The Landscape Has a Beating Heart

It has been a few weeks since I have written here. Life took me elsewhere for a while—not far away exactly, but into that strange territory where the body demands attention and the ordinary rhythms of life rearrange themselves around it.

Amy and I arrived from Oaxaca on September 2, returning once again to our beloved New Mexico. Very dear friends had offered us the use of a wonderful guest house on their beautiful property, along with a car. Such generosity is humbling. We flew into Albuquerque, took the Rail Runner train north through the familiar and wonderful landscape, and were met at the station in Santa Fe.

Almost immediately, the medical journey began.

My first appointment was September 4. I had come north primarily because of a lingering complication from the prostate and bladder-stone surgery I underwent in Oaxaca in June. Although the surgery itself brought significant improvement, the abdominal incision stubbornly continued to drain. Tests in Oaxaca had revealed a small tract extending inward from the wound—though without demonstrating a direct connection to the bladder. Here in Santa Fe, more tests, consultations, urine studies and discussions followed.

There have been suspicions and possibilities, but not yet a final answer.

That uncertainty has probably been one of the most difficult parts. The mind wants a name for things. It wants a diagnosis, a map, a destination and preferably a road sign telling us how many miles remain. The body, meanwhile, follows another calendar.

I have thought often of Maya, that ancient idea of the veil of appearances—the world as we perceive and construct it, rather than necessarily as it is. During these weeks I have had to learn how easily fear can become its own reality. A sensation appears, the mind seizes upon it, and before long an entire story has been written about what it might mean. I have had to practice stepping back from that story: observing what is actually happening, attending to what needs attention, and allowing the rest to remain unknown.

Perhaps this too is part of healing—not only the closing of a wound, but learning to see through the veil a little more clearly. To live with uncertainty and trust the body to do some of its ancient work without the mind continually standing over it demanding an explanation. Yet the wound continuing its weeping for almost three months and not a single definitive answer . . . well I have had to wonder, “What is my body is up to?”

Fortunately, something encouraging has been happening while all this investigation continues: I seem to be getting better.

The wound has been contracting. The drainage has diminished. Pain is negligible. I have had no fever or redness, my energy is good, and I am urinating well. Amy, who has watched all of this closely and perhaps sometimes sees more clearly than I do, keeps telling me, “You are healing. It just needs more time.”

Perhaps she is right.

My preoccupation with the physical problem also led me to visit my psychologist while here. Months of surgery, recovery, uncertainty and watching the body closely can tilt the inner scales. I wanted help restoring some balance—not by pretending that nothing was wrong, but by learning not to give the problem dominion over every hour of the day.

There is the body, and there is the mind watching the body. And then, somewhere deeper still, there is the soul watching them both.

I have been spending each day taking time for prayer. In particular, I have been saying the Bahá’í Long Healing Prayer every day. Its words move through the different chambers of illness and healing until healing itself seems larger than simply repairing flesh. I do not know what form the answer to a prayer will take. I only know that saying it changes the atmosphere within me.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe has been Santa Fe.

We love this place. So many years of our lives are woven into northern New Mexico that returning does not quite feel like visiting. Dear friends are here, and we have been fortunate to spend time with some of them. Old conversations resume. Familiar roads bend around familiar hills. The sky performs its immense daily theater above us.

We drove north to Taos, where something wonderful is unfolding for Amy. The Millicent Rogers Museum has expressed interest in adding some of her artwork to its permanent collection. For an artist whose work rises so deeply from the indigenous traditions, stories and spirit of this region, the possibility feels especially meaningful.

While there, we also visited a dear friend who is homebound and fighting cancer. There are moments when all our smaller concerns become quiet in the presence of another person's struggle. Friendship then requires very little ceremony. One simply arrives. We sit together. We share whatever light the day has given.

And outside the window is New Mexico.

The landscape has a beating heart, and somehow its rhythm is synchronized with our own. The mountains, piñon and juniper, the enormous blue sky, the adobe colors of the earth, the scents—all of it still speaks to something deep within us. Oaxaca is our home now, but New Mexico remains in our blood.

Of course, there is also our storage unit.

