Still Life at El Zaguàn

Historic Santa Fe Foundation’s Executive Director Pete Warzel asked our El Zaguán resident writer Sarah Stark to share some of her thoughts on the lockdown as seen from her rare vantage point as an occupant of our historic building located on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. Sarah is a writer and educator who lives in El Zaguán with her son Jack. Please enjoy this personal narrative on a life in the difficult time that we are all experience in 2020.

Still Life at El Zaguán
April 2020
A Personal Narrative by Sarah Stark

Sarah Stark with her son Jack Stark Dudzik bking behind HSFF’s El Zaguán

It all started last October when Tom Hanks was here at El Zaguàn filming scenes for “News of the World”, things being a bit off with my writing. I think it was a timing thing. I was in a particularly easy rhythm with the re-writes of my novel (Sallie Finnegan Tells Her Story), and perhaps becoming overconfident. This would surely be an award-winning piece of work; this would no doubt get attention for its brilliant perspective, structure, etcetera, etcetera. You know. And then word came that Tom Hanks would be filming a movie here. The same Tom Hanks who I’d grown up with, who seemed to be such a vulnerable, normal guy when I’d first seen him my junior year in high school in the movie Splash, with Daryl Hannah.

What started as a daydream, soon became a creative nightmare. Though I raced home from school on my off-periods those few days in October and though I made a special effort to read outside on my chaise lounge just in case the actor walked by, I never actually saw him. Later, I saw photos taken by a neighbor of Hanks riding a horse up a dirt-covered Canyon Road, and I’d seen the film prep crews the week prior to filming and for a week afterwards cleaning up, so I know it all happened. But in the end, I was left cold and flat. My novel-in-progress might as well have been a wild mustang taking off at a full gallop for open land.  I was left thinking about hubris and celebrity and talent, and wondering how to get back in my groove. Hoping for some kind of reset button.

So I’m not blaming Tom Hanks. Not really.

In my world, it is Day #49 of the COVID-19 reality at El Zaguàn, my clock starting to tick the day I returned home from a visit to see my middle daughter in Portland, Oregon, Tuesday, March 17. St. Patrick’s Day I realize now, but then my mind was on Clorox wipes as we boarded planes and used public restrooms. By the time I pulled my Honda into my parking spot near Apartment 7, all the toilet paper in Santa Fe had disappeared and I found myself puzzling about how I was going to teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream remotely to 7th graders. Since then, I’ve figured out the basics of groceries, essentials and teaching via a screen while Jack continues with his 4th grade Montessori class on a laptop in his bedroom.

But when we’re not in school—which is many hours of each day—we’re outside in the small paradise that surrounds us. The apples and pears are in full bloom, and the lilacs are just starting their show. The birds know something is amiss, their brilliant singing the evidence that they’re not missing the cars on Canyon. The vocal concert begins a few minutes before 6 a.m. every day, and proceeds all day long, through dusk. Jack, who will turn 10 in a week, has learned to ride his bike. It happened somewhat spontaneously on Day #20, a result of time and patience and the perfect hard dirt track around the lower fountain. Can you imagine a better place or time to learn to ride a bicycle?

And let’s talk about contagion. The kind of thing you want to catch. I saw Jack in that golden April sun on that day he started pedaling on his own, and I wanted to be a child again. That carefree sound of rubber tires on gravel. That expansive delight in his eyes. I watched him pedal for a day, pretending to read, and then I ran-walk behind him on the  river trail, Siberian elms and aspens in a parade of lemon green overhead. Finally, when I could bystand no longer, I borrowed my grown middle daughter’s old Schwinn bicycle from her dad’s garage, and I got back on the seat after more than 40 years. Re-learning how to pedal and steer and brake has been like time travel, taking me back to my sunniest memories from Austin, Texas, where I last rode a banana seat bike in the 1970s, weaving aimlessly around those tree-lined neighborhoods.

