More on: New Mexico

O, I write to you now Lew / Wallace to say that a deal is a deal / is a deal, and that everything is possible / under our eye-squinting American sky.

I’m lucky to know a lot of really good, generous people, but they don’t fall into any of those standard narratives of saintly lives. They’re people who just keep on trucking and being good in the face of a lot of injustice and ingratitude.

A Grant of the Divine— That Certain as it Comes— Withdraws—and leaves the dazzled Soul In her unfurnished Rooms. ——————————Emily Dickinson PAINTER AGNES MARTIN, who died in Taos, New Mexico, in 2004, had the ability to make seemingly restrictive, minimalist forms pulse with life. Her paintings are nearly all made up of straight lines and…

Black Cross, New Mexico, 1929 (Georgia O’Keeffe)   Twin of the one in my mind, this cross is uneven—blooms like the trunk of a heavy woman, its underside bright as sunset, and under it, O’Keeffe’s hills—like looking at two miles of gray elephants, she said once—a sort of bed where no cross lies down. The…