Safe, Flat, and Bland.

So here I am in the land of 'fromage l'orange': Wisconsin. I was in New Mexico and while I might not have stayed there forever I did LOVE the state. Vast, varied, vicious and sometimes voluptuous. I liked NM for all the reasons that I am struggling with Wisconsin. NM is extreme. It is still the Wild, Wild, West and you have to stay awake some of the time if you want to stay alive. The traffic is nuts but one thing they don't have in NM is lots of white folks driving around looking for an excuse to self righteously honk the horn and flip you the bird. There are lots of idiots driving in NM and some of them are white folks but mostly people just don't seem to ask for trouble on the roads. The streets are a mixing board and you cannot tell where someone is from and what there predisposition to using a vulgar display of force might be. Which is to say if you honk your horn at every person that acts like an ass on the streets sooner or later you will attract the attention of someone who is seriously having a bad day and now they have someone to blame it on: you.  This is not true in Wisconsin/Madison. Lots of self righteous white folks here looking for trouble which is typical for people who have never really found it.  It is not something you go looking for. I think in general folks in Albuquerque have enough REAL trouble and on some level they know better. 

Generally what I have described about the human culture of Albuquerque is true for the food and the ... topography and climate of New Mexico. The food is interesting and spicy and not bland with many different contributing influences. It won't get you killed but it might make you turn bright red. The landscape and climate is extreme and this was my favorite part. I loved disappearing into the 'wild' and having to manage energy, water, food, daylight, temperature and judgment to keep from getting killed or hurt. It wasn't safe; like most things that are VERY challenging and VERY interesting. I felt alive and beautiful out in the desert, I felt a sense of place and appropriate size: which means that I felt really small, not without any meaning or importance but I had left the world that humankind has created and the sense that we are the most important thing in it. This was and is predominantly the feeling and the phenomenon about being outside 'in it'that keeps me feeling alive gives me sense that I fit in to the world.  : be it paddling big water in a sea kayak or riding a mountain bike in the desert 20 feet from a 200 foot dropoff or skiing up a mountain and then down: your skills and your brain and your experience are the safety net. Sometimes you have to just grit it out and the ability to do that comes from doing it.  New Mexico is hard in the way that Wisconsin is soft, soft like someone who uses the AC in their car a lot and always finds the parking space closest to the entrance and drives to the store when it is a ten minute walk. Wisconsin is relatively flat and there is no 'wild' very close. Even if it is rural it is cultivated and tilled and rolled flat in neat, ordered rows and the only trees are between your land and mine or where the boggy spots are.

It feels like the entire city of Madison is one big, sprawled out mall: car dealerships, OfficeMax, nail salons, supermarkets etc. The worst neighborhoods aren't that bad the pretense that Madison is a 'cool, trendy, and happening' place is thick.  Don't get me wrong, if I had to live here (and in a way I do) I could be in a worse place but ... crazy as it sounds I would rather have to be in Milwaukee or Chicago because they are both places that unlike Madison require some experience and skills to survive and this makes them interesting, not always pleasant but too much even pleasantness and this kid starts to look for trouble.