Today, there are seven of us exploring our lives anew at 545 Canyon Road, even as we do so many things the same way we’ve always done them. All of us living here are quiet to begin with—staunch introverts, mostly—and so I don’t imagine any of us feels too isolated. Not in any negative way. Rather, it’s been just the kind of quiet to hunker down and get things done, even if the faraway reality of pain and suffering is real in our minds. We’ve been watching and listening to the birds as we wait out the uncertainty. Paul, Kuzana, (and her husband, Wade), Celia, Judith, Jack and me. We see each other and wave from a distance while checking for mail or hanging out our clean laundry. When I’m inside, Jack reports comings and goings from his spot down near the fountain. I’ve taken to reading under the blooming pear tree in the mornings, and on the porch swing in the late afternoons. A few times, on Wednesday evenings, a few of us have had a drink while overlooking the garden, careful to pull the wicker chairs far apart.

It is a still life, like a slow-moving painting.

Paul Baxendale (Apartment 6) has taken down his March show from la sala—“Residency: Translations of a New Santa Fe Style in Design and Practice” the inspired wood starbursts and monsoon tableaus and candelabra (see it online at https://www.fieldstudieseditions.com/ )—and has hung all of the pieces that have not yet sold on the walls of his apartment. He’s spending his days making jewelry—“Crystal Allies” necklaces—and rockhounding near Abiquiu and Pilar. He’s been gardening on the Canyon Road side of his apartment—planting pink corn in the pots by his door and tending to the sunflowers that volunteer there every year.

Kuzana Ogg (Apartment 3) will soon have completed two series of paintings during lockdown. The first series, “Valhalla”, involves “seeing the world through tears”, tears that can be interpreted as either our human tears or those of the earth in the form of rain and snow. Her second painting series—in progress now—encompasses otherworldly landscapes for our souls to escape to—small abstract mountains and voluminous clouds.  “The most different thing [is] that everything is staying the same,” she told me. “I awake to birdsong and enjoy listening while I paint.” (See her latest work at KuzanaOgg.com)

Celia Owens (Apartment 1) has taken to social interactive art, albeit at a distance. She started by putting messages in her window, facing out to Canyon Road. Her hope was to reach the curious passerby. Phrases like “What part of yourself came out to play in this time?” She’s alternated small paintings in the window display, and she reports that a few people have let her know they’ve noticed and enjoyed  the unexpected messages. Along the fenceline one day, Celia wove a long adding machine tape through the posts, writing “What do you think?” at each end of the white paper, and leaving pencils and markers in a few socially-distanced locations to encourage passersby to add their thoughts. A number of people did so, writing things like “Have the bravery to share love!” and “I hear the birds say, ‘It is going to be OKAY!’”

And our newest resident, Judith Vanderelst (Apartment 5), was offered refuge at El Zaguàn when her planned project location with one of the northern Pueblos was locked down just as she arrived from Amsterdam. Judith is continuing her collaborative work on a language revitalization project, creating curriculum rooted in land-based knowledge. She is not new to New Mexico, having earned her doctorate in anthropology from UNM more than a decade ago. Judith keeps her door open and writes that “seeing butterflies, a squirrel pair and the occasional hummingbird is an unexpected treasure and testimony to the special place New Mexico is.” (You can check out her wonderful writing at https://sense-iblebaglady.net/)

Meanwhile, Jack Dudzik is drawing leaves and trees, and labeling them for school science and art projects. In addition to daily outings on his bike, he’s working on a soccer move called the rainbow and helping his grandparents (my parents) learn how to participate in our weekly extended family Zoom gatherings.

And I’m still writing and drawing a little and gardening. The seeds I’ve planted in the lower garden—as usual, way before the last frost date—have not yet appeared, but I’m still watering and still hoping. Several kinds of lettuces, spinach, kale, red onions, marigolds, sunflowers and hollyhocks. My novel is still way out ahead of me across the plains. For months I’ve watched it pull away, almost beyond my sightlines. But with all this mind-expanding coronavirus change, and all this beautiful quiet still life, I think I’ve finally made peace with its rebellion. I’ve accepted the idea that I won’t ever be gripping those reins fully, and that I have to find another way. Horses have never been my chosen form of transportation anyway. Instead, I see myself riding my bicycle with abandon across the high desert, joining this otherworldly and spirited horse in an unforeseen and new way. Maybe side by side, not even trying to beat it anymore, but embracing the raucous uncertainty with all my spirit, one hand on the handlebar and the other one, overhead and free.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Sarah Stark is a writer-in-residence at El Zaguàn where she lives with her son, Jack. She teaches English and creative writing in Santa Fe, and is the author of the award-winning novel, Out There (Leafstorm, 2014). To read more go to sarahstark.net.