Palace of Fear

Palace of Fear post image

Es hora de salir de este lugar

The Doberman barks all hours by the trailer down the road, jumping back and forth against his chain that flashes silver in the sun. I realize I am the dog. The eighty feet of elm that fell but only grazed the house had smashing walls in mind. Identifying with the only thing it ever tried to do, I feel a kinship and a small responsibility. Symptoms of decay and too-long-blind are everywhere, the world outside a mirror of my soul. The damage has been done, there’s too much thinking. The only thing we still can do is leave.

The expectations game is relevant. The deprivation I learned to conjure up makes it harder to escape and join the world. Even when you’ve changed inside, the outside knocks you down. That’s what living in this old adobe is like, daily confrontation with the kind of sacrifice you’d only put up with in a hide-out. Taos itself is much the same. People seem to pride themselves on hardship: “It’s just Taos,” uttered with accepting shrugs. That’s why the place is dangerous: it comes with its own built-in myth! If you fall below the level necessary to keep up, it’s difficult to imagine change.

Yesterday we visited the brand-new storage unit, four doors up from the one we’ve always had. I carried a single box of books to start the actual moving process, while my wife was taking winter clothes to hang up in the same cardboard wardrobe boxes they shipped in when we moved from Maryland almost eighteen years ago. Don’t ask me how it came to this, it doesn’t matter. Now is now, and the main thing is to get the everloving Jesus out of here, even if we don’t know where we’re going yet.

We will, of course, and soon.

Sign up for email delivery of JHFARR.COM posts via Substack! Same content sooner with bigger photos! ⬇︎

John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on About page. For a complete list of all John’s writing, photography, NFTs, and social media links, please visit JHFARR.ART  

  • christina ienni April 20, 2017, 7:22 PM

    “There were gee-gaws on a self above the open window…”

    sure, a typo, but it still works, maybe even better! 😉

    • JHF April 20, 2017, 7:26 PM

      Thanks, but I’ve edited that portion into oblivion.

  • Judy copek April 21, 2017, 8:07 AM

    Grand Junction? Reasonable prices and good scenery. But no Taos vibe.

    • Anonymous April 21, 2017, 9:12 AM

      “Taos trap” is more like it. But just leaving this neighborhood would be liberating.

Previous post:

Next post:

Browse ARCHIVES

Browse CATEGORIES

Latest Posts

Discover more from JHFARR.COM

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading