"i feel like i'm in a dream"

one of the guys hanging out at the thunderbird hotel pool told k. he felt like he was in a dream during our 4th of july trip to marfa, tx.

everything about marfa is a little dreamy, and it doesn't take long to get on marfa time. the drive is about 450 miles from austin, and there's not much between here and there. and there's not much there when you get there. but what's there is pretty perfect. since there is so little to do, i found that i enjoyed the things we did in a much more focused way. hanging out at the thunderbird hotel pool and drinking beer and reading magazines, seeing the huge night sky at the nearby mcdonald observatory, eating some great food at the miniature rooster and cochineal, playing the steve miller band on the juke box and letting k. kick my ass at shuffleboard at padre's, visiting the chinati foundation... twice...

the two things i loved most about marfa this time are the same two things i loved about it four years ago when i visited: the first is that people talk to each other in marfa. i had lovely, lengthy conversations with two shopkeepers, one of whom was also the server at miniature rooster. we met a rancher and his crew cleaning up after a wedding that his daughter had organized in a one-time church, turned art gallery. he invited us to ride horses on his bajillion acre property that starts "where the asphalt ends." while we were parked across the highway from prada marfa, we had the pleasure of meeting four young californians on a road trip who had a joie de vivre that was inspiring.

the other thing i love about it is the spaciousness. donald judd, the new york artist, who started the whole marfa art thing, is said to have been attracted to the clean, empty desert. i know very little about art, but the judd installations at chinati certainly utilize the landscape to speak to space and emptiness (maybe?). anyway, it's just so darn wide open out there; the sky is so big, and the desert seems to go on forever until the mountains swallow it up. there's a big feeling of freedom that comes with a landscape like that. i hope to find myself again there soon. want to come?