Chaco Culture, northeastern New Mexico

Travellng, I discover something about my own language and imagine the discovery is very much like an archaeologist discovering an entire buried civilization in the rubble and sandstone of northeastern New Mexico.

My discovery is this: that I have to this point in my life referred to time as something being taken away from me, as in the road from Gallup, New Mexico to the turnoff to Chaco Canyon takes a long time, and the road from the turnoff to arrive at the Chaco Culture Visitors Center, a 20 mi. unpaved road so tortuous that it unhinges the refrigerator in our RV, takes even longer...

Time isn't being taken from me, it never has been and never will be. Time isn't a possession, something that can be taken from me, as posited by my culture and embedded in its way of life, and as embodied in such an utterance. Such an utterance is the way my language is set up within me, the way it's been conditioned and custom-fit for the world I'm living in, and I have the power to change the way I've been taught to think about time by changing my language.

This discovery may seem to you, the reader, to be a small find, but to me it's monumental. It causes me to examine the nature of other utterances, both spoken and written, that I habitually make. That I make this discovery in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a dirt road in northeastern New Mexico after walking for hours through the ruins of Chaco Canyon, a World Heritage Site, only adds to the delight of the discovery.