Walking With the Lord to the Cheap Seats, Part I
Come to think of it, there are more things this book is not about than what it's actually about. Sure, it belongs in context. Context is good. It provides a canvas for which I can mark upon, and, if I like, erase. The weather is the concern, sure, until you spend a week or so in Phoenix, where the weather in the spring is a kind of abstraction. Sixty tornadoes hit the Midwest on the night of April 1 and 2, 2006, providing a clearing not even Rumsveld could devise. Sixty Abrahms tanks, perhaps even without the nuclear-tipped strategic paintball bombs, would be hard-pressed to char an equal impression on the land. Especially if you think of the gas.
The gas, yes: The gas. It pours freely on the streets of Phoenix, where Hummers and SUVs stall in tight traffic spirals across a smog-choked valley, where busses and Seven Up trucks blast on by to their rounds, a daily routine of drops and pickups; airplanes throwing themselves into space; a whole washing machine detergent cycle of acid-laced lather, all churning up on the desert plain. The compromised desert plain. The boom of engines is a constant buzz in the ear until early in the morning, when the owls and sirens and ghetto bird copters resonate a peaceful slumber into the night, the cool, orange blossom scented night.
Rain is rare here. Compassion with those across the continent (when it comes to the weather), even rarer. Yet this place called Phoenix, this sprawl, is a beehive honey pit for smog and pollutants across the southwest, blowing generally east. One has to think hard, real hard, about the weather as it relates to the rest of the globe. One is forced to return to research, that is, empirical evidence of what sort of thing is being caused here, in Phoenix, as well as the billions of blazing headlights on dry land. The vampires live here. They are in force. They dictate space. Its use. Its monopoly, a monoculture clasping on a far-away river, the Colorado, as well as the Salt.
The media here, diverse as it is, lends affirmation of the catastrophe only in blips and blurbs. FOX-TV, of course, a bad example, practically by design, provides a nightly newscast that only affords the apparent imbalances in nature as a freaky thing that happens in other places, in New Orleans, in Tennessee, in Indiana, North Dakota, who cares! The sun is shining here. And so, the baccanalian delight in gas fumes on, a business big as fake breasts and highway taxes, the rest of the world be damned.
- Phoenix, Arizona
The gas, yes: The gas. It pours freely on the streets of Phoenix, where Hummers and SUVs stall in tight traffic spirals across a smog-choked valley, where busses and Seven Up trucks blast on by to their rounds, a daily routine of drops and pickups; airplanes throwing themselves into space; a whole washing machine detergent cycle of acid-laced lather, all churning up on the desert plain. The compromised desert plain. The boom of engines is a constant buzz in the ear until early in the morning, when the owls and sirens and ghetto bird copters resonate a peaceful slumber into the night, the cool, orange blossom scented night.
Rain is rare here. Compassion with those across the continent (when it comes to the weather), even rarer. Yet this place called Phoenix, this sprawl, is a beehive honey pit for smog and pollutants across the southwest, blowing generally east. One has to think hard, real hard, about the weather as it relates to the rest of the globe. One is forced to return to research, that is, empirical evidence of what sort of thing is being caused here, in Phoenix, as well as the billions of blazing headlights on dry land. The vampires live here. They are in force. They dictate space. Its use. Its monopoly, a monoculture clasping on a far-away river, the Colorado, as well as the Salt.
The media here, diverse as it is, lends affirmation of the catastrophe only in blips and blurbs. FOX-TV, of course, a bad example, practically by design, provides a nightly newscast that only affords the apparent imbalances in nature as a freaky thing that happens in other places, in New Orleans, in Tennessee, in Indiana, North Dakota, who cares! The sun is shining here. And so, the baccanalian delight in gas fumes on, a business big as fake breasts and highway taxes, the rest of the world be damned.
- Phoenix, Arizona
posted by Unknown at 2:51 PM
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