back from Phoenix

When I first came to Arizona (1971), Phoenix was my landing spot since a college roomate's grandparents lived there.  I didn't like it much and bought a roundtrip ticket to Tucson.  After a week, I cashed in the return and stayed, with the exception of 15 months of grad school back in Illinois.

The cities are so different.  One is a city with grey-pink hills they call mountains; the other is still a town with purple-grey mountains rimming our landscape.  As times would have it, we now have the opportunity to occasionally, more regularly visit and pretend to live in Phoenix.  I admit, I like some parts of it very much.  Not the landscape which is open and full of trunkated freeways, but the liveliness of where we are now staying--downtown Phoenix--is fun and easy.

Coming back in to Tucson tonight, the Catalinas are like shoulders of earth, carrying four decades of my life.  But I am beginning to wonder if I will remain here beyond the next couple of years.  So much of Tucson seems to be feeling loss and fear--unlike Phoenix our economy continues to sputter.  There are hidden gems of bioscience and artists in colored glass workshops or havens of spun textiles, poets who linger over their pages of words and gather at Cafes and/or the Poetry Center.  There are "bright spots" but my offer to others to shine the light on these bright spots has not generated enthusiasm.

So, I ponder, on this return...beyond the mountains, where might I fly?  Do you have these ponderings where you currently live, or are you settled in?