If you are not so fortunate to live in a place where citrus is able to grow in abundance, you can’t know the incredible phenomenon of these last couple of weeks of March when the scent of citrus blossoms wafts upon the warmer air currents here in the Phoenix area. Over the course of the 29 years that we’ve been living here in the middle of Arizona, this smell is one of the greatest aspects that greets us every year. Most everyone who lives in the desert knows that our seasons are scorching-hellish-summer and not-summer, but for about two weeks the air is heaven scent.
Weaving a Transparency
If it’s Sunday, this must be Mesa, Arizona. For three days now, Caroline and I have been in the distant lands of this Mormon outpost of the East Valley, where she’s attending a fiber arts workshop to learn the craft of weaving a transparency. If you are wondering how one weaves a transparency, you obviously are unfamiliar with the seminal work of Hans Christian Andersen and his epic tome titled The Emperor’s New Clothes. As for the driver, I mean me, each day I took up a perch in different coffee shops that were all new to me: Hava Java, Pair Cupworks, and the last place called Renegade, where I was trapped for a couple of hours on a temporary island due to a water main break. As for Caroline’s project, I can’t tell you about it because I can’t see it.
Jumped To Its Death
In a neighborhood of anarchy and radical homelessness, the local anti-school mafia is on the constant lookout for signs goading impressionable children and their parents into conformity and rules that are consequently tossed off to help negate the pressures of those of us in the woke left trying to maintain absolute order. Just a couple of weeks earlier, someone tried destroying this sign by hitting it, and while they certainly caused damage, it was still functional. This morning, we see that the sign has been thrown to its death: order is breaking down near the grade school. With the writing on the wall about the movement against education, Sunset Canyon Elementary is slated to be closed effective July 1st, 2024, but it’s not alone: Vista Verde Middle School, about a mile away, and the nearby Desert Springs Prep Elementary are closing on the same day. The ultra-right anti-education lobby is winning the battle today, but inroads being made by artificial intelligence promising us a brilliant future.
Squatting
Our neighborhood has a homeless problem that spills out in all directions. From encampments in front of restaurants, car washes, bus stops, behind grocery stores, and hidden away next to cinderblock walls sandwiched between a line of tall plants, the proliferation of homeless people has continued to grow since the end of the COVID lockdown. Ironically, I’d recently read that Atlanta, Georgia, leads the country with about 1,200 properties being squatted in by people who would otherwise be homeless. Well, a house in our neighborhood that was empty for almost two years has been taken over.
We suspected such for the past weeks, but it wasn’t until this morning, as we were walking by and seeing a locksmith parked in front, that we learned that it was, in fact, true: squatters had taken over the house. Earlier that day, the police had been called, and upon their arrival, the people camped inside ran and were allowed to flee as there’s really nothing law enforcement could do about the issue since it’s simply overwhelming. The locksmith told us that the owner was inside assessing the situation, and so I went and said hello. It turns out she inherited the place when her sister passed away, and she’s been too distraught to deal with selling the home, but now that it’s been defiled, it seems she’s changed her mind. After talking a bit, she invited us in to see the carnage for ourselves. A ton of drug paraphernalia was in the master bedroom; however, the kitchen and bathrooms were being cared for with cleaning supplies on hand, and fresh food was stored in the clean fridge. Interior doors appeared to have been punched in, there was some minor writing on the walls, and all of the belongings left behind hinted that at least four people had fled.
Though the owner paid to have the locks changed, she left the broken sliding door in the back to stay that way, with the hope that the transients would return to fetch their worldly possessions. They returned a few days later, but instead of grabbing their stuff, they moved right back in. I called to notify her, but she sounded defeated, and at the time I’m writing this, a couple of weeks later, they are still living rent-free under a roof, keeping them dry and hidden away while cooking up whatever it was in the burned piece of foil on the carpet.
Update: a month after posting this, an Uber driver I met in a coffee shop described this foil setup and shared what he learned from a passenger. This is called “Chasing the Blue,” and it involves placing a blue tablet of fentanyl on the foil, firing it from below, and sucking in the smoking fumes with a straw to get high. Now I know.
Kronos Quartet
In January 2020, already aware of how COVID-19 was impacting China and only weeks away from it colliding with Italy, Caroline and I were sitting third-row center at the Musical Instrument Museum for an inspiring performance by the Kronos Quartet. Here we are, four years later, and they have returned to Arizona for tonight’s performance at the Virginia G. Piper Theater in Scottsdale. Fortunately, there is no looming health scare on the horizon this evening, though the chaos wrought by populism and fear of our world going sideways is its own kind of pandemic. For two hours this evening, from the fourth row left of center, we are transported to this group’s brilliant modern interpretation of music that included what for us was an absolute first: the use of Pop Rocks popping in the mouths of two of the artists.
WeBe Valentines
Meet artist/illustrators Jef Caine and Aileen Martinez, whom I often run into at WeBe Coffee here in Phoenix, Arizona. I first met Aileen sometime last year due to her vibrant, nearly at the cusp of flamboyantly colorful clothes and the ever-present evolving toolkit of materials she works with, from traditional pencils and paints to digital apps, too. Months went by, though it could have been mere weeks, until Jef came into the shop to join Aileen for a creation session, blabbing, or maybe it was the beginning of the collaboration that started with working on this Valentine’s card they exquisitely created for yours truly that focuses on my greatest asset – MY BIG BRAIN!!