 1988, I would visit my long-time Texas friends at their isolated summer place on a mesa in Taos County. The place has its romance. Mostly it’s their romance, their project, their sweat equity and money. For some 30 odd years they have journeyed to there, basically to work, but also to soak up the beauty of northern New Mexico. They’ve done so through the glory of their younger years, through divorce and death and loss of one stripe or another. It’s their story, and I participated only marginally. During these years, I would travel to Santa Fe with friends from Houston who came for reasons that—having now lived here for four years—I understand even better were simply about spending money—expensive lodging and food, and buying stuff. I don’t deny that it was great fun, especially the camaraderie.

Living here in New Mexico for most of the year each of the last four years, I am face to face with one profound truth. Wherever we are, we can feel lonely, and we can feel alone even though we are not. I suppose it is the loneliness that resides in my soul—my soul and no one else’s, even though I have no official claim to this loneliness—that brings me to this understanding. The more I live, the more I read and understand, the more I understand that I am face to face with my nature.

For four years—separated from what remains of my birth family and separated from the few friends with whom I’ve kept some form of contact—for family has always been the center of my life, what I was taught from the beginning—for four years in my seventh decade, I have lived the challenge of starting over in a new place. I’m not a social person, although I love the companionship of a friend or two, friends who like all friends love us in spite of our shortcomings—for that is what family and friends do, I’m told, I’ve read, I’ve lived. Being not a social person—a gregarious introvert, I’ve labeled myself—some days I try harder than others. Some days I feel like trying harder than others. Some days, not so much, not at all.

I remember the year 1980. I lived in Houston. I was in one of the three or four brief periods where I’ve seen a therapist. The issues never change. My fundamental nature never changes. At the time, I still ran a few miles a few times a week. What I recall is a summer afternoon, probably late in the day on a Friday, the beginning of evening. Running through one of the nice residential neighborhoods near my mid-town apartment, I saw through the large dining room window of a city ranch-style house a group of people gathering for dinner. I thought, how nice, and then, how alone I feel. Telling this to my therapist the following week, she reminded me—in a way it seems that she scolded me—for presuming that I could know how any one person in that group gathering around the table for dinner was feeling. Maybe there was ample loneliness in this seeming camaraderie. I remember thinking at the time, true, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, really. What we feel is valid, simply because we feel it. No question of right or wrong, perfect or imperfect, it is valid.

In this place that many people call the land of enchantment, I understand that it is only as enchanting as we allow it to become—only as enchanting as we are willing to live. Most likely it doesn’t matter where you choose to plant yourself—the so-called city different, or the big city they call the Duke, or the more remote mountain areas that are currently besieged by what is being called the worst wildfire in the history of the state, down south where the desert is more prominent, farther north into the mountains, where the liberals reside, where the conservatives make this place merely an extension of Texas—in the end it is just place. The true enchantment resides only in our hearts, in our souls.

If I allow myself to live and embrace my nature—maybe I can’t presume to deny this loneliness—if I allow myself to understand more, if I allow myself to look at my loneliness as if it doesn’t really belong to who I really am—I’ve read that this is possible—if I simply, profoundly allow myself, my walk here will be a better walk. I’ve chosen to be here. I came here alone. I have made friends here. I’ve chosen every situation, seemingly lovely or seemingly problematic. I said to a friend here the other day, as we talked about life, nothing is perfect. He countered that another way of looking at it is that everything is perfect. Everything is perfect, even the loneliness. I need to think about that.

Seemingly Perfect—Albuquerque, New Mexico (July 1, 2011)

R. Harold Hollis