A Quick Look at Superior

hello, stranger –

why do people go to church?  that was the question i got up in the middle of the night to write my notebook.  it sounded like something a five-year-old might ask, and yet it was still the question that i found bouncing around in my head when i woke up in the middle of the night. the more i thought about it, the more i realized i may never have actually asked it before, no matter what age.  it seemed worth writing down.

the thought was obviously springing from the phone call i had earlier in the evening with a family member.  it doesn't matter who, although you're free to guess – and seeing how my family tree bears a striking resemblance to the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, i'm sure you could take a pretty good stab at it.  it's not like it really matters, other than the fact that it's someone i love and respect, in the way we all hope family members should.

and so what had been tugging at me was that we had finally dipped our toes into the water about talking about politics – or not even that, really, just daring to discuss the current state of things, since the maga movement took over again in January.  i'd been avoiding the issue with him for a while.  i'd been avoiding the state of things for a while.  i’d had a memorial service to help put together and make sure it went well.  and it did, but now that it was finally in the rearview there was a whole host of other realities that needed to be faced.  and i’d been having a hell of a good time in my efforts to avoid facing them.

first there was the road trip to San Diego for a Super Bowl party the weekend following the service.  then as soon as i got back and recovered and caught up from that, there was another camping trip back down south to my buddy’s property near the Mexican border.  this time he was there and we hiked up the side of the mountain to an old mineshaft on his property, and looked out across the land below.  to the south across the campsite and just across a couple of hills was Mexico.

it was such a gorgeous, tranquil view that i promised him right then – insisted, really – that i'd come down again with him soon, anytime really, and help clear a camping spot there, so next time i camped i could have that kind of view.  as we looked out though i noticed a white glimmer to the east, something floating high above in the air.  “that's the blimp,” he told me, referring to border security, and then explained how the level of surveillance equipment they had on board could probably tell how many fingers he was holding up, putting out his hand towards that direction.  then he pointed to the west, at what looked like a radio tower i hadn't noticed.  “probably the same over there,” he said.

and there we were, standing there and looking out over his land, a national forest, and Mexico, not another human being or even a building in sight, while people thousands of miles away were gnashing their teeth and pulling out their hair about this very issue.  and all this particular piece of it made me want to do was crack a bottle of wine and have a picnic.

what a funny thing – i remember thinking as we hiked back to camp – the distance between the reality of something and the impression that’s pumped out so far away on the other side of a screen, and to have millions of home made experts, sounding in about an issue that they feel they’re dead-set deputized to render verdict on, even though the vast majority of them haven't even seen it with their own eyes.  that's what we're up against.

***

that's just the nature of there beast though, and i understand that, so it's not lost on me my own potential to fall prey to the same thing, and the sense of irony that might come across in any sort of political screed.  in particular i’m thinking of the circumstances of the following week - for several months now i'd been doing my best to shield myself from as much of the current events, politically speaking, as i could.  it was just a natural way to try not to overload the headspace while going through the grieving process.  but after the camping trip i came home and got all caught up with things at the office and at home, and was all geared up to finally roll up my sleeves and get to work, when out of the blue i pretty much shit the bed.

not literally, of course - but pretty damn close enough a few times.   i came down with the worst case of stomach flu i've ever experienced, starting on Monday morning and leaving me sidelined on the couch and afraid to venture more than a few steps away from the bathroom for the first half of the week.  i'll spare you more detail than that, but needless to say this was not a time for thoughtful reading and careful deliberation, but rather staying hydrated with Gatorade while binge watching tv as my immune system did battle with whatever alien had crawled into my gut and turned it into some kind of demonic carnival ride.

and that’s when all the news started to come in.  i found myself on the couch, flipping through clip after clip of the latest developments in the ongoing disaster in Washington.  it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.  as a political junkie someone had recommended to me The Newsroom as a good series to watch, and i managed to binge out on a couple of well done and poignant seasons for an uplifting break in the process.  but the YouTube button beckoned me more and more every time i sat down and turned the tv back on, and watched every day as things went a little further off the rails in real time.