Every time we return, the steel door is opened with the irrational optimism of a prospector entering a gold mine. Surely this time all those paintings, photographs, furniture and accumulated valuables will miraculously transform themselves into a fortune.

Mostly they stare back at us gently, reminding of other lifetimes lived.

We move a few things around, rediscover something we had forgotten, wonder why on earth we saved something else, close the door again, and leave our treasure patiently waiting for its next opportunity to make us rich.

We also spent time in Albuquerque with my daughter Sarah. Seeing her always seems to reaffirm something that needs no explanation—the abiding love between us, strengthened rather than diminished by the years and the distances that sometimes separate us. While there, I was also able to hand-deliver a print of one of my Vanitas paintings, *Sandia Man*, to a collector: a skeleton in a blue denim shirt and rumpled hat, seated at a table contentedly eating watermelon. It was a pleasure not simply to deliver the work, but to spend time together. I have always loved those moments when a piece of art leaves my hands and enters someone else's life.

And now our time here is almost finished.

In four days Amy and I will begin the journey south again. Oaxaca awaits us. Our house awaits us. Our animals await us. Friends await us. The familiar mountains and villages and brilliant Mexican light await us.

My medical story, however, will travel with me. There are still questions to be answered and another important study ahead. Healing does not observe national borders.

Perhaps that is one of the lessons of these strange months. I have spent much of my life traveling toward something—the next country, the next painting, the next love, the next revelation. Now the journey has become quieter and more intimate.

For the moment, I am being asked to inhabit the mystery of my own body.

To care for it without fearing it.

To seek answers without demanding them.

To remain attentive to the practical things—doctors, tests, medicines, wounds—while remembering that another kind of medicine is always available: friendship, beauty, laughter, love and prayer.

Soon the suitcases will be packed again.

Amy and I will turn south toward our Mexico home.

And the healing saga will continue.

Dreaming Awake

On June 24, I went into a hospital in Oaxaca for prostate surgery and the removal of two bladder stones. The surgery appears to have been successful. The prostate problems that had caused so much pain and discomfort have been greatly relieved. The stones (which I had no idea were rattling around inside of me) are gone, though my bladder has been through a lot.
I am grateful for improvements in my quality of life.

But sixty-seven days later, I am still in a strange place. The incision below my navel that was made to remove the stones continues to weep fluid, and there is pain. I need to change bandages three times a day. There have been various explanations, but no clear answer. Next week, in Santa Fe, I will seek a second opinion.

So I find myself in what feels like a kind of no-man’s land: no longer truly ill, but not yet well.

And strangely, this has brought me back to something I experienced while traveling around the world in 2008.

Somewhere along that journey, I came to a perception that felt profoundly true:

I am dreaming awake.

Not that the world isn’t real. It is completely real while we are here. Love is real. Pain is real. Beauty is real. Loss is real.

And yet this life is only a blink of the eye. The soul is eternal.

Everything matters.

And nothing matters.

That realization gave me a remarkable calm. I could let the dream unfold without constantly demanding that it be different. My task was simply to live fully and observe as if I was a witness. When we are dreaming, events have a life of their own. We surf the “big wave,” and it is best to enjoy every moment.

It is easy to observe the dream when it is beautiful.

It is harder when the dream hurts.

My body has become mysterious to me. Something was removed. Something was released. Yet a wound remains open.

I don’t believe my psychological history caused my prostate problems or bladder stones. But I do wonder what meaning I might find in the experience. The prostate, bladder, sexuality, release, the wound that will not close—touch places in the psyche that I have been exploring for years, especially as I write my autobiography.

Perhaps the question isn’t Why did this happen to me?

Perhaps it is:

Can I remain wide awake inside the dream when the dream has become difficult?

We will be in Santa Fe soon, for three weeks. First off, I will be seeing my urologist for a second opinion, and I have an appointment with my longtime psychologist as well. I want to approach this from every level: physical, psychological, spiritual.

Jim Morrison wrote:

“Strange days have found us

And through their strange hours

We linger alone

Bodies confused…”

Yes.

Bodies confused.

And perhaps this is simply another chapter in the dream.

The Wanderer has traveled far.

Now he has been asked to stop.

To wait.

To heal.

To remain awake.

