Taos Travels

I just love Taos, it calls to me! I went by myself this time and thoroughly enjoyed poking around the galleries, museums, back streets, and surrounding areas. What is it about walled yards that is so appealing....and such a great backdrop for the flowers that never look like this in Texas! And literally, the mountains are visible from right in town, heavenly!






Went to the Harwood Museum there, great old building full of a variety of art some early modernist, some from the first art colony of Taos in the late 1800s. For some reason this portait made me sit down and study it. I could somehow see the real person even though it was a somewhat stylized image, something about her eyes.



This photo just speaks to the colors there I love, the shadows, the adobe, and the flowers! Something about adobe is so human and warm....and it makes colors pop.



As I've gotten older, I find myself much more intrigued by modern art and sculpture. I don't know why that is, maybe the fact you have to study it and it's open to interpretation. Life becomes less black and white, more gray, and perhaps it's that same principle at work for me re: art.

Taos has more than its fair share of sculpture gardens.....



One in particular is Lumina Gallery. Besides this incredible sculpture garden,





Felicia Ferguson has a beautiful house/gallery full of high quality contemporary art. Every window in the gallery frames an amazing view of the mountains and surrounding countryside (hers is sans highway:). Like this one.....



I begged her to hire me and let me live in the broom closet :)

She has just remodeled a couple of casitas on the property which is a few miles outside of town. They are beautifully decorated and reasonably priced. And just imagine walking out into the sculpture garden with your morning cup of coffee!

I wanted more time, but maybe it's best to leave a place when you still want more. That way you have the pleasurable anticipation of the next visit and it remains fresh and vivid in your mind and heart.

Allison fashion tips (please see disclaimer in small print at bottom of this posting)

I have the good fortune to be sitting in Taos, NM at this moment working on this blog post. I love it here so much, lots of natural beauty, good art, quaint buildings and unusual stuff to buy if you're in the mood. I am preoccupied with that at the moment actually.....

The last two trips I have taken I find myself absolutely stumped when it comes to packing. I simply have no idea what to pack. My wardrobe is so....so...incoherent right now, it does not hang together. I'm not sure which came first, the fragmented wardrobe or me forgetting how to pack but I'm pretty sure the two are closely related.

If a woman wants to look chic and 'together', yet easygoing, what does she pack for a long weekend in a semi-hip yet laid back place? A place where she may be doing a little hiking but at the least walking around a lot?? What does she wear on the plane that's comfortable and casual yet conveys she cares a little bit about her appearance? And, hiking boots.....clunky and space guzzling, ya hate to wear 'em on the plane but it's the sensible thing to do. Ugh, my head hurts.

I'm sure I don't know the answer exactly but a few thoughts occurred to me. I decided I needed a plane uniform. Of course, once I thought of that, I thought, "I need a long weekend in a semi-hip yet laid back place" uniform. The question is, what is this uniform to be? What is my 'look' and how do I reduce it to a uniform?

I'm thinking jeans with simple white long-sleeved shirt for the plane (it is so dang cold on those things). A very nice belt and some unusual but comfortable low heel shoes. A friend who is into fashion recently told me you go mostly cheap on the clothes but expensive on the accessories. That could be shoes, purse, jewelry, jacket, things like that. That makes sense to me.

That means I only need to buy.....shoes, purse, jewelry, and a jacket. Oh, GREAT!!!

Well, after poking around in Taos' boutiques and little shops, I decided to add my own little addendum to Debbie's good advice. Shop boutiques. I think you can make a lot of impression with one or two little pieces from a boutique that sells unusual stuff. And the ones here abound in hip little variations on a T-shirt of all descriptions. Lots have unique detailing. And not that expensive either.

Since I don't want to spend much on clothes but I do want to look 'together', I think I have to go with uniforms that consist of jeans, cotton shirts, etc. But, I am going to be looking for those few accessories that make the difference. Found the perfect shoes in a little shoe place here, only $208. Maybe to the Sex and the City gals that would be a bargain, but to this DSW shoe gal, that's hard to swallow. But they would look very cool and I do tend to wear stuff I like until it literally wears out.

