Starstruck
By Cliff Simon
I am by no means a world traveler, possessing a somewhat geographically sedentary nature, tethered to the familiar landscape around me. Still, I have been to places that to this day play my heartstrings, enticing me to move there. Every time I’ve been to Paris, at some point during each visit, it was as if Circe herself had cast a spell on me, and wherever I went, it felt idyllic. Even the garbage trucks. As cities go, Paris is a natural-born seducer.
What I recall with genuine warmth, however, are those idiosyncratic experiences that are not advertised in tourist guides. For example, in my beloved, elegant, continental Paris, the most memorable moment concerned a baguette. At a boulangerie, my husband Julian prodded me to use my high school French to order one. I (nervously) asked the pâtissier for un baguette, and she yodeled back at me, in a most piercing, high pitched, exasperated voice, the grammatical correction: UNE baguette. Maybe not a Fodor’s entry, but I smile now as I think of it. And I will never forget the correct usage.
As to Rome, more than the Pantheon or Vatican, my nostalgic, somewhat Hitchcockian encounter began when Julian and I entered a dark, dank pensione. In the middle of an oddly empty room (lobby-ish), sat a huge, old, round, wooden table on which were laid dozens of keys in no noticeable semblance of order. We were given our key by a rather indifferent, slipper-sliding woman who seemed to choose it by chance. Walking down the cave-like hall towards our room, we noticed that beside every door along the way was a grimy, anorexic mattress on end, slumped against the wall like a drunken sailor.
Wherever any of us travel, we are inevitably changed, one way or another. Returning home we understand that we have somehow grown. We’ve learned a little more about humanity.
As it happened, a short time after the baguette trip, Julian and I went to New Mexico to visit his two friends, RoseMary and Bill. He knew them from his earlier days in San Francisco. Neither of us had ever been to the southwest, and descending into Albuquerque I was thinking, this is very different from Manhattan. In fact, driving I-40 west towards Gallup, continuing on into Arizona, north to Utah, east to Colorado and then south, back into New Mexico, we felt like we’d been to another planet.
I’d seen westerns with scenes filmed in Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly (pronounced shay), but the wonderful thing about traveling is that until you’re there, standing on that ground, under a bolt blue sky, smelling the dirt, wind, and rain of a place, you don’t have any frame of reference to more intimately understand an area. When you’re close enough to touch it, it comes alive.
By the time we reached RoseMary and Bill at their home in Rinconada, we were floating in stimulated wonder. Being smack dab on the Rio Grande, we all spent a lot of time together exploring the immediate area because there was so much to discover right around their house; beavers building dams, deer, rabbits, eagles, and coyotes.
Bill was a taxidermist, and a month after we returned home, he sent us a taxidermied rooster, perched on a pile of hay in a huge box delivered by UPS. I was born in the Bronx, grew up in Queens and for two decades lived in Manhattan, so nothing in life prepared me for opening a box and confronting a stuffed, dead chicken. It distressed me knowing it had once been alive (before it met Bill), so to alleviate my apprehensions, I put it in a basket and christened the chicken “Billy,” in honor of my new found friend and chicken benefactor. Often, when I would walk by, I’d pet little Billy.
RoseMary is one with the earth, a master grower who over the years has had informal gardens brimming with sunflowers, hollyhocks, flowering plum, honeysuckle, iris, garlic, lilac, morning glories, and on and on. When she puts together a salad, it is with the same care and reverence poets give to their words. Surrounded by a topographical anomaly worthy of the painter Maynard Dixon, I was deeply moved by the natural world around me, the simple healthful food we ate, and the generous spirits of our friends.
One evening they asked if we’d like to take a drive up to the mesa in Pilar to look at the sky. I didn’t know what a mesa was (or Pilar for that matter). We took some leftover food, got in Bill’s truck and drove ten minutes into the town, through the small charming conclave of simple houses among brown hills splashed with piñons. We crossed a bridge over a waterless riverbed and began the spiraling ascent up the mountain
The mesa felt as endless as the Great Plains. We drove towards the Taos Gorge, then walked right up to it. Looking out into that vast and majestic chasm between us and Taos, I realized if I would ever use the word “awesome,” this would be the time.
Returning to the truck, we talked, we ate, and then Bill said we should look at the sky. We could see stars in New York, several sometimes! But when I turned my head up, all I could say was, What is that? Julian said, It’s the Milky Way.
It was the clearest evening, the perfect company, a breathtaking night sky, and for the first time in my life, I saw that unfathomable mix of stars and planets all in an ordered, swirling, resplendent configuration that was romantic, ethereal, and transcendent. It was a most magical moment, entirely Steven Spielberg.
And even after all this time, Rinconada and its environs remain my favorite place on earth. It’s an ideal spot to sit and lean back against the trunk of a shady tree, your legs crossed in front of you, eight feet from the river, munching on une bonne baguette.
À bientôt!
Cliff Simon has baked, painted (and eaten) cakes since the ‘70s, while his love of theatre has brought him to a career designing sets and teaching students how to, too. He first discovered a love of words from hearing the lyrics of composer Stephen Sondheim, whose work he’s found to be so totally on target. Cliff is obsessed with whatever he does, and writing is definitely no different. http://www.cliffcakes.com