The Fabric of Fate

We met at a Compassionate Friends gathering— a once weekly session for parents who had lost children to death. The year was 2000. Her daughter had been five years old when the child´s father accidentally ran her over in the driveway. My daughter Naomi had died, age nineteen, in 1999 after a two year struggle with cancer.

The group formed a small circle of perhaps six or seven people, with some occasionally dropping away and new parents arriving. We all carried the sadness of the greatest loss.

I did not know then that our paths would eventually merge many years later. And now, in 2026, as I write an autobiography, I recall how fate wove the fabric of our lives into a single cloth.

I live in Mexico now, but my friend still lives in Santa Fe, where I lived for over forty years. We remain Facebook friends, and when I could no longer recall certain details from an important time we spent together in Italy and India, we spoke over the phone.

Through those conversations I have been able to gather the important strands of our shared experiences and shape them into scenes that now belong to the epic prose poem I am writing, The Canticle of the Wanderer. The work is now nearly 50,000 words in length and about three-quarters complete. A typical published poetry collection is often only 5,000 to 15,000 words.

The poem has crossed from expression into world-building—a lifetime’s evolving consciousness given form.

Perhaps I am simply an aging artist attempting to gather the scattered fragments of an entire life into one coherent song before time disappears.

The writing is in the third person. The Holy Bible is a primary influence, shaping both the sound of the language and the intent of the heart.

Eventually, the work will appear on Substack, available by subscription. Contact me for more information.

Here is a recent canto honoring the time my friend and I traveled together. This follows a previous canto describing our meeting in Italy.

The Canticle of the Mother River and the Sacrifice of Light

Being the Record of the Burning Shore, the Ash of the Innocent, and the Salmon Shroud 

I

They left the land of composed memory, where stone is disciplined into beauty;

And stepped into the city of the three million, where the senses find no shield.

The cool silence of the sestiere exchanged for the roar of the ancient hive;

Where dung and incense, refuse and roses, are woven in a seamless garment.

II

Crossing at the cusp of Diwali, when ten thousand lamps defy the darkness of the world;

Each small flame an act of defiance against chaos and death and the ignorance of the age.

The marigolds floated upon the river and were worn as garlands around the necks of the faithful;

Fireworks blasted so loud that the very heavens seemed to answer with their own thunder.

III

At the height of the day, when the sun stood sentinel over the river, the companion knelt;

Clad in a sari of the bazaar, she fashioned a design of colored powders and flowers upon the roof.

A quiet offering for Lakshmi, laid upon the tile to welcome beauty and blessing into the house;

While below, the Ganges shimmered in the heat, holding the twin mysteries of bather and pyre.

IV

From that hour, the keepers of the house and the men of the street looked upon her differently;

No longer a stranger passing through the dust, but a soul who had offered respect to the deep.

For the people of the river recognize the heart that bows before their ancient mysteries;

And the gates of the city opened wider for those who brought flowers to the threshold.

V

Each morning before the dawn he went to the foot of Assi Ghat among the worshipers;

Where young men swung lamps and blew conch shells in the ceremony of the river's greeting.

Flames wheeled through the dawn while the Ganges gathered the prayers of the living and the dead;

And the sun rose over the opposite bank, casting its first light upon the bathers in the holy water.

VI

He raised his lens to a holy man and took the image without the asking of permission;

When he returned to the shelter, the pictures of the morning had vanished from the glass.

For in the city of Shiva, nothing is owned, and every image is but a borrowed shadow;

And he said: Lord, accept my loss as a sacrifice, a tithe paid to your holiness.

VII

Then came the night of the softly flowing mother, when they rowed upon the Ganges;

He and the companion Celeste, carrying the small vessel of a fifteen-year grief.

The ashes of the child, a daughter of five years, were released into the matrix of the water;

Mixing with the prayers of the living near the pyres that burn without end.

VIII

They stood as the Witness while the heavy weight of the departed was given to the river;

Watching the small leaf-boats of fire drift toward the sea like wandering stars.

In that place, the conversation between the dead and the living never falls into silence;

For the Ganges washes the sin from the mortal and sets the spirit free from the wheel.

IX

On the day that followed, the companion wrote the air with salmon-colored cloth;

She moved like a poem upon the high steps, an unfurling butterfly beneath the sun.

