Taos (it rhymes with mouse)

im sat here writing this in an artsy coffee shop in taos, its like a hippy version of central perk. the weather has taken on an altogether welsh quality and im stranded here until my bus leaves at 8. luckily, this is american so i am able to purchase a 20oz cup of coffe to nurse while i am here. toas is tiny but famous as an artists colony, dh lawrence and georgia o keefe both stayed here at some point. i like it because it has a ramshackle quality thats missing in santa fe. i saw a tumbledown adobe dwelling that tom sawyer wouldve probably referred to as a 'haunted house' and there is a small stretch of street that still has a boardwalk. i dont think anywhere really feels like the wild west without a boardwalk. i also passed a bit of wasteland that had been prepositioned into a 'holy garden' with each tree turned into a tatty shrine of hand drawn signs and wind chimes. it was very odd. i just spent ages in tiny ramshackle museum to kill time. among the exhibits were vintage barbed wire - they all have different names such as 'crannoks twisted oval' - and a stuffed eight legged lamb. this is one of the most bizarre things i have ever seen. it had a pair at the front and two backends each with a pair and the remaining two were on its back. oh and it had an extra ear in the centre of its head. apparently it lived for 5 days and even more surprisingly it predates the atomic bomb testing in new mexico.

i visited the indian pueblo up the road. i had wanted to visit an ancient native american site but they are a bit off the beaten track. toas pueblo has been continuously inhabited for 1000 years so it kind of counts and it has those tiered adobe houses that are the same as the ancient dwellings. its built on the most beautiful spot, at the base of a sacred mountain with a stream running through the village. the smell of wood burning ovens also wafts around adding to the atmosphere. there is a fanous church (as painted by o keefe), inside they dress the icons according to the seasons. when i visited they were in clothes of a sickly pink colour. there is a ghostly cemetery as well where the old church can be seen tumbled down. i bought an indian pie, it was pretty tasty but it had an apricot filling so im not sure how authentic it was. the unleavened bread, a bit like pizza dough had been baked in the traditional oven though. i must admit, i am less interested in native north american art and more into early spainish colonial religious art. there is a 300 year old chapel in ranchos de taos still decked out in the original fashion. the brightly painted wood carvings of icons and cruxifixes are so naive they seem byzantine or early english medeaval, but thay have such a lot of character, i find them mesmerising. the artists who made them, the santeros, were considered holy men in their own right. interesting thought. the real feeling you get is that people who came to live here in the c18th and c19th were really coming to live a lifestyle out of the middle ages.

i feel i should also say a bit more about santa fe, because once you get beneath the cliched tourist experience, its actually quite a cool place with a lot going on especially as it has the same population size as shrewsbury. there is a really world class cutting edge contemporary art space called site and even some private galleries showing some decent stuff. i went to an audio-visual performance evening at the art schoolm - it was students graduating off the interactive fine art course and most of them were pretty good. it included someone who had made a cello out of flat touchscreen moniters and he played it with a bow. im not describing it very well but it was impressive. i enjoyed people watching all the students too.