Phoenix Memories

Phoenix Memories

Falstaff? The fat, errant knight?

“But to stand stain’d with travel, and sweating with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.”

Shakespeare’s 2 Henry 4 (V.v.14)

My favored memory of that passage was in — I think — the Gus Van Sant movie, “My Own Private Idaho.” Also: mentioned elsewhere.

But to stand stain’d with travel

That’s what I was looking for, “stain’d with travel” — notes suggest it could also be “travail.” (Your mileage may vary.)

Phoenix Memories

I saw all of one Shakespeare play on screen in my entirety there, the churlish Henry V. No, wait, Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, kind of a set of bookends. Two plays, in total, on the big screen.

I realized, hat tip to Steve (redoubtable Capricorn), that I spent very little time west of Central Avenue, in all the years.

“Every time you pass Central, Stairway to Heaven comes on the radio.”

Half the ball parks are on the west side. My education was mostly the original ASU campus, East Valley — almost exclusively in the whatever they called it — Language Arts building.

Phoenix Memories

There were three bookstores that come to mind. I don’t know the name of two of them, and one was called Changing Hands Books. Changing Hands was on Mill Ave., old town Tempe, and it had a basement filled with used books. Both before and after, my love of Half Price Books.

The other two bookstores, one, all I recall was middle of the suburban blight, sprawling subdivisions, and rank strip centers, but the bookstore had ceiling-high shelves with not just popular lit, but all kinds of hardback. Plus? A knowledgeable staff. Think it was a mystery store.

The other bookstore, and I still have a bookmark at home, was “Books (something¹)” and was tucked in a center like an afterthought for the University. I ordered books there because: before Amazon.

Changing Hands has changed locations, and the others I can’t even recall.

See Libra about bookstores.

Phoenix Memories

There is another thought, too, about the land, the shape, the texture of the light, and the soil. The tired, old volcanic cinder cones that punctuate the inner landscape of the city proper, and the ring of mountains loosely knit around the valley?

I lived in Roswell for two school years, eventually, then Albuquerque for a year, bouncing back to Texas, then pausing long enough in the Phoenix area to earn those degrees.

Add to that, the years, more than two decades, spent in and out of El Paso. Occasional summer forays into Santa Fe? I’ve been in and around the southwest my whole life.

But: I’m not really a desert rat.

I have a distinct recollection of being on foot in the empty lot next to the center where I was a scheduled to present, probably early aughts, Las Cruces (NM). The jagged shards of mountains to east, it was the same desert floor, mountains rising to one side, the variegated hues of the earth, microcosmic worlds contained in sparse, desert dirt.

Scrub cactus of one sort or another, struggling against the searing heat. I understand it. I like it. I can visit, but it’s not my home.

West Texas, then El Paso, both are Chihuahua Desert, northern terminus, but Phoenix, if I caught it right? Sonoran Desert.

Phoenix Memories

Play ball?

1. The correct title was Books Etc. ↩