So named by painter Georgia O'Keeffe, the "white place" (La Plaza Blanca) is a geologically unique and stunningly picturesque area near the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico (USA). It was a favored painting location for O'Keeffe and is visible from her house in Abiquiu Pueblo. Nikki and I spent a beautiful morning there during our visit to New Mexico in November of 2019. Nikki had a vigor that had been absent since her diagnosis, and it seemed as if the chemotherapy through which she had been suffering was perhaps working. Little did either of us imagine that she had only ten weeks to live. This was the last hike we took together.
This song was the first track recorded during the "She Who Watches" sessions in December of 2020. It features guitar, Native American flute, mandolin, and accordion.
La Plaza Blanca
You could see it from her house in Abiquiú across the Rio Chama Georgia’s skull-white landscape muse owned now by a mosque that grants us heathens and pilgrims of Other respectful access to this pallid sanctum of tuneful wind raven song ringing beyond chalky hoodoos and along milky ledges pastel creek beds that seem to run more ways than one. Then silence then song again then wind then none. With Georgia’s ghost and the hosts of Muhammed we track a shadowy past slipping through fences of barbwire and bone pondering strange exhibits of black stones on this ashen canvas stretching beyond time. This sun-bleached forever is quite hard to find there are no signs and the address in the local guide is 1234 Fictitious Lane.
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This was the sky over Portland on the morning of January 30, 2020. I shot the photo through the large window of Nikki’s room in the ICU, where I had spent a sleepless night on a recliner next to Nikki’s bed, holding her hand across the bed-rail, whispering and weeping. At one point during the night, she stirred and opened her eyes. I squeezed her hand and said, “I love you, baby.” She looked at me, recognized me, and said with a smile, “I love you, too.” These were to be her last words. Not long after sunrise, Nikki was transferred from her room in the ICU to an adjacent ward, into a room with no windows at all. I asked a nurse if another room could be found, pleading, "I don't want her to die in a room without a window." Around 3:30 that afternoon, half-asleep on a bed in that same bleak, windowless room, I felt the nurse tapping me and heard her say, “She stopped breathing.” I have no idea what the sky looked like then. You Continue
To Nikki My dearest love, you are No longer in the body that I used to recognize, the body That I walked with and made love to You are no longer in the form that Graced this earthly plane But you have not ceased to be You are here in other forms that I will love and always love Your bright spirit, your loving kindness, Your joyful energy and equanimity Continue You are not gone, you continue You are in the rain You are in the cloud You are in the flame You are in the smoke You are in the seed You are in the flower You are in the wind Your are in the trembling leaf You are in the snowflake You are in the sunbeam You are in the dusk You are in the dawn You are not lost You continue Always You are in my breath You are in my blood You are in my heart You are in my soul You are Always Late afternoon sun on
The jade sparkling stream I hear your voice in the riffles, soft currents Soothing whispers, tender murmurs And joyful sighs My own voice trembles to answer To sing you a song To speak you a poem Of deep running love and The deep grief I bear, Of devotion never dying Solid like the mountain, like bedrock But with words like the clouds Of yesterday Here then gone Like you, my angel My truest love. Dawn on the river brings
A soft rain, gauzy fog Geese barking on the sandbar Wet madrone, color of tobacco Songbirds muted by mist. I come from strange dreams To you, your picture by my bed Altar of petals, mala, candle Swath of beautiful fabric gifted By a loving friend, to honor Your spirit, your smile the brightest of Anything in this unfamiliar room Here by this river with Its stained-glassy glimmer Grey clouds and oak leaves weeping. |