Loving Marfa

Marfa is an unlikely combination of art town and border patrol, rural America with a Spanish colonial background, tiny, poor population with an influx of sophisticated free spending visitors. It's friendly, slow moving and open. It's also reminiscent of small town America in the 40's: wide main street, loud freight trains crossing the main drag, a single blinking red light, and old, lovely stores, now in another incarnation as galleries. Everyone seems ready to become a friend… one gallery owner said there is not such things as a quick errand, because there is talk, talk, talk…

Donald Judd, the artist who started this phenomenon, worked here during the war, when there was a German prison of war camp here. Tonight we are going to a fundraiser to save the prisoners' murals, so we'll get a sense of the space, 60 years later. There is a wonderful local book store across the street, with a strange and wonderful collection. Browsing the fiction today, I was aware of how the books you've read, companions of your past, speak to you quietly as your eyes scan the titles on the shelves…. We're going back there for a reading by an African poet….We're amazingly busy for our first 24 hours in a town of 2100.

Our hotel, El Paisano, is lovely, with a little courtyard for Marcel and Magnifico, and a view of the dome of the Presidio County Courthouse, which at night becomes our nightlight.