New Mexico

The Creeley quote below reminds me of when I was living in New Mexico a few years ago. I had a nice adobe style pad with a couple of pinon trees in the front yard. Ever anxious to make good with my only neighbor on an isolated street I would wave to him whenever I saw him in our daily routines, but he seemed to want to have nothing to do with me. He had a single large pinon in his yard near his driveway that he would seemingly take quick umbrage in when skirting out of his car. I didn't think too much about his reluctance to my overtures, as I am fairly insular and reclusive myself, but somehow I felt I needed to make some sort of benevolent acknowledgment of each others existence, so I continued my efforts. No success. Eventually I began to sour a little bit myself until finally I decided I had to approach him and get to the bottom of things. When I saw him arrive home from work, I hurried out my door and approached him, asking why he was so reluctant to my overtures. He looked at me, then my yard, then at his yard and said, "Isn't it obvious?". I looked around but wasn't sure what he was getting at, there was certainly no class distinction, no obvious divide, nothing offense on either side. When I answered that it wasn't obvious, he said, "it seems we have a difference of a pinon."