She lay down as a corpse in a shroud, then rose to fling the rose petals high;

Like teardrops of blood falling upon the stone, a sacred theater for the mesmerized eye.

X

He made friends with a young man who drove a rickshaw through sixteen hours of the day;

Supporting his wife and two boys by the labor of his legs and the strength of his back.

Yet always he greeted the traveler with a smile and looked him in the eye and asked:

Are you happy? — and the question rang in the chest long after the city had fallen behind.

XI

The marigolds gathered in heaps, and the thunder of the fireworks shook the earth;

Until the time of departure came, and the rickshaw moved toward the iron rails.

Celeste vanished into the distance, and the Wanderer turned his face toward the desert;
Where the camels gather in the dust of Pushkar, and the next portal waited to open. 

Between Two Homes

It is easy for Amy and me to move between Oaxaca, Mexico, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. We love both places deeply. Oaxaca is our home now—it has broadened our perspectives on life in ways we could never have imagined. But Santa Fe—and Taos as well—live somewhere deeper, woven into our bones. They are part of our story.

After so many years of adventure, commitment, and growth, there is a particular pleasure in returning. Not just seeing again, but recognizing—landscapes, faces, rhythms that once shaped us.

For the past few years, we’ve been fortunate to stay in the house I built long ago with my former wife, Jean. She travels now, and we care for the place. I know every inch of it. We lived there for twenty-five years. Walking through its rooms is like moving through layers of time.

Spring has arrived. Flowers are just beginning to show themselves. The air is brisk, clean, and invigorating. I find myself breathing more deeply here.




We’ve seen dear friends, as we always do. Familiar laughter returns easily.

We opened our storage unit, and our belongings seemed almost to greet us—old companions asking, “What next?” Most of it is artwork, with a scattering of personal items. Pieces of a life lived in many chapters.

We are releasing artworks from our Santa Fe years. To view, click HERE.

Another bonus from the storage unit is the discovery and unfolding of exceptional quilts Amy made in the late 1980's. They formed the basis of a traveling museum show and appeared in venues across the midwest, including the Field Museum in Chicago. She won a National Endowment of the Arts award for the work. Many are available for purchase now. click HERE.

We drove up to Taos along that spectacular route tracing the Rio Grande and passing the great Gorge. The land was as powerful as ever. Taos, in its quiet beauty, moved Amy to tears. We saw friends there too, the kind who make time feel less linear and more like a circle.

Saturday, we drove out to the small village of Cerrillos for the annual Turquoise Trail Pack Burro Race. It was joyful, unpretentious, and full of life. Many of the animals are rescues, now cared for by people who clearly love them. There was laughter everywhere—good, simple happiness.

And soon, we will return to Oaxaca. We leave next Sunday, May 10.

There is no sense of leaving one place behind for another. Instead, it feels like stepping between two homes—each offering something essential, each reminding us of who we have been, and who we continue to become. And somehow, in going back and forth, we never really leave home at all.

Return to The Land of Enchantment

Amy and I are preparing to fly north—to “New” Mexico—from our home in “Old” Mexico.

There is unfinished business waiting for us in Santa Fe. Artwork of ours still held there, personal belongings of value, threads not yet fully gathered. These things call us back, but so do the people. My daughter in Albuquerque, dear friends, familiar faces and places that still live somewhere inside us.

And beyond all that, there is the simple happiness of returning to a place we loved for so long.

This visit will be shorter than most—just two weeks—but the days will be full. The lilacs are blooming in Santa Fe now, and the spring air carries that unmistakable sweetness. I look forward to standing again beneath the vast Southwestern sky, breathing in the high desert air, feeling that spaciousness that once shaped so much of my life.

We will be staying in the home I built years ago with my former wife, Jean, who will be away in Europe. Returning there will no doubt stir its own quiet reflections—another layer of time folding back upon itself.

And so, once more, we travel north—carrying the past, meeting the present, and remaining open to whatever waits for us there.

Keys to the Heart: New Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Spaces Between

After a month away, the arc of our travels has closed—New Mexico’s familiar mesas, Minnesota’s lakes, and now back to Oaxaca. We landed safely on August 3rd. The journey began before sunrise in Santa Fe and ended with our neighbor Mayolo’s smile at the airport, ready to welcome us home.

