{"id":12428,"date":"2021-09-09T13:17:53","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T19:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12428"},"modified":"2021-09-26T08:51:08","modified_gmt":"2021-09-26T14:51:08","slug":"back-in-taos-layers-of-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12428","title":{"rendered":"Back in Taos, Layers of Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in Taos, New Mexico, to visit old friends, I keep walking past my favorite hangout of years past, Caff\u00e9 Tazza on Kit Carson Road. It closed in 2018, I think and it had been going downhill from its slightly entheogenic-esoteric height. The food offerings diminished, the interior became grubbier, and the baristas bathed less frequently \u2014 but the coffee was always good.<\/p>\n

The town’s adobe (and pseudo-adobe) architecture owes something to the Pueblo Indians but also to the Middle East; after all, “adobe” is a loanword from Arabic\u2014and maybe from Coptic<\/a> into Arabic before that.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Caff\u00e9 Tazza, like the gracefully aging El Pueblo Motel, was a favorite place reading, and I like to think that sometimes architecture influences your receptivity to certain ideas.<\/a><\/p>\n

And now off to the Harwood Museum to look at lowriders and santos.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"

I often meet my own ghost.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Exterior,

Caffe Tazza as it was, maybe around 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

The same building in 2021, empty.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

Interior doorway, about 2016 \u2014 or any time in the previous two decades.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

The back pato, where you might hear conversation in New-Age Spanglish: “Vamos a pensar en how to manifest that.”<\/p><\/div>\n

  1. Surprise, al-tob<\/em> means “the brick.” [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Back in Taos, New Mexico, to visit old friends, I keep walking past my favorite hangout of years past, Caff\u00e9 Tazza on Kit Carson Road. It closed in 2018, I think and it had been going downhill from its slightly entheogenic-esoteric height. The food offerings diminished, the interior became grubbier, and the baristas bathed less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,32,401],"class_list":["post-12428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-new-mexico","tag-taos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3es","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":930,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=930","url_meta":{"origin":12428,"position":0},"title":"The Right Architecture for Reading","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I played hooky and went to Taos last weekend. I spent part of two mornings reading In Search of Zarathrustra (interview with author Paul Kriwaczek here).The book is both an exploration of how Zorastrian ideas influenced Western monotheisms and an travel book about Iran, Afghanistan, and other regions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=442","url_meta":{"origin":12428,"position":1},"title":"Taos Notes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 23, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I got in the new Jeep, headed up the \"secret cutoff\" and came over the mountains and down to Taos for a couple of days.There is always a nostalgia component for me here, dating back to the summers in college when I worked on what you might call\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1139,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1139","url_meta":{"origin":12428,"position":2},"title":"The Difference between Santa Fe and Taos","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking back to the artists and writers of 1930s-40s Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico writer Paul Horgan observed,Between Santa Fe and Taos there was a sense of rival constituencies, and sensitive persons tended to be loyal to the powers, virtues, and dangers of one place or the other. Santa\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1423601823","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2234,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2234","url_meta":{"origin":12428,"position":3},"title":"Los Matachines at Yule","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"You hear different languages. There are French tourists, German tourists, and some guy in a Rasta tam. Another man looks like he came straight from the nearby Overland Sheepskin Co. store, pausing only to snip the tags off his coat. I am not the only one in the artsy Anglo\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/matachines-taos.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":242,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=242","url_meta":{"origin":12428,"position":4},"title":"Leaving Lammas","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"What was the \"moment\" of Lammas this year? Not a formal ritual, but walking down an overgrown logging road in the Wet Mountains, looking for mushrooms in the grey-green firs. A soft, misty rain started to fall, enough that I had to dig my GI poncho out of my pack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"culture\"","block_context":{"text":"culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=culture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10898,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10898","url_meta":{"origin":12428,"position":5},"title":"The Robot God and the Underworld Gate","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 29, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this month, M. and I were in Taos, New Mexico, for what I think was the fifth annual PASEO outdoor art festival. The interesting thing about PASEO is that it happens mostly at night, in a town with a late-medieval street plan that was built for ox carts and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"Robot God","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/idol-daytime.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12428"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12472,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12428\/revisions\/12472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}