No Parking in the Flow Zone

Maybe it's just because I haven't had much sleep, but finding a parking space near the Plaza in Santa Fe seems like bartering with Ursula, the Sea Witch in the "Little Mermaid". I've lost my voice, but still, I am unperturbed. If I had my blood pressure cuff, I bet I would register in the twinkly star happy face rainbow sparkle sticker range.

Once I find a parallel parking spot, I am loathe to surrender it. Of course I don't know where I am after driving around block after block in search. Still, I find my way to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. And it is FABULOUS! FABULOUS! The exhibit is called, "Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place". Sense of place is what my trip is all about. I am drawn to the images of the black places.

What wonderful landscapes! All around me whiny tourists are pestering the guards with, "But WHERE are the flowers?????" No wonder the guards are pacing like the caged tigers at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo!

These landscapes are pared down to the essentials. Distractions have been banished. Somehow a sudden downpour seems an answer to a prayer. Santa Fe is desperate for rain, only partly because it is watering those golf courses for the rich and famous. The rain keeps many tourists in the museum gift shop. I have been breathing the paintings in and out amidst an enlarged sense of open space. Now I'm trapped in the tiny gift shop with MANY people wanting Red Poppy souvenir keychains. When the rain slows it feels good to break out into the street, even if I don't know which way to head. I bumble into a store with Flax clothes on sale.

Finding the Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts seems to give me focus. The museum is also the box office for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. There are tickets still available for the Beethoven evening featuring Pinchas Zukerman. Upstairs there's a dandy group of prints and paintings about making music. Naturally, the pieces I really want reproductions to show my students aren't available in the gift shop. You will just have to imagine a Red Grooms' piece of Fats Domino playing Blueberry Hill. Please see my rant of 7/13/04 about special exhibits without postcards. AARRGH!