Not sure I could live here. Too many people that are like me, and the altitude—7,000 ft.—too rarefied, a little too extreme, though the locals say it keeps the place cooler in summer than Albuquerque or Phoenix. Too much art, rather too many galleries in which there’s not enough art. The Georgia O’Keefe Museum. O’Keefe the Joan d’ Arc of Contemporary Art. I’m not suggesting O’Keefe self-bestowed this appellation, only that it was bestowed upon her by others both before and after her death when it was, by then, too late to confirm or deny. Agnes Martin, late painter of whom I have an almost otherworldly regard, lived for years in Cuba, New Mexico, a small town a couple of hours from Santa Fe in which we stop for coffee. The coffee may be the worst coffee in the world, it’s that bad, but the town is kind of sweet, in that it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. It’s a day later, the day after I throw the coffee away, that I learn Agnes Martin lived in Cuba and made some of her best paintings there, before she moved to Galisteo where she lived before she too passed away.

Attributed to Georgia O’Keefe, at The Georgia O’Keefe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 9, 2019. Photo by author.