Southwest By Northeast
Arizona is a pizza stone. When not in use it is cool to the touch. But when the Sun is up, when the oven lights are on, it’s a hot hot heat. A baked heat that cuts through the wimpy SPF, produces those mirage waves you’ve seen in every movie about high temperature places. This isn’t new to me though. It’s just been a while. Close to a decade? I’m bad with time sometimes.
But the heat isn’t invasive. No, this is New America. Far too modern for nature’s totalitarian schemes. A place fit for a Henry Miller title (you know which one). So sod to the heat, it’s the serenity that permeates. It’s hitched on the breeze, animates the wind chimes, extends the distance of the helicopter blade sound. Even with feet bare on the semi dead grass, the chlorophyll deprived blades like highlights in the hair of some dopey Phoenix teenager, waiting for the pitchfork pinches to come up from hell so I can retreat twenty feet into the shade, staring languidly at the perfectly clean pool - it’s there. If anything, it’s there especially.
I had to keep correcting myself, in my own mind that is, from referring to Arizona as West Coast. I have this tendency to refer to anything west of the Mississippi as West Coast, even though the vast majority of it is landlocked.
It’s more about philosophy than geography. I’ve read plenty of reactionaries who write off America as the land where Europeans shed their precious heritage for some bunk modernist cultic codswallop and insofar as this is true it is true of the West Coast: my definition. Now I concede that part of the reason I’ve come to this conclusion is self serving claptrap. I won’t ever throw my sweet New England under the bus like that. Objectively speaking though, the proto Black Metal Puritans knew that there wasn’t any good reason to stick around for Henry VIII and his ancestors. Europe wouldn’t get good again until the Romantics and then taper off at mid century grooviness. Now it’s just an open air assisted living complex run by masochists and corporate auctioneers. We move forward, yes, but in cycles you see. Spengler and Hegel locked forever in this weird dance.
There is no virility in Arizona. It is not a state for the young. It’s where people go to retire - mentally, aesthetically, socially. There is the Georgia O’Keeffe crowd: fat old dykes in sun hats who stroll around confusing botany for art. Former teachers, currently good neighbors.
Then there are the tanning bed McCain voters. People who wear a shirt and tie with a baseball hat, sunglasses on the brim. Red generic polo shirts tucked loosely into cheap chinos, unaware that a red polo always signifies retail electronics. But this is of little concern in the land of national sales conferences, real estate pyramids and popular car dealership mascots. Greasy tanned old drones with half sober ideas about self ownership and property. This is the rabble of airport drunks, petit bourgeois settlers and owners of newspapers that write in monotone officialdom.
Go beyond this and it’s mere hybrids. Slather some New Age aioli on one of the other subgroups. There are emo Chicanos, rockabilly skaters and white Sikhs. The last grouping I know only because I have relatives who are members of this community. Keep in mind that ‘community’ is a word seldom used in Arizona. I’m not even sure I’d use it in this respect, it’s more accurately a form of Orientalist welfare for aging baby boomers. There are arranged marriages, yoga classes and free food from the Ashram. Those accursed children born into this generally flee once they get old enough.
Arizona isn’t a state, it’s a landscape. A smiling cactus painted on a cold tile combined with a working knowledge of what flowers bloom when. Everything moves at half speed, even on the five lane highways packed with white cars and black windshields. The noise barriers decorated with a faux Amerindian pattern. The mind has plenty of time to think here, unencumbered by the actions of reality. Multiple drafts are completed before the answers are delivered. This is the place to take your tests. Will this tempeh trigger my allergy? Is this guy queer or was he earnestly flirting with my sister? Revelation: people aren’t stupid, they just do stupid things (and like it). Unimportant decisions are left up to God. Bad plastic surgery in the cafeteria of the art museum. Stay Healthy, Holy, Happy®, I’m taking a 5 hour flight home.
