Where Am I?

 

I’ve woken up not knowing where I am a lot this month. It hasn’t been scary, just an interesting math problem – “Good morning? Who’s dog is barking?” And then I remember I’m in Phoenix to hang out with my pal and bandmate, Jon Rauhouse as he comes back from cancer treatments. I think a lot here, there is so much space for thinking, but I don’t root down. I float over the ground like a used plastic bag. There are a lot of dimensions overlapping and visible; things and lives and whole decades forgotten in plain sight. Old skeletal signs, buildings abandoned and boarded, humans abandoned, some dark neighborhoods with no streetlights, then BOOM! Fashion Square in Scottsdale. Some businesses with desperate “WE ARE OPEN!” signs. Large swaths of “big city” that are completely humanless. I have known Phoenix for a really long time and I have always loved it. It’s the butt of SO many mean jokes (some earned for sure) but the soft place in my heart remains.

It doesn’t seem so different mid-pandemic except the price of real estate is no longer in the grasp of working families, just AirB&B-ers with two other homes. Some of the old holdout businesses are gone which makes me sad, but I guess it’s that way everywhere. It’s what will make me have to leave my home too. I see lots of real estate guys getting out of their cars in Jon’s neighborhood. I never see them drive in, it’s like the black sports sedans just drop from space. They are always on the phone, talking loudly and looking around, but seeing no one. We are invisible to them. They make a couple turns as if modeling the “skinny jeans work-casual” look, hop back in their cars and speed away, slick as palmetto bugs. The neighbors are watching them too. We look at each other and shake our heads. People are always playing out their “realities'' on top of their lives. I think that sums up Phoenix pretty well. It’s like a tortoise with people tap dancing (badly) on its back 24/7.

The nature here is one of a kind. The heat is one of a kind. It’s surreal. It’s represented well in the paintings of Philip C. Curtis which I just checked out at the Phoenix Art Museum (“PAM” hehehehe! The name “Pam” just cracks me up). The colors sear your vision. I drink them in greedily. I want them to replace my blood. Every regional desert here in Arizona is different – different plants, different light, different creatures. It’s not the Road Runner cartoon backdrop people have in their minds. 

I hike at night a lot here. Phoenix has more hiking than any other city I’ve been to. I love to step out onto the trail just as the sun is going down. The quail are shooing their babies under bushes, the rabbits are coming out to graze. Hummingbirds alight for the evening and survey their territory until they doze off. Snakes are waking up with the mice, and if I’m lucky, the coyotes start singing around 8pm. 

I climb up high and look out at the city; it’s a massive, sprawling platter of pinkish clay-colored “progress”. (Called “the pink fungus” by some.) It is all so mercilessly unsustainable. There is literally NO water here, but it hosts almost FIVE MILLION people and rising. From my perch on the mountain side it looks as if the saguaro cactus anchors an invisible net over the valley of the Salt River that holds the brown pollution at a certain altitude just below where I am sitting. It is amazing that even in a slow peril the flora and fauna become more extreme natural phenomena, even if it’s just an illusion. The lingering exhaust hurts my lungs and eyes. I’m sad the people of Phoenix have to live under the brown blanket. Then I think about the creosote bushes that grow around the city and of how they clean the air and produce the smell the desert is famous for – creosote after the rain. Some of these plants are literally thousands of years old but somehow not remarkable next to bristlecone pines and redwoods? How is this possible?! There are scientists who study them from space to see how they form rings. What fascinating beings they are! Creosote bushes are very picky about being replanted and I really hope they are not wiped out in land grabs for spec home building. It’s rampant here.

The moon rises behind me and illuminates the spectacular quilt of the desert. The lights come up in the valley and the brown fog disappears. It is magical. I realize I have never taken the desert for granted and it breaks my heart a little. A horned owl says something conversational to its mate and I remember it isn’t too late to aid the Earth in healing itself. (Thank you, Robin Wall Kimmerer for planting that seed in my heart.) I head back down the trail in the glorious moonlight. 

I have to cross part of a golf course to get back to the parking lot. It has just been watered to keep the lawn “golfy” enough. I find a striped pole filling in a proper golf hole and I yank it out. I pull down my pants and piss “the cup” full to the top. The pitch of my urine ascending as it crests over the top of the plastic is like a toast – “This is for you, Phoenix. I love you.”