Month: May 2024

Almost Land, Almost Air

We don’t have to be Sisyphus, pushing a rock up a hill forever. We don’t have to be Demosthenes, speaking with pebbles in our mouth.

Half the time, these doves fly wherever they want. The other half, they fly away from danger.

It’s warm today. Too warm for worries.

I sort everything for the move. A box for hate. A box for love. A box for confusion. A box for pain. In the end, everything’s in one box: the box of love. It’s overflowing.

If we can see ourselves in literature, we can see ourselves in the world.

You feel almost human, Tucson, just like your stately Saguaro. Or maybe I feel almost land, almost air, almost bird, almost snake, almost you, Tucson.

I dreamed my mother had a car that was also a dishwasher and an ashtray. If it had been a wet bar, a bassinet, and a coffin, too, she would have had a cradle-to-grave device.

Want is the first word I felt with my whole being. Want want want want want clattered through my nerves making sense of physical phenomena that can only be conceptualized through language. It’s never left, that word, not since I learned there was a name for what moves me, what makes me ache, what blinds me to reason and reveals me for what I am at my core: a thing that craves.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to superglue your cracked and bloodied feet and keep walking.

Sometimes all it takes is a neighbor reaching out with an armful of peaches to save us from disaster.

My neighbor appears to be pushing a stroller full of snacks down the trail. No child. No dog. Just snacks. Brilliant.

May winds blow birds your way.

It’s the time of year in which I worry ceaselessly about baby birds.

My dog is in the kitchen staring at the air fryer.

Ravens overhead and a pile of entrails on my back patio.

Catastrophic thinking: The tip of an agave spine is lodged in my finger. I’m obviously going to have to cut my whole hand off.

Walking with Cavafy

Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong / and my heart lies buried like something dead. / How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?

Windy night. Windy morning. Tumbleweeds congregate in my yard like churchgoers who stick with their own kind and bristle at anything unlike them.

Wherever I turn, wherever I look, / I see the black ruins of my life, here, / where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.

I walk from one tumbleweed to the next literally sizing them up. I want a fat one, nice and round, no thorns. I find one I like and carry it high like a torch to my back door. I imagine I’m carrying justice or truth, though it’s just a dead amaranth and I’m just a person living in Toquerville, Utah, trying to make sense of this place before I leave it.

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore. / This city will always pursue you.

This is not a city, I think. Not in any real sense. Eighteen hundred people live in this town named after a Paiute Chief who may not have existed. He makes a nice story, though, one of Native Americans and Mormon pioneers living in harmony, so the locals are sticking to it. There are probably as many cows and chickens as humans here. Six cloned while bulls live up on the hill. Two Shetland ponies reside down the street. More than anything, this place is comprised of sandy soils, so many types they each have a name — alfisols, aridsols, entisols, mollisols — not like the basalt, which is just called basalt. Chief Toquer was named after that basalt, so the story goes.

You’ll walk the same streets, grow old / in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses. / You’ll always end up in this city.

The tumbleweed will stay on my coffee table until I get on the road to Tucson, where I’ll display it as a reminder of the place I’ve left. Well, mostly left. We never leave the places we leave. Didn’t Cavafy say as much in his poem “The City”?

Don’t hope for things elsewhere: / there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.

But I have hope. Those of us who despair must also hope. It’s like a teeter-totter, but with great effort you can sit closer to the fulcrum and find balance. Hope isn’t a thing with feathers. It’s a tumbleweed trying to spread its seeds as far as possible even after it’s dead. I have that kind of hope, one that moves with me and urges me to move. Movement is breath, is heartbeat. I especially love those slabs of highway that make the car go “ga-dung, ga-dung, ga-dung” the way my heart does when I know I’m alive. The roads between here and Tucson undulate like a roller coaster meant for children. They make me nauseated, which is another way of knowing I’m alive, an old way of knowing, a way I may cast off one day as I tumble along.

Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner, / you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

Then I might as well go anywhere I want, Cavafy. Why relegate myself to this small corner? Why do here what I could do in wilder lands with deeper histories? Where admission is possible and millions of saguaros throw up their arms to welcome the beloved wrecked and wretched with perfect equanimity.

—

The text in italics is from “The City,” by C P. Cavafy.

Conversation with Cavafy

Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong / and my heart lies buried like something dead. / How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?

Windy night. Windy morning. Tumbleweeds congregate in my yard like churchgoers who stick with their own kind and bristle at anything unlike them.

Wherever I turn, wherever I look, / I see the black ruins of my life, here, / where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.

I walk from one tumbleweed to the next literally sizing them up. I want a fat one, nice and round, no thorns. I find one I like and carry it high like a torch to my back door. I imagine I’m carrying justice or truth, though it’s just a dead amaranth and I’m just a person living in Toquerville, Utah, trying to make sense of this place before I leave it.

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore. / This city will always pursue you.