Hmmm, well, I think the theory is sound even I'm having a hard time putting it into practice.....I'll work on it....

(Editor's disclaimer: Allison's fashion tips are in no way to be construed as authoritative, relevant, or even fashionable. Her views are hers alone, please check with your personal shopper before attempting to implement any of her ideas.)

Taking it personally

I was attacked this morning at 4:30 am by severe doubts about my ability to create this scene called an online community. Yesterday I was struggling a bit figuring out how to get content for a couple of my interest categories. And, I'm still thinking about the email I sent out to the ladies I've been talking to and held focus groups with.....I got some responses but not as many as I hoped and I asked people to let me know about women who like to write and inspirational stories I could use etc. Not what I expected. It all added up to give me a sleepless hour.

I took it, of COURSE, as any sane woman would, personally. Not as in offended or hurt, but as a reflection on my self-worth. Why do I think I can do this? Why do I think people would be interested in what I'm doing or what I have to say? I could go on but that pretty much captures it. And, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only woman who has that particular bug-a-bear to deal with.

It's like, when you throw a party--and don't deny it, I know all of you have thought this :)--and you're afraid no one will come. Or, you're pretty sure people will come but that isn't good enough. You want LOTS of people to come because then people will know you're a cool person whom others want to be around. And, I don't even need to point out what it says about you if people don't come in droves......

It struck me this morning in the light of day when it's easier to have a sense of perspective, that this is a basic difference between men and women.

See, it would probably never occur to a guy to think a light turnout to his party had ANYthing to do with the size of his manhood. If he thought about it all and was trying to throw more parties, he would merely consider it a problem to be solved. Hmm, well, let's see, I bet they didn't come because the basketball semi-finals were on. Hmmm, more queso and fewer sausage balls. Or, gee, I think it's time to change the oil in this thing....

That would pretty much be the extent of it.

A woman of course would spend hours stewing over what she could have said or done to make people not want to come. Did she not have the right clothes? Did she fail to consider who had just broken up with whom, so neither came? At previous parties, was her food unappetizing, was the conversation BORING??? Was she not measuring up to parties OTHERS WERE THROWING? WHHAAATTTT?????

OK, I feel better now that I can laugh at myself. I'm laughing because this is so extremely TRUE! Oh my gosh! I think I"ve just stumbled on the reason men are still in charge of the world generally speaking. (I think that's a woman thing too, to draw sweeping, generalized conclusions from a single datapoint--men would you agree with me here?)

So, I just need to be a guy about this thing. It's a problem to be solved, a puzzle to piece together, not a reflection on my worth as a person.

So, it might be that people are just busy and would give me some of the information I wanted if I approached them personally (ha, there is that personal thing again). Or, ping them as a group again because we all know people are very busy these days and sometimes you have to ask a couple of times....or understand that people don't know what the site is yet and just need to time to trust it and me.

It's a problem I can solve, not a personal reflection....OK Allison, write that on the board 200 times....

On second thought, maybe just a sticky on the bathroom mirror will work :)

Life Floats.....

A friend of mine was telling me the story of a friend of hers who has begun having some serious hormonal issues associated with menopause. That combined with some realizations that 50 is fast approaching and certain things in her life are not what she expected them to be have really got her down.

This isn't an uncommon occurrence based on what I've heard in my many conversations with women at this time of their life. Nor with me.

As I was listening to Pamela, I was musing on how you go through life, making choices and decisions....just living your life. You make some good decisions and some not so good ones. For many of them, you can see the immediate consequences of course. They work out or they don't.

You have kids or you don't. You get married or you don't. If you're single, you decide to stay in this or that relationship, or to leave it. You probably face that one more than once. Professionally, you accept additional responsibility or a proffered new position, or you don't. At the time, these decisions make sense. But it occurred to me that it's the larger implications of them that remain hidden to us.

Until mid-life that is.

I think mid life becomes such a big deal because we finally have enough 'data' to see the patterns formed by the accumulation of all those seemingly sensible choices. Unfortunately, the pattern of seemingly sensible decisions has landed us somewhere we did not expect to be. WAIT A MINUTE! HOW DID I GET HEEERREE??

