New Mexico. The State And Its Awesomeness.
New Mexico is awesome.
Like many of our mid-west to west-west states, it has a very open feel to it. The skies are huge, because the land is so flat. Not entirely, of course, because all that flat land leads right up to a mountain. You can see so much more of the sky, it's incredible. The clouds look enormous. They are basically the same clouds I can see out my window now, but because everything is so open you don't just see the cloud above, you see the whole cloud. I put that in italics because it is important that you focus on those words.
I've heard that some people have a sense of claustrophobia when viewing such skies. For them I suppose it feels like the sky is almost pressing down on the earth. I don't really understand it, but I thought I'd bring it up because I jotted something down about it on the little notepad I was working with and it seems like a disservice to my New Mexican self to not diligently report everything I decided to distract myself with.
The landscape is somewhere in between desert and not quite desert. I didn't see any tumbleweeds, but I'm sure they were somewhere. Lots of sand, with thousands of small brushes scattered throughout. They looked like pine bushes, but there was no way to tell as I was traveling in the car and my Dad had the child-locks on. Son of a bitch.
Passing by on the highway, I got a good look at the houses and neighborhoods we drove by, and I gotta say, I love the architecture. I know it's a big word for me, but I really did. I believe the houses were made with adobe for the most part, which is added over the built wooden frame. I deduced this after seeing an empty wooden frame. So each house looks kind of like a rancher with adobe all over it. Large, bold squares attached to rectangles all over the place. Maybe it's the simplicity I liked. Not really sure. All I know is if I ever live in New Mexico, I''m getting one of those bad boys.
It was nice rolling through the countryside, seeing all this space and in the distance, a mountain. Pretty much on all sides, no matter where you looked there was something mountainous in the background. Taking pictures out of a fast moving car isn't ideal, but we were all tired of being cooped up in the airplane and then the car, so I didn't want to bother to stop. Besides, we'd look like tourists.
We had a Texas license plate on our rental. Odd.
Living in Columbia, I was privy to all kinds of weird street names. I lived on Wild Lilac, there's a Smooth Meadow, stuff about blowing leaves and scented what-not and on and on. The Powers That Be decided to take phrases and the like from random poetry to name their streets. So I'm used to odd names. The ones in New Mexico were kind of similar, and yet completely different. There was Cerillos Ave, Avenida de Las Americas, Vegas Verdes, Zafarano Dr., etc. By the way, there was a Panda Express on Zafarano Dr. Real Mexican Asian cuisine. General Tso's in a tortilla. Magnifique.
There was also a Richards Dr.
The speed limit on all the highways was 75 mph. Very nice. Made for a quick drive wherever we went. Well, besides the dirt road through the mountains. But being that there was a sign near Albuquerque that read Albuquerque Next 19 Exits, it seemed very expedient to have a fast highway.
All the overpasses were the same beige color as the adobe houses, except each had a turquoise strip running it's length. The small touches such as this really helped to cement one's whereabouts. When I'm driving to Towson and go under the overpasses, I could be anywhere. It's the small things that give you the feeling of really being there.
Even though being there gives you the feeling of being there, too. When you're there, as opposed to not being there when you might go there before you get back.
What?
I haven't really come back yet, sorry.
By the way, two days before I left I stopped shaving and didn't shave the whole time I was there. It really itched.
Like many of our mid-west to west-west states, it has a very open feel to it. The skies are huge, because the land is so flat. Not entirely, of course, because all that flat land leads right up to a mountain. You can see so much more of the sky, it's incredible. The clouds look enormous. They are basically the same clouds I can see out my window now, but because everything is so open you don't just see the cloud above, you see the whole cloud. I put that in italics because it is important that you focus on those words.
I've heard that some people have a sense of claustrophobia when viewing such skies. For them I suppose it feels like the sky is almost pressing down on the earth. I don't really understand it, but I thought I'd bring it up because I jotted something down about it on the little notepad I was working with and it seems like a disservice to my New Mexican self to not diligently report everything I decided to distract myself with.The landscape is somewhere in between desert and not quite desert. I didn't see any tumbleweeds, but I'm sure they were somewhere. Lots of sand, with thousands of small brushes scattered throughout. They looked like pine bushes, but there was no way to tell as I was traveling in the car and my Dad had the child-locks on. Son of a bitch.
Passing by on the highway, I got a good look at the houses and neighborhoods we drove by, and I gotta say, I love the architecture. I know it's a big word for me, but I really did. I believe the houses were made with adobe for the most part, which is added over the built wooden frame. I deduced this after seeing an empty wooden frame. So each house looks kind of like a rancher with adobe all over it. Large, bold squares attached to rectangles all over the place. Maybe it's the simplicity I liked. Not really sure. All I know is if I ever live in New Mexico, I''m getting one of those bad boys.
It was nice rolling through the countryside, seeing all this space and in the distance, a mountain. Pretty much on all sides, no matter where you looked there was something mountainous in the background. Taking pictures out of a fast moving car isn't ideal, but we were all tired of being cooped up in the airplane and then the car, so I didn't want to bother to stop. Besides, we'd look like tourists.We had a Texas license plate on our rental. Odd.
Living in Columbia, I was privy to all kinds of weird street names. I lived on Wild Lilac, there's a Smooth Meadow, stuff about blowing leaves and scented what-not and on and on. The Powers That Be decided to take phrases and the like from random poetry to name their streets. So I'm used to odd names. The ones in New Mexico were kind of similar, and yet completely different. There was Cerillos Ave, Avenida de Las Americas, Vegas Verdes, Zafarano Dr., etc. By the way, there was a Panda Express on Zafarano Dr. Real Mexican Asian cuisine. General Tso's in a tortilla. Magnifique.
There was also a Richards Dr.
The speed limit on all the highways was 75 mph. Very nice. Made for a quick drive wherever we went. Well, besides the dirt road through the mountains. But being that there was a sign near Albuquerque that read Albuquerque Next 19 Exits, it seemed very expedient to have a fast highway.
All the overpasses were the same beige color as the adobe houses, except each had a turquoise strip running it's length. The small touches such as this really helped to cement one's whereabouts. When I'm driving to Towson and go under the overpasses, I could be anywhere. It's the small things that give you the feeling of really being there.
Even though being there gives you the feeling of being there, too. When you're there, as opposed to not being there when you might go there before you get back.
What?
I haven't really come back yet, sorry.
By the way, two days before I left I stopped shaving and didn't shave the whole time I was there. It really itched.
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