So much silence.
I like being alone. Prefer it, most of the time. I always have. This sort of alone-ness, solo on the road, feels different than the day-to-day alone-ness of living alone and working from home.
There is so much silence, so many days and weeks filled with its lush richness, that I begin to notice how careless and frivolous people are with their words. There can be fun in that, but mostly, I like the quiet.
I’ve noticed there are levels of listening: there’s the music that carries me through the desert—Carla Morrison, the Raveonettes, Bon Iver. There is the sound of nature—winds, chirping, water. And there is silence, muting it all, a silence that sits at the bottom of all of these sounds, where I am alone with myself and quiet enough to hear the voices on that current that runs much deeper than all of this surface noise.
“You’re Zen Lauren now,” a friend told me, 20 minutes into a one-sided conversation about a boy. She’d finally reached her stopping point, the point where she was asking for my advice. I gave it to her in a succinct sentence, not mincing words. She kept going on, rapid-fire sentences strewn together loosely by stream-of-consciousness rambling, flailing around all over the place like the arms of those balloon men you see at roadside car lots. Followed by another short sentence from me. Or silence. At some points, I literally did not have words. There was nothing to say. How do you respond to such airy questions? You respond with air. I didn’t feel like I could energetically engage, couldn’t enter that space where she was because it felt so far-away. I couldn’t enter it emotionally, but even mentally was a challenge, by that point. I’d seen too much, moved through too much, to find common ground on what seemed now like such trivial things. And she didn’t want to hear about what I’d seen or moved through, because the two times we’d talked in the past week, she just launched into her boy problems (which really aren’t problems), and I just held the phone up to my ear. So there I was, doing it again, phone in hand, one of the rare times in my life where I didn’t know what to say other than to just cut right through.
“You’re in a totally different place than me and I feel like you’re just dropping these truth bombs,” she said with a laugh. “You’re blunter than usual, but I appreciate it. Thank you. But just one more thing …”
This is how everyone, including myself, must sound to monks who have been tucked away in the mountains for years taking vows of silence. Most of the time, words are unnecessary. One of my favorite quotes is from Rothko: “Silence is so accurate.”
A few days later, a good friend of mine lost his mother. I called him that night and found that it was easier to speak from my heart. It’s like I’ve been opened.
An experience I’d had earlier that day might’ve had something to do with it. I’d driven through Old Town Albuquerque, this time alone, to stop at an address a guy from back home had given me with these instructions:
In ABQ in the old town … go to 112 Rio Grande Blvd, NW. It may seem wack at first, as it’s someones house turned into a store. These are the works of Roberto Gonzales. He was the “saint maker” of ABQ. You should be offered coffee also, and should accept a small cup to go. It will likely not taste good, but you will be thankful for it. Only purchase a piece of art if moved to do so, but likely a small piece or keychain to help your travels may serve you well. Each piece has a meaning. If a man is working, this is all you get and you should go after no more than 15 minutes. However, if the lady is working, you’d be well to speak to her and perhaps inquire about the works of Roberto Gonzales. Ask her if she’ll say a prayer for you before you go, but only if moved to do so. Could also be a total dud. I’ve left here weeping on some visits and wondering why I bothered to stop after others.
After reading that, how could I not go?
I wandered in, and a woman was working. I said a silent “yes—good—but is that the woman he was referencing?”
She followed me into each room of the house-turned-store, which looked more like an art gallery. Sixteen kids were raised here, she told me. A bit deeper into the maze of rooms, she told me that her name is Dora and that she’d lost her husband, the artist, Roberto Gonzales, the “Saint Maker of Albuquerque,” a year ago. Her face was solemn and heavy. The grief was still there. She was short in stature but possessed a quiet sort of depth, like the ocean—you could sense what was just underneath the surface.
She inquired about my life, and I opened up to her in the most honest way that I could, as I looked through paintings of Saint Michael and Mother Mary and crosses with Roberto’s signature roses and punched-tin work and his prints and his words written in pencil on the backs of some of his paintings. I told her I’m a freelance writer from Maryland, the simplest, most accurate way I could put it, but then I explained why I couldn’t afford the $600 painting that I’d love to buy—that I lost my job in the fall and took the opportunity to write and travel. I told her I was seriously considering moving to New Mexico. She pointed me to a book on her front counter by a woman who was from somewhere like Wisconsin or another forgettable state who fell in love with New Mexico and moved here and started writing books. The one she showed me was about sacred sites in Northern New Mexico, which was curious, as I’d wanted to write a book called “Sacred Sites of America” during this trip but decided against it when I realized it had basically already been written—“Sacred Places North America” by Brad Olsen, 2008.
I ended up buying a little print of Mother Mary dressed in Hopi Indian garb (apparently each tribe dresses her in their own traditional wardrobe) in a tin frame made and painted by Roberto. Dora gave me 10 percent off, to help with my travels, she said. She told me to be safe, traveling all alone, and I said I’m careful, but I’m also always listening to … I couldn’t find the words. I pointed up.
“To your intuition,” she finished for me.
“Yeh. I don’t feel alone.”
And then, standing on either side of the cash register, she started to pray out loud for me, for my safe travels, that I be protected. We stared into one another as she spoke, until our eyes began to well up with tears. Then she nodded at me, and we both said, “Amen.”
A few words can go a long way.