From the vantage point of your late 40s, the past isn't exactly what you wanted, and the future doesn't stretch nearly as far as it used to.

Suddenly, you're 49 and unmarried. How did THAT happen?? Or, you're not at all in the professional space you wanted to be. The last kid is off to college, and you look at your husband of 23 years and realize you don't know each other. 'Yikes, wha' happened?', you ask yourself.

Voila! Mid-life crisis. Life sneaks up on you, it floats by before you realize how much scenery has slipped out of sight.

Mid-life is the time it seems to me, when we have to learn to let go. Letting go of kids, relationships through death, divorce or simply outgrowing, physical looks, dreams. Not that we don't have to let go all through life, but I think mid-life letting go, in general, goes much deeper, to things we hold deep in our hearts.

Letting go involves a grieving process. That's to be expected and it's healthy to accept and honor those feelings. And yet, mid-life doesn't represent the end of the line by any stretch.....

Being the eternal optimist, I've found that letting go of something means you've freed up space for something else. I prefer to think of a mid-life crisis as a mid-life recalibration. There is still plenty of time to dream new dreams. To reacquaint yourself with hubbie, to make new friends, do new things.....deciding what to do with that new space can be exhilarating. And scary. And overwhelming.

But before we get to that point, like Pamela's friend, we grieve.......

Women in Art Video

This is a lovely video that must have taken untold hours to do.....

The Wise One on my shoulder.....

It struck me yesterday, as I was having one of those rare mornings when the answer to a frustrating set of silly and unrelated incidents just seemed to be having a good cry (which I did....ah! that's so much better....), that even in the midst of my frustration and tears a part of me knew that this would go away and fade into the mists of time.

The sky would be its same lovely blue, again. The small, sublime beauties of life would still sneak up on me when I least expected it and leave me stunned with surpise and delight. The 10 year old girl in me would still take an unreasoning pleasure in using various colored and glittery-inked pens for writing everything from checks to journal entries.

It is definitely one of the perks of hitting one's 40s.

I noticed this beginning to happen several years ago. That even when I was in the depths of sadness , or presented with an upsetting situation or bad stretch of life happenings, there was a 'wise' part of me sitting on my shoulder, nodding knowingly and telling me that this would pass. "This kind of thing has happened before", my Wise One tells me. "Here you still are", she says, "having your share of happy times." "Remember how this works?" Oh yeah....I do remember, I think to myself.

It doesn't mean I don't have the occasional urge to just cry over the whole thing. Or life doesn't present more than its fair share of difficult times. But, I guess it's having lived through enough that you begin to see the patterns in things. So you see the ebb and flow of life more clearly. And you know that the pendulum always, eventually, swings back.

THANK GOODNESS!!

I think this awareness is what keeps the occasional 'yuck' time from spiralling into a much worse time. It keeps me more open to the possibilities embedded in those situations.

Even when I'm crying, I know that somewhere over the rainbow......

Trusting the process

I tend to be an action oriented kind of person. It seems to me that I figure out things by taking action. And, or maybe consequently, I try to 'make' things happen. The underlying assumption that if I just work as hard as I can at it I can make it happen seems to be a fundamental basis of my being. It shows up physically in that I overcharge my body when in physical activities, much more tension and tone going on than is necessary for the task. I seem to assume that everything require 120% effort.

The irony is that approach just doesn't always work in one's favor. I've found there is some (so fine as to be almost invisible) line between unflagging persistence and hard work, and trusting the incubation process. Trusting that the way forward will become clear in time without forcing.

My back improvement is due to pilates and what it has taught me about strength combined with relaxation. You put out the effort necessary for the task and no more. WHAT A CONCEPT!! Maybe that's a message for all of us overachieving, perfectionist ladies :) If mastered, it keeps you from making tension and stress such a constant that you forget what it's like to relax into the energy.

This is an awfully zen concept. And, very hard for me to do but I'm slowly seeing how it works if I just let it. The zen part is that you can't just not focus on it, it requires active....something....maybe attention. But not overthinking it either. Again, the Almost Invisible Line.... Obviously, I haven't figured it out or perhaps I could articulate it better.

But I know I'm onto something......