Newbie Once More

Last weekend, we did a couple of cool new things. First was a talk by David Hwang and Huang Ruo, librettist and composer of M. Butterfly. We’ll see this opera, which is having its world premiere in Santa Fe, in a few weeks when our friends Beth and Peter come to visit. It’s basely loosely on the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly, and more tightly on Hwang’s award-winning 1988 play about a real-life French diplomat and Chinese opera singer. I love beautiful music, but for sheer narrative power, opera is not my preferred art form. I get that it’s all about the music. But to my mind, opera tends not to measure up in elements of strong storytelling ---pacing, character development, foreshadowing, believable plot lines. My failing, I’m sure.

All this to say that anything that gets me inside the head of the creator is helpful. And what a powerhouse these two are. Hwang and Ruo appear to have something of a musical bromance going. They clearly like each other a lot. They see their craft in similar terms. They are wry, funny, self-deprecating—and really informative about this piece they created together. Ruo told us to look for the little clues he dropped into the score—“like an Easter egg hunt,” he said in his charming Chinese accent—with allusions to Puccini, to his buddy’s original play, to a Taoist fable called Butterfly Lovers. David Hwang was thoughtful and eloquent about how our ideas on gender fluidity have changed over time—a theme of both his original play and this new opera. On top of that, there’s a faint personal connection: David Hwang was a college dorm mate of Cal’s.

Santa Fe Opera House

The second cool new thing was Spanish Market. Sunday morning, we walked down to the Plaza and spent a couple of hours wandering around, talking to artists from all over the Southwest. Many of these people have spent their entire lives—and multiple generations of their family’s lives--working in tin, straw, wood, stone. Much of this work comes in the form of retablos and bultos—painting or carvings of saints and other images of religious devotion. A lot of these artists come from the Pueblos, and have lives so very different from mine it’s hard to imagine them. How can you really connect, and understand, when that’s the size of the divide? Interacting over art is one way, I suppose.

Retablo at St Francis Cathedral

When we’d seen enough, we drifted over to the Belltower, La Fonda’s rooftop bar. As happens most afternoons, the monsoon clouds gathered over the plateau to the west, getting ready to unleash yet another thunderstorm. We struck up a conversation with Rene, a charming Santa Fe native. Over margaritas, we discussed where to get the best Hatch chiles, which restaurants were up and comers, whether locals view us newcomers with welcome or resentment.

For the first time in 40 years, I find myself a newbie. I don’t know things. I have to ask. I have to learn. I get lost. Driving to the grocery store or the gym or the library takes actual attention. I need to find a vet, a pharmacy, a haircutter—questions that were settled years ago at home. I find myself needing to read rooms full of strangers; pick my way carefully through conversational minefields. Can I criticize politics I find appalling? This is a liberal place. But it is also Western. They like their guns, don’t they?

What can I say, and not say—as I try to be a courteous newbie and make connections?

All this newness is glorious, but it also takes energy. I am gob smacked every day by some vista, smell, sound, or experience that I’ve never had. I round the top of old Santa Fe Trail and spot an intense double rainbow. I

hear the bells of Cristo Rey, the old adobe church down the hill, calling the faithful to mass. It is an ancient, haunting sound, centuries old but new to me. I pull into Albertson’s and am assaulted by the aroma of roasting chiles pouring out of the big smokers set up in the parking lot. This will continue all over town as long as the Hatch chile harvest goes on—probably another couple of weeks. The smell permeates the air. If you buy a great big box of chiles, they will roast them for free. For a second, I am tempted. I want to talk to chile roaster man, and take home a box of this delectable, iconic food. And then I think: what on earth are you going to do with that many chiles?

Jaime at the chile roaster

Here in Santa Fe, Cal and I grab life with both hands. We take every meeting; say yes to every experience. It is stimulating. But it is also less comfortable and less connected than our old life. There are things I miss, starting with the human connections built over decades. There’s another force in play, too: time is marching on. When your journey is closer to the end than the beginning, there is not enough time for everything you want to do. It’s too late to make really old friends--people who have been with you for the better part of your life. Who know your history, your glories, your warts. Who have seen you at your best but also in your pain. Who have seen your unloveliness in the face of that pain, but are still there. People who forgive you, because they love you, and they know you can do better.

It occurs to me: this choice we have to make, Cal and me, is not really about geography. It’s not the Bay Area versus Santa Fe. In a lot of ways that matter, it’s about another dimension altogether: time. How, and with whom, we want to spend it.

I linger at the roaster, still debating about the box. “How long does it take to roast the chiles?” I ask Jaime, the chile roaster man. Jaime takes this gig in the Albertsons parking lot every year, because he loves it. “About 15 minutes and they are perfect,” he says, loading the big fat peppers, a brilliant deep green, into the spinning drum. “Es muy bueno,” he adds, holding one up for my inspection. Fifteen minutes for something that is rich and aromatic and delicious. That is muy bueno.

I don’t think you can cook friendships in 15 minutes. You can collect a great big box of them. You can feel at times like the box is too full; like you have too many to savor each one. But to collect the kind of friends who really know you, your stories, your language, your light and your dark? That takes time. That’s not a harvest that comes around every year.

But when it does---like the smell of roasting chiles filling the whole world---you better drink it in.