Arizona through Instagoggles

Experiences are everything. That's what I have learned from riding my bike around the metro area in which I was born, raised, and am currently existing. Phoenix, along with every other city, has its certain stigmas for certain people. But whether someone is stuck here or chooses to be here, they're here--which means we're here.

I whoosh by pedestrians and all their experiences--I glimpse through the crack in their universe's door. I share a small sliver of history with each one. He's the guy whose dog barked and chased me until the leash ran out of slack, while he gave me a look. I am the bearded white guy that rode by and made his dog start barking while he was on the phone.

She is the woman who I waited for at the drinking fountain who wished her two kids would appreciate historical sites when they obviously did not. I was the guy that mumbled a witty comment that she didn't understand and so casually fled from, grasping her children's hands.

The cacti are monumental here. It's arresting to think about the variety of humans that have come to dwell in this desert--an ecosystem so unique that the mere presence of a Saguaro cactus pinpoints your location on the globe to within a couple thousand square kilometers. These fulfill for me any conceivable purpose that a church spire might fill for another. They serve as monuments to the lands and processes that have survived millions of years only to have no choice but to allow us to depend on them.

And let's face it. Our sports history is tragic.

But there remains that relationship to my surroundings that is always so apparent. We don't exist so that our freeways are used--they exist for our use because we chose to build them. But the Saguaros watch on, weathered yet stoic, threatened yet protected. Threatened, yet they have never had a fight to fight. I am proud of them but there is nothing about them to be particularly proud of. The pride felt for the Saguaro is not ownership, it's not tribalism. I think deep down and it turns out to be a selfish pride. I'm proud they've stuck around despite me. I'm proud that we haven't yet screwed things up so badly that they're gone. I'm proud of the Saguaro because it has escaped so far.

The state symbols and Arizona's natural imagery are two different things, though there is substantial overlap. A flag is an effective mode of representation communicated from human to human. But coyotes don't know what the copper star means, and Gila monsters have never heard of Barry Goldwater. I've always wanted a tattoo of a Saguaro, but I feel like the level of permanent trauma between cactus and human is already at a pretty solid level.

And there are the hidden things. The pearls that the swine from other states are not privy to. There is a cactus in my backyard that blooms once a year for only one day before the petals shrivel and fall.

Other-wordly pods grow dark purple and I can almost see them pulsating with anticipatory energy. The annual fuse runs low and a painfully gradual explosion of white and yellow bursts forth hour upon hour. I want to call everybody I know to come appreciate the arresting sight in person, but the window is too small.

The petals have withered and fallen to the rocks by morning. There is a present feeling of grief felt at its passing, knowing that a similar moment would not occur again for a full year--and that it will be very easy to miss when it does.

But in Arizona we sing on anyway. Because there is a lot of that kind of stuff. Most of it is a lot harder to notice and appreciate upon first experience, but that's the desert. It's an acquired taste that doesn't deserve the term. I like to think of it as foolproof. Transplants swarm in from snowy cities to use the climate here while they wait for theirs to climb back up. It's nice to have something other people want.

Then again, we don't have the desert--it has us. Those of us with roots here, I think we do relate to the cacti more than we realize. A cactus survives almost in defiance of its environment. Throughout the world, life is drawn to water. The history of life centers almost completely around its use of water. Civilization was originally birthed between the convergence of two long rivers, a metaphor of femininity too perfect to be made up.

Whatever all that means, it matters little to the desert plants. They've hacked nature, as humans also get a thrill out of doing. Over the millennia, they reworked their biological systems to avoid being so dependent on water. They're still ultimately dependent on it, but they realized long ago that Mother Nature was going to be stingy with moisture in the Sonoran Desert and that it probably wouldn't change soon. What did cacti do? They developed water storage and rationing systems. What did we do? We developed reservoirs and canals. Ours just happen to be outside our bodies.

I love my home state. If I ever do leave, I'll likely return. I learn here every day--from the people I pass to the resources I use--and, because of that, my mind is my own mind from living in my own Arizona.

Fuck You Very Much

a short story by T

I just sat through 45 minutes of nightmarish traffic and I decide to cut through the far side of my city block to stop at the neighborhood corner store for cigarettes. School is just getting out, so the streets are crowded with parents in cars. There’s a complicated interaction of machinery unfolding in front of me–moving parts that evolved to their present state through mutations of new solutions, rules, and regulations that arise for the purpose of increasing efficiency and safety of each individual part. I keep this in mind as I grow anxious about an upcoming crowded intersection.

