Back from Phoenix

I'm home from Phoenix. Steve and I took in two Cubs games, one against the Rockies at Hi Corbett Field in Tucson, and one against the Indians at Hohokam Park in Mesa. The game in Tucson was pretty spur of the moment. (We had tickets ahead of time for the one against the Tribe.) We got up on Saturday morning and Steve said, "Hey, want to drive to Tucson and see them there too?" I said, "Yep," and we went. It was a blast. The unfortunate part was, the Cubs lost both games. But. They are shaping up to be a good team. It'll be a good season. My advice to Lou: Find a way to use Hoffpauir on a regular basis. That guy is gonna produce lotsa runs. Oh yeah, and get DeRosa back. No...he looked good in a Tribe uniform. He'll help them out a lot. I'd say. Dang, he hit two home runs, a double and a sac fly off the Cubs on Saturday. Yeesh.

Well, even though the Cubs lost, Steve and I had a blast. ...what a great thing to do with one of your best buddies. Spring training. Baseball. It was an idea Steve had awhile ago and it was kind of like, "uh....we should definitely do that." Our wives were very understanding of our need to watch the Cubs, even at this early stage of the season. Baseball just matters and our wives get it.

It was great to be back in Phoenix. I haven't been there in 8 years. When I lived there, the city very quickly felt like home to me. Much more quickly than it's taken Chicago to feel that way. I've missed it tremendously. I think there are a number of reason I formed a fast bond with Phoenix, though who can say really. Going there in 2000 was a gigantic exploration for me. I love to explore. I was in the midst of newness. I had never been to Arizona, never seen the desert. The landscape, the desert and the scraggy, parched mountains around the city were new and I loved them. Still love them. It's like I adopted them and, though I haven't seen them in awhile, being back was what it must feel like to visit your kids at college. I didn't know anything about Catholicism (I was on staff at a Catholic Worker house called Andre House, which I believe I've mentioned a time or two), had never really seen a "bad part of town", much less lived in one, had never lived in a community of my peers, never worked that closely with homeless men and women. Never a lot of things. I spent most of the time participating in the work of running a hospitality center for homeless men and women, which sometimes made for sixteen-hour work days, work I loved, but I had one and a half days off a week too. On those days, I would often go off by myself and explore. I hiked and rock climbed in the White Tanks Mountains and Papago Park. I remember, after an afternoon of solo bouldering at Papago Park, climbing to the top of the rock and watching the sun set over the entire valley. Incredibly beautiful. I hung out at the Willow House and Jitters and wrote poetry and drew in my sketch book. I made a lot of art when I lived in Phoenix. That's probably a big part of the reason I connected to the city on such a deep level. I went to a lot of punk shows with new friends I made or sometimes by myself. Sometimes I just drove through the city and out on the highway through the desert with the window down and the radio blasting. The smell of the desert, mainly the creosote, coming in the window. I was brimming. That's the word. I was overflowing with excitement and contentment from the city, from the landscape, from the people, from the work.

The work stretched me in ways previously unimaginable to me. I had never seen a drug overdose before, but there was one in front of my eyes. I had never heard gunshots before (aside from in Boy Scouts on a tightly controlled shooting range) but where I lived, in the summertime, it was nearly a nightly occurrence. Nobody was ever murdered down the street from my parents house or my dorm room or my college apartment. I'd never been woken up in the middle of the night before by the beam of light from a police helicopter circling the neighborhood. I never knew somebody who was getting evicted in the morning. But she asked me to help her move her stuff in the middle of the night before the sheriff came, way out to her sister's house on the Indian reservation outside the city. That was certainly a night that changed my life forever. For example, in the hollow shell of my magnanimity I was confronted with my privileged-ness and saw the the depths of my self-centeredness and realized that was a really deep pit. At midnight, after you've rushed her garbage bags full of stuff two hours outside the city, knowing she has nearly an entire housefull of stuff left that's gone with the coming of the law in the morning and you say, but do not really mean in the least, "Want to make another trip?" thinking you deserve to hear, "No, you've done enough," but what you really hear is, "Would you mind?" you look at yourself in the mirror in your mind and say, "I am driven only by my own comfort and desire for praise."

I don't mean to be preachy or whatever. Living in Phoenix was a big deal and it altered the course of my life.

Hey, I forgot to say, Steve and I spent time with David and Gabrielle. They're married and live in Tucson now. They were on staff when I was on staff at Andre House. It's always fantastic to see them and it was the first time I'd seen their house. It has a great front porch and we sat on it and talked for awhile. Very cool.