the time passed - thankfully - and i began to feel better and that’s when the call came.  i found myself reluctant to even touch the subject of national news, with all the rancor and upset breaking out across the country.  the administration had promised to flood the zone with news, and that's one promise i think everyone can agree was kept. but my relative lives in a very different part of the country than i do, with a much different culture, so i was also increasingly curious too.  surely everything that was playing out - i thought - couldn’t be construed as anything short of craziness.  i was hoping i'd hear something that would put me at ease about the increasing divide in this country.

but i did not.  after i hung up i sat down on the porch for a long while and stared out at the fading light of the day, in melancholy disbelief about how two parts of the same country could hold such opposing views of reality about the very same thing, and be so goddamned certain about it too…

***

later in the night i looked at the calendar and realized that i only had one more day left in February.  i'd promised myself to have one drifter trip per month, and even though i done some traveling none of it had been anything new.  if i was going to stay on track then it would have to be the next day, so i opened up my map and looked around for a suitable spot for a day-trip.  it didn't take more than a minute or two for the town of Superior to pop out at me.

it was perfect.  it was only a couple of hours away, an easy shot through rural desert, and it had been on my radar for some time now – i've done a little work laying out some of their ad material in a magazine i’ve worked for, and the picture they sent always gave me the impression of a kind of hip, laid-back and funky little town, tucked away at the bottom of some mountain range with high rocky cliffs looming in the background.  i was feeling good enough at least for a scouting mission, and just the idea of getting out and on the road sent a renewed vigor through my body like a fresh burst of air in a place that had been deprived of oxygen for far too long.

so in the morning i got up early, stretched out my body like i hadn’t in a week, did my morning routine, packed my hiking boots and a backpack in case i found a good hike, and set myself up to take off.  i wasn't moving too fast because of the lingering gut issue, but i was still determined to go.  i’d been alone and isolated and borderline catatonic for the whole week at that point, so spiritually speaking, i just needed it.   besides, more couch and tv time seemed completely out of the questions.  the stomach virus had brought with it a funk, and the virus might not have been completely done with my gut, but in my gut i knew it was time to be done with the funk.

as i did the dishes before i left, my little stray cat friend Tiger popped onto the windowsill outside to watch the process.  this was like his tv.  he was endlessly curious about the running water, the soapy suds on the plates, and where those plates went.  if i leave the door open long enough and step away, he’ll sometimes come in long enough to investigate the kitchen he's been seeing from behind the glass.  i've even gotten to the point where i can pet him a bit when i go out to put food in the food dish outside.  but he’s a stray, and i know that the sense of wild he was born into will never fully disappear.  we might become the best of friends someday, but he’ll never really become anybody's pet.  and frankly, i wouldn't want him to.

i thought about this, standing there in the morning sunshine of the kitchen, watching him watch me, doing the dishes and mulling over the past few days, the world that was swirling around, and the phone call that i’d had the night before and the question i wrote in my notebook.  i thought about all the tv i'd consumed, laying there on the couch like an invalid hospital patient, watching a world on the other side of some glass as it went on without me.  i thought about the subtle pangs of remorse i felt for a moment as i laid there watching an episode of the newsroom, the seductive sense of envy it’d felt at the journalists and their careers, and their youth, and how in earlier times that might've sprouted into a full bloom tizzy of anger and blame about who should have been there and who could have done what, if only…

but times like those were in the rearview now, and i logged far too many miles and read too words of wisdom passed down through the ages to tread down that path again.  and Tiger had some prowling around to do and i had some miles to drive, so i flicked some suds at the window to scare him off the sill, grabbed my bag and headed out the door.