A short hop took us to Dallas, where we changed planes, then crossed the border into Mexico, touching down at 12:15. Mayolo helped hoist our two large suitcases, each packed to the brim with loot from the USA: new clothes, art supplies, medicines, gifts, old photographs, and a few beloved books. Customs took one glance and waved us through.

Oaxaca is our home—of that there is no doubt—but Northern New Mexico also holds a permanent set of keys to our hearts. After so much life, love, and trial in that blessed country of mesas and mountains, it’s embedded in us. In our DNA. When we return, the streets, the food, the mountains, the very air and light feel as familiar as the rooms of an old house.

Amy’s sister arrived from Minnesota during our stay, and the two slipped easily into that rare sisterly rhythm—shopping, swapping stories, and laughing until the air seemed to sparkle. Together, they also visited their father’s gravesite at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe. A veteran of the Korean War, Daniel Cordova´s ashes are interred in the columbarium, a wall of plaques marking niches that hold the remains of those who served. The two daughters placed their hands on the marble plaque bearing his name, feeling the warmth of his presence in that quiet, dignified place.

One morning we drove to Bandelier National Monument, an hour away, where honey-colored cliffs rise in quiet grandeur. From around 1150 to 1550, this canyon sheltered the Ancestral Pueblo people—farmers, builders, artisans—whose dwellings and handprints still cling to the stone. In time, drought and the pull of migration led them away, yet as we walked the winding trails beneath a shifting sky, their spirit seemed to move with us, woven into the land itself.

And then there was the other homecoming—the house I built with my ex-wife Jean three decades ago. To visit that home again is to step into a perfectly preserved chapter of life. Now spectacularly valuable, it sits just fifteen minutes from Santa Fe’s plaza, with six-acre lots, well-spaced neighbors, hushed air, and horses grazing in corrals.

Santa Fe’s summer music scene was in full swing, with free, first-rate performances at least four nights a week. The air at sunset carried that mingling of music and mountain coolness I will never stop loving.

My daughter made a quick trip up from Albuquerque to see me one more time. We both felt grateful to be together, walking the trails of our old homestead, renewing our bonds, then sharing dinner.

Officially, we’d gone north to pare down the “stuff” still in storage—more selling, more giving away. But what remains is the distilled essence of a life, and we wondered if perhaps, someday, a part-time home there might not be impossible.

Back in Oaxaca, life quickly returned to its own tempo. Less than two days after arrival, Amy began feeling unwell—possibly something caught in transit. She waved off my suggestion for a COVID test.

“What good will it do? There’s nothing they can do,” she said.

She’s improving now, and I’m betting on a full recovery soon.

The cornfields around our home stand green and healthy. I’m back to starting my mornings outdoors—tending to the small demands and quiet pleasures that the wet season brings.

Old Ground, New Light

 

Two weeks slipped by since my last post—sunlit and full, with the kind of quiet richness that unfolds when one returns to old ground with new eyes.

After the whirl of Mexico City and the vibrant color of the International Folk Art Market, I laced up my hiking shoes and headed into the high country—the Santa Fe National Forest above town. I hiked with my former wife, Jean, with whom I share a cordial and respectful relationship. We walked among the stately aspens, followed gurgling brooks, and breathed deeply in the crystalline air. The wildflowers were out in force, reminding us both of the beauty that has always encircled this region. Together, we share our daughter Sarah, and many chapters of life. 

Later, I opened our storage unit—an archive of the past. Amy an I have downsized at least five times, so what’s left is either materially valuable or emotionally priceless. Going through the stored relics—paintings, objects, books, memories—I felt pangs of nostalgia. A quiet voice seemed to ask, “Why did you leave?” But life continues to unfold in Oaxaca, and what remains here is simply an earlier verse in a still-unfolding song.

I went down to Albuquerque to visit Sarah, who recently bought her first home. She's still settling in, boxes stacked here and there, a young tree of a life just beginning to root. We only see each other about once a year, so every moment was precious. I helped with the yard work, and we shared meals and conversation that brought us closer.