Politeness and courtesy are virtues mastered by the kind of people we want to fill the world with, right? But I’d argue that it ought not to be the rule all the time. Any chronic pleaser will tell you that much. Sometimes it is not only appropriate but integral to personal fulfillment to do away with pleasantries and selfishly look out for “Number One.”

Listen, a lot of us work hard every day to make the world a better place in which to live. We try not to destroy things and we are nice to people. We don’t take our own frustrations out on our loved ones, or even strangers. Most of us understand that the 19-year-old barista isn’t conspiring to make our bad day worse by taking extra long to get our coffee order.

Call it contextual politeness.

Pass on the left.
Use your blinkers before turns.
Stay in the inside lanes when turning.
Use your lights at night.
And, for Christ sake, four way stops go in the order of who got there first.

The closer I get to the intersection with the stop sign, the more anxious I feel, like in an airport security line. No need for any hiccups, I should just be able to get through this smoothly–if I just follow the rules that have been laid out as a result of countless trials and errors before me, things should go off without a hitch. There’s a system for this.

Okay, pulling forward.

Yes, there is a system in place. One that ensures that as long as you stay in the boundaries of the system, your turn will come and you’ll be able to be safely on your way. We all get that comfort at traffic lights, stop signs, airport security, the Chipotle ordering line, the DMV, theme parks, dog parks, parking lots, liquor stores, gas stations, banks, grocery stores, hospitals–the rules provide us with comfort. They allow us to approach varieties of high-stress situations without freaking the fuck out every single time. They give our brains familiarities so that we can react in orderly ways that minimize harm and stress for everyone involved.

But when your sense of chivalry starts to monkey with the operations of our well-oiled machine? That’s when I have a problem.

As I pull up to the stop sign, a perfectly fine-looking older woman in a Saturn Mercury has already come to a complete stop, a few full seconds before my car stops. She’s there first, there is no question. Yet I sit and I wait. I wait and I don’t see her car moving at all. I’m staring at the tires because as soon as I see those babies rolling, I start taking my foot off the pedal to get on my way, safe and sound, through this intersection that was designed with solutions to the problems that come with four way intersections. I stare at her tires and there is no action. My eyes drift up to the driver seat. There she is, waving me forward. I despise her for trying to be so nice.

NOW IS NOT THE TIME OR PLACE.

Courtesy is fine, but not when it sticks a wrench in my spokes. I take a split second to try and supersede her “generosity” with my own more vigorous wave, hoping to inspire her to take her turn after all, restoring balance to my driving universe. But before I can execute the full wave, I’ve already given up. The cars behind her will start honking at any moment.

I want to give her the finger, but I don’t. But I sort of think she deserves it. I drive away feeling a lingering sense of an unresolved cadence. I want that root chord back; I want order restored. I realize the longer I dwell on it the crazier it makes me. 

I get home and I go into what we’ve unofficially designated as our “creativity room.” The room is a jumbled mess of storage and procrastination, but ultimately it’s supposed to be our creatively inspiring area to work in. We are artists after all! But in this room, like in our lives, the creative things get squeezed into the spaces between all the other shit we’ve put in there. Here’s a box of crap from high school. Why? This here is a project we’re hoping to wrap up in the near future to clear some space out. Oh, that over there is an amplifier I’m in the process of building? That? That’s my day job. Over there is the book I’m writing.

I go into the kitchen and get water out of the pitcher in the fridge. Ashley is looking for the cheese grater. She’s rushing to finish making a salad for an event that starts in 8ish minutes. All she has left to do is shred some carrots and cheese on top and she can leave–but she can’t find the grater.

“Oh, it went through the wash yesterday,” I volunteer. “I put it up in that corner cabinet.”

“Why would you put it there? That’s up by all our mixing bowls. The graters, slicers, and strainers are all under the island.”

“There was just room up there and I didn’t think it would need to be found so urgently–sorry.”

She shakes her head in frustration because I have an ongoing problem of not putting our household items in their proper places, and now it’s screwing up her night. She rolls her eyes at me as she walks by with the salad bowl filling her arms.

I probably deserve that eye roll.