*******

on my way out of town i had to swing over to the post office downtown – a relatively short delay, but an annoying one, especially when you're already running behind schedule.  i got stuck at a red light that was idiotically red on all sides for at least fifteen seconds i guessed, so i just had to drive right through that - only to get into a new mini-traffic jam right around the corner.  for some reason they had yet again blocked off one of the lanes, a sight so common around here you'd think we had some of the best roads in the country around here instead of some of the worst.

i drove by the only grocery market downtown - which i saw was all which was all boarded up, for reasons i have yet to understand – and passed a couple of street people having a hollering match on the corner, and when i finally parked and walked over to the post office there was a guy with a blonde haystack for hair sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk with his dog, in a loose blouse that was colorful enough to catch my eye for a brief second and wonder if it was some kind of circus outfit or what…  but then i quickly remembered that i didn't give a shit, and popped up the stairs to do my business at the post office.

there’s been plenty of moments out here that stood out to me about this town, and that either made me love it or hate it.  this wasn’t one of them, either way.  it sure wasn't a strong endorsement for staying out there long-term though, but at least it had the nicest postal workers i've ever seen, so i hopped back in the truck, happy enough with that and headed north.

***

the route to Superior brought me through Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson that was established about fifty years ago.  it’s crisscrossed by a series of two lane roads the connects the sparse collection of housing developments, private roads, parks, golf courses and shopping centers. the demographic is primarily older, white, and much more financially sound than their average neighbor from the city to the south.  the difference in certain streets is night and day, and the voting block in that community is – unsurprisingly – by and large conservative… whatever that means these days.

as i drove through i thought a lot about the time I'd spent in the community.  i’d done a lot of work in the area, and even got myself tangled up into local politics a while back.  mainly i got thrown under the bus whenever the opportunity presented itself to anyone who held a better position than me and it fell within their interest – as it tends to do in this industry.  the world of marketing can be as wide and varied as the personalities that inhabit it, but in the end it's always the hired gun that ends up on the outs, and the first to get the shaft when there's one to give.

even so though, i'd managed to grind out a few successes in my time there, and most of my personal exchanges with people there had been pleasant and happy ones.  even when i'd gotten crosswise with the mayor and his council for some purported campaign shenanigans, my reputation as a hard worker and diligent professional kept my name out above the fray.  so on the surface there was little that would keep me from fitting in just fine in a place like that.  but i didn't, and don't, and i'm pretty sure i never will.

for one thing, i've been spoiled to be born and raised in a home my parents built with their own hands.  raw wood beams, imperfect angles and a rustic wood stove are all necessary ingredients to my vision of a dream home, and no suburban planned development - no matter how comfortable or spacious – is ever going to deliver on those.  and there were rarely any books on the bookshelves in the homes i'd been a guest in as well.  maybe i’m being a book snob about it, but i think that for anyone who grew up in an environment like i did there’s an unspoken and underlying acceptance that books are where ideas come from, and a subtle discomfort with any home where they’re noticeably absent.

i wondered, too – as i left the outskirts of town and traffic behind and made my way to my rural route – if the people i‘d labeled in my mind as conservative considered themselves that way as well.  i knew they weren’t about to introduce themselves as some kind godless liberal, that much was sure.  but then again, northern would i.  i didn’t. even know what that term really meant anymore.  during the phone call i was arguing for policies that were actually much more in line with fiscal responsibility and national defense than anything that was currently going on.  so the idea that these labels still had held anyway by the standards that they used to was laughable to me.  the terms might still have a broad stroke meaning behind them, but only applied to a sort of “us versus them” framework, and from what i've seen the more time went on the less gray area was in between. in fact, that had even become so eroded at this point that in my mind anyways – there was no longer even a need for the two labels.  from where i was sitting there were the conservatives, and then there were the rest of us.

