joy

The first thing that I noticed in Arizona was not the local culture. By local culture I mean impatient liberal responses to burning questions of our day like how much gas an SUV consumes, and, if it’s rude or not to text message, and, why weed should be legal. These conversations begin timidly at first and then quickly devolve into major posturing. “You’re gonna think I’m nuts.” This is the driver of the shuttle North from Phoenix up Interstate 17 150 miles to Flagstaff, a retired man with a trim peppered beard, looking younger than his years. (A fact of which he was proud because he told me his age, 61, though I didn’t ask.) His phishing proved me a non-threat so he shared some of his liberal views. “You’re gonna think I’m nuts, but I think they should stop everything for an entire year. No new laws, no new legislation, no elections, no policing the world, no more building, no more roads, no new cars, if you need a new car you have to buy a used one. Just take an entire year to think about it and take stock of what we got.” He was right, I thought he was nuts, but it seemed a sound plan. When I hear such plans in the wide open country while simultaneously awestruck by the utter raw beauty of it, even in the 110 degree heat, I think, “The world is good. People care. I’ll just stay here. I can just stay here.” The thought felt so conscious I told him so, “maybe I’ll fall in love with the place and stay.” “Many people do,” he responds. Then I thought of a boy I saw on that ten mile walk to the lake I made a week back when anger hit my blood and nearly unloaded. The boy walked lazily between loiterers and panhandlers along the ghetto plaza with a half eaten fast food burger and a jug of water. When done he tossed the whole mess right there on the street, no bones. No one raised a concern, not even from the nearby homeowner scraping paint from his railing. That boy lives on those streets, navigates them, had to learn and live through them. His immediate utopia, omitting the transgress, evidenced by his piers navigating those same streets would likely be immediate procurement of gas consuming SUV supped to the nines, and a fat wallet permitting free roaming access through the social stratum, the local one, familiar ones, those streets, and maybe Atlanta where his sister took him once by plane when he was eight. In the west, movement is enough, burn down the rest save for the gear shops. Nope, no chance the drivers plans’ll go down; he’s outnumbered by the poor in distant cities never mind the economic elite polluting the wilderness with subdivisions. One can dream. But before all that, before I make judgments and notice the brown skinned people, the Navajos or the sun baked burnouts, I notice that the people here are kind. Here, there exists a genuine and sustained attitude of service to fellow man. It alters ones approach. And as I saw my friend for the first time in over six years, we embrace, I smile huge and tell him without reservation, and with honest sincerity, “Brother, I must tell you, I feel… joy.”