This is not a city, I think. Not in any real sense. Eighteen hundred people live in this town named after a Paiute Chief who may not have existed. He makes a nice story, though, one of Native Americans and Mormon pioneers living in harmony, so the locals are sticking to it. There are probably as many cows and chickens as humans here. Six cloned while bulls live up on the hill. Two Shetland ponies reside down the street. More than anything, this place is comprised of sandy soils, so many types they each have a name — alfisols, aridsols, entisols, mollisols — not like the basalt, which is just called basalt. Chief Toquer was named after that basalt, so the story goes.

You’ll walk the same streets, grow old / in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses. / You’ll always end up in this city.

The tumbleweed will stay on my coffee table until I get on the road to Tucson, where I’ll display it as a reminder of the place I’ve left. Well, mostly left. We never leave the places we leave. Didn’t Cavafy say as much in his poem “The City”?

Don’t hope for things elsewhere: / there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.

But I have hope. Those of us who despair must also hope. It’s like a teeter-totter, but with great effort you can sit closer to the fulcrum and find balance. Hope isn’t a thing with feathers. It’s a tumbleweed trying to spread its seeds as far as possible even after it’s dead. I have that kind of hope, one that moves with me and urges me to move. Movement is breath, is heartbeat. I especially love those slabs of highway that make the car go “ga-dung, ga-dung, ga-dung” the way my heart does when I know I’m alive. The roads between here and Tucson undulate like a roller coaster meant for children. They make me nauseated, which is another way of knowing I’m alive, an old way of knowing, a way I may cast off one day as I tumble along.

Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner, / you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

Then I might as well go anywhere I want, Cavafy. Why relegate myself to this small corner? Why do here what I could do in wilder lands with deeper histories? Where admission is possible and millions of saguaros throw up their arms to welcome the beloved wrecked and wretched with perfect equanimity.

Rustle and Racket

My husband doesn’t like saguaros. I felt an immediate connection with them. They’re columns of water, not unlike humans. They store what they need so they can survive dry times, deadly times.

Their arms are few or many or long or short or tangled and twisted. One is called Shiva by locals who check in on her and wish her well. She’s as beloved as the wild mustang colt at Salt River who the locals have also named.

Sometimes saguaros grow up and through palo verde trees. Sometimes their arms grow into each other. That’s when they look like they’re dancing or embracing or holding up one of their own who would otherwise fall.

Human, human. Impossibly human. More human than humans, perhaps.

Imagine walking around with woody nests in your hair, the rustle and racket of fledgling crested caracaras who see you before they see much else.

Imagine white blooms erupting from your crown every day for a month before the heat comes, the dry heat, with its days as monotonous as the desert you live in appears, at least at first glance.

Imagine howling nights. Imagine remaining so silent and still some see you as a spiritual teacher, your pleated roots ready to expand for water and more water and more water.

Impossibly Human

My husband doesn’t like saguaros. I felt an immediate connection with them. They’re columns of water, not unlike humans. They store what they need so they can survive dry times, deadly times.

Their arms are few or many or long or short or tangled and twisted. One is called Shiva by locals who check in on her and wish her well. She’s as beloved as the wild mustang colt at Salt River who the locals have also named.

Sometimes saguaros grow up and through Palo Verde trees. Sometimes their arms grow into each other. That’s when they look like they’re dancing or embracing or holding up one of their own who would otherwise fall.

Human, human. Impossibly human. More human than humans, perhaps.

Imagine walking around with woody nests in your hair, the rustle and racket of fledgling Crested Caracaras who see you before they see much else.

Imagine white blooms erupting from your crown every day for a month before the heat comes, the dry heat, with its days as monotonous as the desert you live in appears, at least at first glance.

Imagine howling nights. Imagine remaining so silent and still some see you as a spiritual teacher, your pleated roots ready to expand for water and more water and more water.

This Canyon

The problem with this canyon is that it doesn’t know it’s a canyon, so it will go on being a canyon until someone stops it from being a canyon.

This canyon has moods. Its moods can’t be contained. It’s cold wind, warm wind, hot wind. It’s the echoes of coyotes howling from the land and hawks and vultures screeching in the air. It takes on all these sounds, all this movement, without thought, without hesitation, without common sense.

We want to put this canyon in a long-term program so it can learn how to be a church lot or a fractional-ownership community. Anything but a canyon. Maybe a golf course or a shopping mall. Maybe a water park or an RV site. We need more of those. What we don’t need is more canyons.

This canyon is a burden to the taxpayer. It never gets any better at not being a canyon. We’ve tried everything we can with no luck. This canyon doesn’t listen. This canyon doesn’t learn. This canyon doesn’t stay on task. It won’t tell us its history. It doesn’t answer our questions. It just goes on and on about rivers and rocks and how it’s millions of years old, all evidence of its derangement.

We can’t help this canyon if this canyon won’t cooperate.

We don’t need any more canyons here in these canyons which are always annoyingly so canyonlike. Canyons should be outlawed. They should be jailed. They should be shocked into being what we want them to be.

This lousy canyon. This maniacal canyon. Such a waste, such a terrible waste.

—

The last sentence of this poem is from the ending of Charles Bukowski’s poem “Paper and People.”