I went to Roswell for the aliens. I wanted to see how one tiny little town could put itself on the map and keep it there with accounts of mysterious government cover ups, and the suggestion of not being alone in the universe.
I also just wanted to take an off highway route. As much as America is blacktop leading to cookie cutter super stores, it's also still so much more...
After zipping through endless miles of two lane open sky, I pulled into Roswell at sunset.
What was the first thing I saw?
I might as well have been in fucking Kansas.
Luckily, the rest of the town was different. I have some more photos... but they don't do justice. This is one moment in my life where I'll say images can't speak better than words.
Images would capture the small town. The auto stations, the restaurants, the banks, the alien gift shops, the alien museum... and everything else that made it a place for people to call home. It would show all the dust, and how a lot of it was for sale.
But, it wouldn't show the spirit.
After settling into the hotel, and an awkward conversation with my neighbor for the night---while we were both on our laptops wandering the parking lot searching for the promised internet connection. I'm not kidding. I didn't catch his name, or occupation, but I caught that he was in town on business in the standard polo shirt and khakis, I set out to find some awesome New Mexican food. I settled for the restaurant across the street, when the other ones I tried to go to weren't open, because it was after 6pm on a Sunday. The place was a local rip-off of a chain restaurant. Totally weird.
In any case, I had a long back and forth with the waiter about my drink order. I asked for a milkshake. They were out of ingredients. I asked for Bulliet. No dice. I asked for Jamesons. Let me check. Yes...
Now, it took me a year to write this, because putting it into words takes away from it... I'm not enough of a writer to describe the sun setting into the West, especially when I can't ride on all the emotions that sunsets usually carry away. This sunset isn't the end of anything. Just a moment...
In the time it took the waiter to bring me my whiskey, the sun settled down into the horizon. The sky became the perfect blue that only a clear summer twilight can be... and the unyielding heat decided maybe it could give up for a little while. I looked out into the horizon, taking in the faint evening stars. I stretched out my legs onto a nearby chair... and took in the immense quiet.
In that moment, I realized two things.
One, why aliens were such a commodity in Roswell. Because whether or not a real alien ever exist, any person who stepped foot into the town was an alien. I know I crash landed there for the evening, and just as foreign coming from Austin as I would have if I came from Mars or the outer limits... and I'm sure my wandering around a parking lot with my laptop was no weirder than using a probe (okay, maybe a lot less weird). I saw that selling aliens to the world brought much needed money to the town, since it didn't have a hell of a lot more to offer... and that I was already working out my own alien sighting jokes and stories. Not to mention, making up visits from Outer Space made everyone who claimed the town feel a little less alien themselves. It might be obvious... but sitting there, I earned a deeper understanding of the American sensibility to sell what you know to whoever will buy it, and that sensationalism will always be a profit when all that's left is heat, dust, and pretty night skies.
Two, that I was quite proud of myself to be sitting alone in a restaurant drinking whiskey while the sun was going down. I never really thought about who I would be in my 20s, well, aside from pretending to be April O'Neil on the elementary playground... and I like that I'm perfectly comfortable thousands of miles from anyone or anything that I know.