While I was there, Amy arrived from teaching a workshop in Nebraska. After a couple of days, she and
I drove back to Santa Fe. We put our things down in a home in an old Santa Fe neighborhood, courtesy of the landlord and lady who rented it to me for several years about a decade ago. We are still friends. Amy absolutely loves the place and would move in right away. Whenever I go back, it feels like I never left. 

Menwhile, Jean has generously offered us the home we built together more than thirty years ago, while she is away. It’s a big, quiet, light-filled place nestled outside the center of town on the open high desert plains, where people have horses—filled with the echoes of past seasons. We’re staying here for nine days, until we return to Oaxaca on August 3.

Back in Albuquerque, Amy was interviewed by New Mexico PBS about her work as the preferred illustrator for Rudolfo Anaya, the late literary giant and National Humanities Medal recipient. Her luminous illustrations have become part of his enduring legacy.

Meanwhile, I had my annual physical with my longtime physician—now in his eighties. We both moved like two old guys, chuckling like friends navigating the terrain of aging. Fortunately, nothing much has changed. I’m still going strong enough to hike, photograph, and find joy in the rhythm of daily life.

Friday night, we joined the traditional Santa Fe gallery stroll—an old ritual of openings, reunions, and conversations that stretch across decades. I stopped frequently, bumping into artist friends, trading stories and hugs. It felt good to be back in the thick of it.

Fortunately, we have been in town during the annual Spanish Market, that showcases the fabulous talent of New Mexico Spanish American artists, of which Amy is one by ancestry. Amy's cousin exhibited his craft and the two got to meetup.

Tomorrow, Amy’s sister arrives. From there, more adventures will unfurl—until we make our way home again to Oaxaca.

Two Mexicos, One Vision: Seeing With the Soul’s Eye

New Mexico again—the land of wide skies, long shadows, and a heartbeat that still echoes in my bones. Albuquerque was the first stop: a sweet reunion with my daughter and a night spent under the roof of the house she’s just made her own. A rental car waited at the airport, and soon the familiar road pulled me north to Santa Fe—the City Different, where a great arc of my life has unfolded.

Amy has been with family in Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Tomorrow she flies to Omaha to teach at a university, then makes her way here. Her arrival is on the horizon, and I relish with anticipation the warmth of shared companionship.

Mexico City lingers like a vivid painting—raw, layered, full of movement. The Metro became a kind of subterranean gallery: not easy to navigate, but full of life. Only one wrong turn that took me the wrong direction, which felt more like a curve in the composition than a misstep. Tickets were fifty cents—a small price for immersion. Far preferable to sitting alone in a taxi, removed from the living current.

One morning was devoted to Mercado Jamaica. It was like stepping into a kaleidoscope of scent and color—flowers tumbling from trucks, arrangements rising like offerings, petals underfoot, and fragrance heavy in the air. I wandered with camera in hand, sketching with light. Outside, a colossal mural titled Jamaica Revive—15,000 square feet of vibrant homage to Mother Earth, created in 2013. Street art on that scale always moves me; it’s public and personal at once.

The return flight north was uneventful. A final walk through the Metro tunnels, a last glimpse of the city's pulse, then skyward without delay to this familiar homeland.

Artists at the Folk Art Market

Santa Fe is alive with art just now. I attended an international art  exposition, then yesterday stepped into the great swirl of the International Folk Art Market—a place where the world gathers in handmade offerings. Jewelry, textiles, carvings, masks—each piece a doorway into another culture, another way of seeing. Yet it isn’t only the objects that astonish. It’s the people: radiant in traditional attire, standing with dignity beside their work, bearing stories and spirit.

One could feel it in the air—a deep, unspoken unity. As Bahá’u’lláh wrote, “Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self.” That vision was present in every handshake, every exchange, every smile and eye contact, every photograph.

Amy’s return draws closer. My daughter will visit again. Jean, ever gracious, has offered her home while she travels—a house I once built, thirty years ago. Memory lives in the grain of the wood and the angles of light.

“Make thou every effort to increase the number of thy journeys,” wrote ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “for travel hath great virtues. The traveler returneth with an enlightened heart and a spiritual mind. He seeth what the others do not see, and he heareth what the others do not hear.”