jojo left his home
The New York Times travel porn has completely fucked me up. Yesterday they were running a piece on a trip to the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona, using the type of prose that could make a meat-packing plant sound alluring:
The desert surprised us both. By chance, we arrived during a 30-year bloom. Along Interstate 10 we passed hillsides awash with Mexican poppies that, stirred by a soft breeze, seemed to flow toward us like molten gold... So we abandoned our grungy diner plans and picnicked instead surrounded by miles of sapphire-blue lupines, poppies, and the paler yellow bladderwort which, en masse, resembled powdered sunlight strewn across the range. No cars in earshot, no people in sight. Just a coyote loping through the poppies, its coat a little shabby against the golden glitter.
That paragraph made me go all mushy, and by the end of the article I was of no use to man or beast. The longer I spend away from Arizona, the more mythic it becomes.
In Brooklyn last week, Lauren asked me under what circumstances I would be willing to live in New York, and I couldn't come up with any scenario at all. I wouldn't live in New York unless I had money, and if I had money I would live in Tucson. I really really miss the place. I miss it so goddamn much that I may have to pack up and move there. Reno was a nice idea, but I'm not married to it.
I have been doing some math, and I have determined that if I were to go into business on my own tutoring high school students in academic subjects and standardized tests, I could support myself on about 16 hours of work per week. In a couple of days we will find out whether my sister got into the University of Arizona pharmacy program. This could work.
