Magicians breed magicians, but by the time they get here, the air and magic are reverse osmosis-ed into the parent; thus, it’s a reverse heredity, inspired with contemplation and driven by naked, unapologetic wonder. 

   

     11 1/2 years ago my ‘77 orange Dodge Tradesman cargo van with no power steering broke down in Taos whilst vacilando. Angel Fire was its last descent; I lived in a Wal-Mart parking lot for two weeks before landing a job at a local NPR affiliate as a news reporter, selling the immobile van to a fellow who happened to ride by on his bicycle for exactly the cost of one-way transport to the job interview. The next several years of my life were spent adventuring every crevice of the southwest and Mexico, getting married, getting divorced, and eventually quitting my job, wrought with the idealism of my early 20s, to squat abandoned farmhouses in northern New Mexico, redigging their irrigation systems and growing guerrilla crops of weed and vegetables in order to prevent agrarian water rights going back to the State.

     I hated convenience. I loathed amenities. I had no hot water, but knew Spanish, rigged plumbing, had outlaw neighbors, and a simple wood stove. My leftovers swam in a net under shade willows of the acequia.

     To what point has time taught? Are you still as wild, with your dishwasher churning in the background? Will your son ever know?

     My heart is forever buried in the underworld of Aztlan, yet work continues, never fades, grips the points of the North Star from all directions, stationed as the god that neither increases nor disappears.

“I wonder what tomorrow’s going to feel like.”

— Lio, age 4

     I judge this passing time by the plumpness and roundness of where the cheek meets the jawline; by the long swirl of the cowlick; by the subject matter behind the thumbs-up.

“Are you not doing what you just did forever and forever again?” — Lio

Katey Sleeveless