I've made a small home of red sand

More than 35 hours in five days… My Explorer—probably more of a home to me than any shack, apartment or house I’ll ever stay in—took me to Albuquerque, New Mexico last week. I was calling the trip a small introspective experiment in dealing with utter aloneness. I knew not a single soul, and the closest relative or friend was about 10 hours away.  
I found myself eating New Mexican food in small cafes, where voluptuous Hispanic servers delivered huge plates of eggs, peppers and beans smothered in red or green Chile to tattooed immigrants, alone. I was drinking my liver into submission in seedy bars alone, viewing the skinny-jeaned hipsters and quiet, mustached homosexual artists, all with something quite intriguing in that head I was sure, if only they’d notice me.

But as I was screeching open old rusty cabinets and rummaging through sticky notes in my own brain, I found every so often under stacks of crumbled papers thoughts of the others around me. My lips twitched as I mouthed the words they would say and what I’d say back, being cool and witty of course.

Is introspection not also extrospection? Is there ever a difference between the two? What you have seen and heard and felt all has an effect on your mind—aren’t they all parts that couldn’t work correctly without the mind—so maybe it isn’t that they are the same, but that introspection doesn’t really exist. But then again, after watching a TED video by Julian Baggini, I don’t much believe that we as humans even have a core—a real you—but merely we create what we are and in turn can be absolutely anything we please, at any given moment, especially if we don’t have to perform but instead only speak.

This led me only to another experiment. Be someone else. It would only take a creative mind and a good lie, but think how interesting it might be to absolutely trick someone, maybe even depending on what they like. It would be as if the two of you were meant to meet, or at least that’s what the other brain would think.

I’m not really sure what the implications are to this kind of experiment. I didn’t try it in Albuquerque, merely because I met a lady the first night I was in town, getting a drink at a crimson glowing pool hall.
I asked her, “How far is Sante Fe?”
She said, “About an hour. Hey my friend bailed on me for pool, want to play?”

It was that easy—the beginning of a great friendship. I suppose not all first meetings go so well, but Luck and I get coffee every morning.

There was something about that place. Who knows if it’s because I’ve been dying to move but I came here thinking I wouldn’t leave. That I would just stay and make a new life for myself. How hard could it be with $300.
When you meet someone that you can talk to for hours and the conversation never ceases to interest and before you know it you’re five drinks in and you walk to the bathroom and the mirror whispers to you, ‘You’re drunk,’ it’s hard to find motivation to drive out of the city.
Albuquerque wasn’t the most beautiful town I had ever seen, but the way the buildings were tinged with red dirt and the small immigrant businesses, probably started with only $300, showed cracks and scratches from the winds whipping hard work and tumble weeds across the façade, got to me. The stories of the War Zone and gang battles—the Padilla boys and the West Siders—pushing cocaine and heroin and shooting their guns in the streets on holidays, I was immediately entranced.

For me the stranger the better. I enjoy the filth, I relish in the grime and I’d much rather play in the dirt than sit pretty with dolls.