I was told that it is windy in New Mexico this time of year.  For someone that lives in the Midwest, eighty degrees with a stiff, dry wind, is a hot day in April…

On the way to Albuquerque New Mexico we glimpsed an abandoned structure, a wrecked shell, with a small parking lot and what might have been mounts for gasoline pumps.  Even though a schedule must be kept, obligations fulfilled, — the off ramp invited us to have a look.

These photos are of what we found.  The desert is unforgiving.  It’s not city living.  I know nothing about the history of this abandoned, debris strewn mini mart, the causes of it’s failure, and the wreck that time and nature has made of what someone with dreams once built.  The insides are ripped apart, electrical wires in tangled disassembly, a single partial floor shelving for motor oil, or shack cakes, or potato chips rest on the floor. 

However the surfaces of the building are a canvas for more recent graffiti art, — a sure sign of life.

Standing at the back of the building the blue desert sky painted with cumulus clouds impressed me as particularly beautiful.  The desert, spare of moisture, only enough for shrubs appearing to be juniper, is austere.  

Nothing, and I mean nothing lasts forever.

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In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

In my beginning is my end.

–excerpt East Coker, by T. S. Eliot