20 Years in Arizona

Today marks the day 20 years ago in 1993 when I officially moved to Phoenix.  I've written about my "Arizona-versary" several times in this blog so I won't go over things that I've already talked about, but it is somewhat of a milestone.  Just short of one-third of my whole life I have lived here, and in spite of being born in Pennsylvania, I consider Arizona my home.

I have always loved the desert, even as a little kid when the only desert I saw was on our black-and-white TV.   Something about the dramatic starkness and the beautiful barrenness of the land spoke to me, and I was always mesmerized by the craggy, windswept mountains and vast expanse of sun-baked earth.  Where a lot of my peers saw nothing but brutal desolation and debilitating emptiness, I saw life, history, color, art and intricate, ageless patterns and rhythms.  This is a land that holds more ghosts than people, and the footfalls and songs of countless previous generations echo down the canyons of time right to the present day.  The desert might appear to be a lonely place, but you are never alone here.  Wherever you go, spirits walk with you.  Monument Valley, in far northeastern Arizona, is one of those places where the veil between the temporal world and the spirit world is especially thin.

Arizona is a place where cultures collide, intersect, conflict, separate and come together again, over and over.  Cultures such as the Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo have mixed uneasily at times but have still melded together to form a uniquely colorful and vibrant pastiche.  A fine example of this is the church at San Xavier del Bac, in southern Arizona.  Known as the White Dove of the Desert, it rises in hallucinatory splendor from the shimmering, heat-blasted expanse of ochre- and olive-colored desert near Tucson.

It seems, though, as time goes on the various cultures who make up this land are increasingly at odds with each other. Discrimination and bigotry are rampant in Arizona, particularly against Native Americans and Mexicans who have lived in this area for a very long time.  A lot of those doing the discrimination are people who have moved here from somewhere else, and really have no claim on the land or any of its residents.  I guess Anglos have a way of doing that, moving into a land and then taking it over and appropriating its culture as their own, making aboriginal residents feel like outsiders and trespassers.  They did that with rock and roll music of the 50s, when black gospel and rhythm-and-blues music were co-opted and taken over by white artists like Elvis Presley and thus made palatable to the presiding (white) culture, who milked it for as much money as they could get out of it.  They took everything, and gave nothing back in return.

The Anglo culture has been dominant here for a long time, but that is coming to an end. The increasing Hispanic population fairly guarantees that the white population of Arizona will become a minority, as early as 2025. What that will do to this state, its culture and its population cannot be reliably foreseen, but it will be amazing and fascinating, and it will blaze a trail to a new reality and a new state.  Maybe Arizona, as it rushes into the future, will find that it more closely resembles the Arizona of 100 years ago than anything else.

I feel that I have carved myself out a really good life here in Arizona.  I have a home which I dearly love.  Buying this house was one of the best things I've ever done, and it is a place where I feel perfectly safe, secure and satisfied, and where I can enjoy my beloved rabbits in peace.  I have made many wonderful, faithful friends who I value very highly, and a new chosen family in Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue. I've been a volunteer with BHRR for going on 13 years and it has made a huge, incalculable difference in my life.  BHRR is also one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and I feel that I have gained much, much more than I have given.

The yearly parade of what passes for seasons here in the Phoenix area never ceases to fascinate me, and a beautiful desert sunrise can still imbue me with an awe and an appreciation every bit as strong as the first time I witnessed one.  The cranberry-colored clouds of a December sunset can fill my mind with a beauty and serenity unsurpassed by any other.   The summer monsoon can set the sky ablaze and turn the evening twilight into a living painting of the most amazing and intricate textures and colors.  And most certainly, a clear nighttime sky far away from the lights of the city is absolutely one of the most mind-blowing and awe-inspiring things I have ever witnessed in my life.  The sheer number of stars you can see defies comprehension and is a treasure beyond any valuation, and far beyond my ability to adequately describe.

The vast diversity of the land and the eternally-changing tapestry of the sky turns this state into an artist's-canvas of the soul, a multifaceted prism which shows you many, many different, new sides and angles of something you have seen dozens of time.  The desert renews and reinvents itself constantly, but in very subtle ways and if you don't tune your mind to these changes, you will most likely miss them.

But, all things have a beginning and an end, and I am starting to get a bit restless.  I find the right-wing, ultra-conservative politics of this state to be destructive, suffocating and toxic.  Too often these days conservatism is just a convenient cover for racism, homophobia, religious intolerance and bigotry.  American politics is fracturing along many different fault lines, not only by political orientation but also racial, economic, gender and class lines, to name a few.  People are much less inclined to open their eyes and their minds to new outlooks and opinions, and many of them opt to shut out any voices which are different from their own.  They choose to not make an effort to understand what their neighbor is saying to them, and prefer instead to surround themselves only with others who share their narrow views.  Understanding different points of view takes a little effort and so many people in this state are very disinclined to do to make that effort.

