To this land where the clouds fall
I am attracted and repelled, attracted by the actual
physical magnificence of physical New Mexico, attracted by my
visions of the potentialities of life here, yet repelled by a
number of trivial matters, all of which I know to be trivial,
nevertheless they please and obsess me as
yet I cannot do away with them because they are, I suppose,
expressions of some deep as yet undiscovered protest. So may
after day I go through the drama of it, night after night,
affirming and denying, glad I am here, wanting to be somewhere
else, This hour I would build my home forever on this earth,
just this earth of sagebrush, pinon and cottonwood trees, the
Rio Grande and streams from the mountains. The next hour I am
in rebellion and want to fly away, critical of adobe, disliking
the altitude of fast heartbeats and restlessness, both can
scornful and depressed that so many small people have come to
live small rancorous lives in this great region of the western
continent.

I am one. Here I am I. In these grand spaces I feel grand,
with largeness in me, and my body in the world. I tell myself
that this geography must in the future as it has in the past
produce a great race. I see this future, mountains beyond moun-
tains, and then the sun. I buy land, a large tract. I build a
big house and smaller ones. I have few fields and cattle. My
children grow up. Their children grow up. With my friends and
workers I inhabit it, building in New Mexico my world of man.
I am divided. I am split into many Is. I am in pieces, all of
them small, each one wrestling with some petty problem too great
for them-but which would not tax a child. I say that a great
people are not possible in this altitude. The air does something