la silla vacía en la mesa
Why do we leave the seat available to those whom we know will never show up at the table. Like the empty space between la and mesa in a language that we do not understand, the words express the same sentiment. This is the tension behind the place and it's mood. The town of Lamesa had one seat removed because no one wanted to look at the empty seat [draw parallel to county seat of Dawson], left behind by one of its beloved, left behind by those who would leave a place that everyone of the town's residents knew was empty to begin with. The town begets nothing nor was it begotten from anything. A place where the white clouds are born from the dark tabula rasa only to be torn from their roots and removed. A place that had to be abandoned to escape captivity in the soil, the dark sinful soil. The remaining ones grow religious to fight the soil, the sun, the sand in their eyes and the emptiness that expands in all directions.