ROVIN’ AND RAVIN’ WITH MIKE

     All of those intense feelings came back to me recently, when I received a postcard that as as much from that time as from any place.  My old friends, Margaret and David, were chronicling their adventures in New Mexico.  They had fished in the Rio Grande the day before.  (I didn't fish there, but I did gather wild sage--a sprig of that sage, preserved in an album divides the sections of this article.)  The next day, they were going to a hot spring nearby.  (Oh, yes, the clothing-optional hot spring, but not for your shy raver.)  And then, heading back to Taos, they said....

     I don't know what it is, the beauty, the open space, the mix of cultures, but almost all of New Mexico seemed to be sacred space.  There were so many roads I did not go down, so many that I wish that I had.

     I remembered that the British author D. H. Lawrence had spent some time in New Mexico, but I did not know that his grave is there.  His wife Frieda had his body cremated and the ashes brought to the ranch where he had lived only five months (in 1924).  She mixed Lawrence's ashes in wet concrete to make the altar inside the building (second photo), while she herself is buried just outside (first photo).

     If you plan to make a pilgrimage to this little chapel (which Lawrence's widow insisted should be called a memorial), take some sensible shoes... and a sensible car.  Although the  D. H. Lawrence Ranch is today maintained by the University of New Mexico, it takes a little roughing (at least when I was there in 1995) to get there. 

     While the place would be sacred to those for whom Lawrence is a sort of prophet (decide for yourself with nine works by Lawrence),  the incredible beauty and peacefulness of the setting make it a good place to think, just to be with yourself.

     Generations of artistic people have been drawn to Taos.  Five years after Lawrence's stay there, Georgia O'Keeffe  lay under "The Lawrence Tree," which is still standing, and painted what she saw.  You can compare the painting with a photo of the tree.  I, too, have lain under that tree, but a painter I am not.

     Neither am I a member of the Lawrence cult, although I do cherish some of his short stories.  But the cool, clear air and radiant sunlight of this place infused it with a special value for me, a value that I can understand Lawrence appreciating so much.

     But, here's a little mystery.  Who is really buried in D. H. Lawrence's grave?  It turns out, the answer may not be D. H. Lawrence.

      One of the people in my mind when I made my pilgrimage was a survivor of the Vietnam War.  So, when I learned that there was a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in nearby Angel Fire, I thought I would go, perhaps to get him a souvenir and to take a photo or two.  As it turned out, my afternoon at the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial, as it is now called, was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.  

      Dr. Victor Westphall built the monument to commemorate the loss of all of those who died in the Vietnam War, but especially his son Victor David Westphall III, who was killed on May 22, 1968. Dr. Westphall has told the history of the memorial himself.  I would like to tell you a little bit of the history of my afternoon there.

     As I drove up to the memorial, I could hardly figure out what I was seeing.  It is not so much a building as a giant, shimmering chord, hanging visibly in the pure mountain air, not resolving all the dissonances of a sad, long symphony but somehow transcending them.  (It is, by the way, fiendishly difficult to photograph.)  

      I walked around the grounds and through the visitors center, almost afraid to enter the building.  The interior of the memorial (second photo) is starkly simple: a few bleacher-style seats with cushions and boxes of tissue.  Across the back, there are photos, changed monthly, to give faces to the terrible numbers.  There are no symbols to link it to any one religious tradition (although, the day I was there, someone had left a few sprigs of sage, which Native Americans use for purification).  All who come there fill in the emptiness in their own ways. 

     There is, of course, a much better known monument to those who died in the Vietnam War that cuts into the ground like a black sash of mourning.  I don't know if there is any reason other than its geographical location that has kept this memorial from so capturing the national imagination, but for me, this place is much more about hope, about the possibilities that remain rather than the potentials that were lost.

     The best part of my afternoon at Angel Fire was spending about a half hour with the memorial founder, "Doc" Westphall.  (Of course, I would spend another memorable afternoon with parents mourning the loss of a son in Vietnam.) The memorial and its mission had become so important to him that it was at times hard to tell where Dr. Westphall ended and the memorial began.  The love for his son had become multiplied in the calculus of grief to become a love for almost sixty thousand sons. 

     When I began work on this article, about a week ago, I was happy to note on the memorial's website that Dr. Westphall was still alive.  This morning, to check my links, I returned to the website and read that "Dr. Victor Westphall, Ph.D., 89, founder of the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial in Angel Fire, New Mexico passed away on July 22, 2003."  

     While I had looked forward to sending him a copy of this article, now I am left to memorialize the maker of a memorial.  In the spirit of his memorial, however, I want to emphasize the joy I feel for having met him, for having visited the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial, and for having this opportunity to recommend it to you.

      Note: Since I posted this article, the friend referred to above showed me an album of photos and pamphlets from the Memorial that I had put together for him, but that I had forgotten.  In that album, there is a photo of the cross in the chapel.  Although I made a mistake in saying there are no symbols in the Memorial to link it to any specific tradition, I still believe that the impact of the chapel comes from its emptiness, not from what fills that emptiness.  

     Now, it is time to take a journey out of this world, some forty miles south of Taos, to the little town of Chimayó, where, in the early years of the nineteenth century, a friar discovered a crucifix, which became known as el Señor de Esquipulas.  

     Three times the crucifix was moved, and three times it reappeared in the hole where it had been found, and so, a little chapel was built on the site so that el Señor could stay in Chimayó.  Soon, the chapel gained a reputation as a site of miraculous healings, and as the crowds of pilgrims grew, it became necessary to build a larger structure, the current one, in 1816.

     Although I have interior shots of the other two chapels, I did not take a photo of the interior of this one, because the day I was there, there were many people praying.  I wish that I had taken a photo, because the chapel walls are lined with crutches no longer needed and other tokens of healing.  In the chapel, there is a hole in the floor at the spot--el posito (the little well)--where the crucifix was found.  You are permitted to take from the hole the sand, which is supposed to have healing qualities.  (There is a sign stating frankly that the sand is replenished and blessed as needed.)

       I had a friend in New York, the product of nineteenth century European secular intellectual trends which did not even condescend to renounce religion.  Yet, when she visited Chimayó a year or two before I did, she was so moved that she wrote me about the experience.

     What happens at Chimayó is a mystery.  What happened to me at Chimayó, I do not care to discuss.

     Three chapels down, one to go... but, we've already gone there.  Sacred space for me is like those bizarre structures, the Klein bottle and the tesseract or hypercube, which cannot exist in the physical world of three dimensions as we know them.  (I find it reassuring that Salvador Dalí used a hypercube in a painting of the crucifixion, Corpus Hypercubicus.)

     I read one time, and I don't remember if it was in a book on topology or a book of science fiction, that every point inside the single-sided Klein bottle would, by definition, be outside it, and similarly, every point in the universe outside the bottle would be inside it.  That is what sacred space is all about.  And so, at night, when I pitched my little tent, it got crowded in there, with all the people I was thinking about, caring about, because sacred space is not just about space but also about time.  All times and no times are contained.

     Each of us is at this moment inside every chapel that has ever been... or ever will be.