So, I am starting to look elsewhere to live, most probably out of Arizona.  I'm looking toward New Mexico or Oregon/Washington state.  I have no concrete plans as of yet, but this is how things happen in my life.  There will be a slow, almost imperceptible change in me and eventually, when the time is right, I will leave Arizona and move on to the next adventure in my life.

There will come a time when I will have no more Arizona-versaries, but I will always have memories of the great times and unrelenting beauty of my desert home.

Surf's Up

The month of September is at my doorstep, but the summer is still trying to suck every last drop of life blood out of us, like a crazed vampire who doesn't know when to stop draining its victim.  Almost imperceptibly, the great wheel of the seasons is turning with tantalizing slowness, and the sun continues its languid, snail-like journey towards the south part of the sky.  I leave my weekly aerobics class at approximately the same time, 6:50pm, and I can tell it's getting a tiny little bit darker each time.  Used to be I would walk out of the gym into the bright sunlight of an early evening, but now the sun is hovering just above the western horizon, sinking a little more each day.  The equinox is about three weeks away, and before long I will exit the gym to a sky devoid of sunlight..

I so love autumn because it has always been a time of reflection and contemplation, a time to consider what has been done so far this year, and plan for the long cold winter nights.  Everything seems richer and more colorful; the air will soon carry a touch of chilliness in the morning, and there will be a fragrance that speaks of the harvest and coming-of-age, of promises fulfilled and lessons learned.  The nighttime sky, always an indication of things to come, shows the Scorpion slinking low across the south toward the faintly glowing western horizon, and gallant, regal Pegasus, the celestial flying horse, making a powerful leap into the eastern sky, taking its rightful place of honor in the starry firmament.

In the coming months, the Scorpion will disappear in the west just as Orion the Hunter throws his leg up over the eastern mountains and hoists himself sideways into the sky, his faithful dog beside him and Lepus the celestial rabbit underneath him.  The Scorpion and Orion are locked in a death pursuit, each chasing the other but never catching up.  Scorpion wants to sting Orion with its glittering tail, and Orion wants to kill Scorpion with his club.  They've been doing this for billions of years and will probably continue for billions more. Such is their fate, both of them hopelessly joined in titanic struggle that will never be resolved.  Orion will rise higher in the southern sky until around the winter solstice, when Orion will take his rightful place as Lord of the Sky, glistening in the cold, deep winter night, Master of Heaven and Earth, surveying his kingdom.  The Rabbit will still be underneath him, right above Columba the Dove.  And very late at night, right around the winter solstice, you will spot the star Canopus, the harbinger of spring, skimming barely above the southern deserts and wildly twinkling like an over-caffeinated, multicolored strobe light.

I have been listening to a lot of music from the 1960s recently.  XM satellite radio in my vehicle, along with the music channels on DirecTV, serves up an endless stream of great tunes from that amazing decade.  Some of the music still sounds incredibly fresh and new, as if recorded just last week.  The music and the vocal harmonies of a lot of the groups were startlingly complex and intricate.  Looking back over four decades, I have a new appreciation for the achievements of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the glorious "Jersey Boy" pop of the Four Seasons.  Even shallow contrivances like The Cowsills, a musical family whose members ranged from youngsters barely out of the toddler stage to the surprising youthful and hip (for the 60s) mother, recorded an amazing song called "The Rain The Park and Other Things."  The Cowsills were a manufactured pop group, a precursor to the ubiquitous "boy bands" of the 80s and 90s, and their short-lived success degenerated into a series of acrimonious lawsuits which ended up tearing the family apart.  Besides the reign of brash, revolutionary groups like The Beatles and the Jefferson Airplane, the 60s also saw the dawning of the singer-songwriter era with geniuses like Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, whose brilliance would continue into the new millennium. 

Sure, there was a lot of crap music from that era, something that is inescapable no matter which decade you examine.  The "bubblegum" music craze was particularly obnoxious, and unabashedly phony studio groups like "The Archies" and "The 1910 Fruitgum Company" sold millions of annoying records.  Reflecting the cultural war at the time, a lot of people snapped up faux-patriotic potboilers like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler (1966) - and on the other end - whiny, overwrought polemics like "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire (1965).  But all that was counterbalanced by Motown, the early Beatles, and the whole San Francisco psychedelic era, and those are the musical genres with real creativity, and real staying power.

Also central to the 60s sound were the Beach Boys, whose music and sophisticated vocal arrangements are still universally regarded as the best of the best.  Brian Wilson's perfectly crafted masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and the shimmering, transcendent "Surf's Up" are unforgettable.  The Boys, along with lesser lights such as Jan and Dean, created the entire California youth scene, an eternal playground full of fast cars, surfing and beautiful girls in bikinis frolicking on a golden beach in an endless summer (recently given a garish, playfully hallucinogenic update by Katy Perry in her "California Gurls" video).  As someone just entering their teenage years, I was completely captivated by this perfect vision of a happy, carefree world drenched in lemon-yellow sunlight where you didn't have to work, and the biggest problem you had to worry about was catching the perfect wave.  Growing up as I did in a gritty steel-mill town near Pittsburgh, life could get oppressively dull and dreary.  The nearest body of water was the dirty Allegheny river which absent-mindedly meandered nearby, definitely not conducive to surfing.  The "beach" (derisively called the "Polish Riviera") consisted of a tiny strip of land on the other side of the river made up of smooth, round river rock, which was incredibly uncomfortable to walk or lay on.  Wintertime could be long, harsh and very depressing, often not seeing the sun for two weeks at a time, the trees devoid of green leaves, and the world locked in a frigid grip of icy, frozen ground and heavy, leaden skies.  But gods help me, that was my home, and I loved it.  Truth be told, sometimes I miss those incredibly dismal, cheerless winter days.

When conditions outside become difficult or unpleasant, either emotionally or because of the weather, the natural urge is to turn inward for solace.  Whether it's 10 or 110 degrees outside, it's the same thing, two sides of the same coin.  Memories are important stepping-stones back to a world with which you are intimately familiar, and that can be a very comforting thing.  It's endlessly fascinating to me how a song or a piece of music can evoke such rich, detailed memories of who you were and what you were doing when you first heard it.  I can remember all the words to songs I have not heard in 40 years, yet I can't remember what I did last week.  Funny how such seemingly trivial things make such an enormous impression on you.  Memories are funny, precious and remarkable milestones on the journey of your life.

State of Grace

In a previous post I mentioned I am a lover of language and words. Some scientists say that the use of language separates us from other animals, but I don't believe that. In my opinion, other (maybe most) animals on this planet use language. I certainly think that whales and porpoises have and use language. The great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans - most likely have some sort of vocal communication. And my work with rabbits over the past decade has convinced me beyond any reasonable doubt that they have a common language which they use to talk to each other. It's far too subtle for humans to discern, but I believe it's there. Even very young rabbits are born with an understanding of the lapine language.

Maybe what does delineate us from other animals is the extent to which humans use language. Over thousands of years humans have created hundreds, if not thousands of individual languages and dialects. More importantly, humans have devised a way of codifying and writing their language down, which means knowledge can be preserved and transferred to other humans. Animals may have dialects but to our (admittedly meager) knowledge they do not write things down.

Humans have taken language as a means to express information about concrete objects and extended it to include abstract concepts. Abstractions are very important ideas that don't necessarily have a physical manifestation. Emotions, such as sorrow, joy and anger, are abstract concepts without a physical component, even though you can often "tell" if someone is angry or sorrowful from the way they look and act . But these are merely outward signs, not the emotion themselves. Other abstract concepts such as courage and honesty are even more ephemeral - it's sometimes impossible to tell from their outward appearance if someone is courageous or honest. But they exist and are very important. It's interesting to me how some of the smallest words can carry immense abstract meaning, which brings me to the subject of this post.

"Grace" is one of these words. Five letters, one small word, but what an interesting concept. Everyone has heard of grace. Athletes and dancers can be described as "graceful." We talk about being in someone's "good graces." A Catholic prayer starts out, "Hail Mary, full of grace." We've heard about "grace" all our lives but what does it truly mean? If a dictionary entry did not exist for "grace" and you were called upon to write it, what would you write? It is such a highly abstract concept that everyone knows what it is, but it is very difficult indeed to describe it in concrete terms, much like "hope," an even smaller word but equally abstract. We all know what "hope" means, but how can we describe it concretely?

I did look up "grace" in the online dictionary and there were eight different entries for its meaning, including the short prayer said before meals and a temporary reprieve or exemption, such as a grace period for paying a bill. Only one entry came close to the abstract meaning I'm thinking about, "the quality or state of being considerate or thoughtful," which for me doesn't quite come close to describing grace. For me, "grace" is a state of being, but it covers so much more. It is a state of contentment, satisfaction and happiness, of being magnanimous in spirit, of being generous and joyful and accepting and embracing everything in life. It is a place you find yourself when you are fully appreciative of the life you have, being surrounded by people and things that you love, and understanding how fortunate you are. I think all animals naturally exist in a state of grace. Humans also have a legacy of graceful living, but too many years of "civilization" have taken it away from us. That's why we need to strive and purposefully try to get back to this natural "state of grace" into which we are born.

The Quaker song "Simple Gifts" has a line which for me comes close to describing this state of grace:
"...When you find yourself
In the place just right,
You'll be in the valley
Of love and delight!"

And that's where I want to be.