***

there's nothing quite like driving into a town you've never been to for the first time.  there's a sense of anticipation mixed with a heightened sense of alertness that comes naturally when one is forced to navigate unknown territory.  even on just a quick little day trip like this one there's a undercurrent of excitement that tends to stretch out the time, and make the journey seem a little longer and more vibrant than it likely ever will again.  it's worth slowing down to appreciate moments like those, because you can never visit the same town for the first time again.

and it was a gorgeous day for a little road trip, too.  sunny blue skies, not too hot or cold, with just a light breeze on the air.  open windows and empty highway on a two lane strip of asphalt through the middle of nowhere, with hardly any other cars to share it with.  a good moment to throw some chill beats on Spotify, and let the mind drift as i let the truck pull me along to wherever i'd end up.

i kept coming back to my church question.  i was never raised in any sort of formal religion or theology, and had – in fact – grew up in an environment where one was to question everything, and be skeptical and even suspicious of those that didn't.  but that didn't mean that i didn't feel like there was some kind of bigger picture to things, or some kind of underlying force that bound the universe together and gave some kind of order and meaning to things that were beyond what we could see with our eyes or measure with our hands and minds, call it spiritual or religious or whatever you may.

and i’ve attended church services a handful of times over the years as well, on those occasions that i was invited and accepted the invitation.  i always felt like there was a certain value and beauty to the ritual and community of certain religious practices, one that i felt a sense of envy for not having grown up being exposed to.  but the map is not the territory, and if i’m to be honest about those rare occasions I did find myself in church, i felt nothing spiritually to make me want to return, and in fact the experience usually only left me with a deepened skepticism about the whole set up. and since it always ended up feeling almost rude sitting next to people who were buying every word of it wholesale, i figured my days of giving it a shot were just about behind me.

besides, one of the main purposes of going to church – as far as I could tell - was to learn how to be a good person, and in the last few months alone i'd probably developed a better understanding of that by diving into my philosophy books than i ever had before.  that was, in fact, the purpose of the writings and teachings, to fully examine one's own spirit and develop a higher level of mastery over it through diligence and practice.  there were the common themes of virtue, empathy and service to others, but this was an every day sort of practice and not just once a week on Sundays - and given the checkered history of so much of religion in general living up to what it preached, i felt like there probably wasn't a lot for me to discover by kneeling in a church pew once a week somewhere.

the other major reason i could see was that people went to assure that they would get into heaven, or whatever they thought the afterlife would look like.  but again, i had some problems with that this concept when i batted it around in the mock debate in my mind.  regardless of whether or not an afterlife actually existed and what it looked like – and whether there were parameters here on earth to somehow gain access to it – the net effect it seemed to me was to keep the believers focused on what happens in some future world and not on this one.  that seems to me a pretty raw deal for the people you're sharing the planet with - like treating a place like it’s a hotel room you’re checking out of in the morning anyways, instead of caring for it like your own home.

so neither of those arguments seemed particularly convincing to me, and I just figured I'd quit my mind of it until I called my relative later and see what they had to say.  in the meantime there was plenty of road ahead and better things to let my mind wander over to.

***

the road into Superior from the west was a treat for me.  even though i've been out in this part of the world for years, my eastern eyes still can't help but be impressed by the shows of desert mountain painted against the vast blue sky that can pop up on a road like this one.  there's just something about the desert landscape that never ceases to fill me with a sense of awe, no matter how I used to it i get, and the drive up was a good reminder of that.

i accidentally passed the road to the downtown Superior - which seems like an easy thing to do – so had to double back a short bit.  when i turned off the highway i was for some reason surprised to see the amount of vacant and abandoned buildings that i came across.  i don’t know why, as this tends to be more common than not in small towns out here -  i guess when there's plenty of land it's just cheaper to build something new than fix up something old, and the population probably just dwindled as times changed just like the rest of rural America.  but for some reason i couldn't quite put my finger on the sight of vacant buildings standing empty and falling into repair tugged at my heartstrings more in this town than most i've been to.

i passed a saloon with a bunch of motorcycles parked outside with their big windshields and wind blocking shells, obviously a destination for desert cruisers.  a little further down i parked on Main Street, so i could wander around on foot.  it was quiet and sunny and relaxed, and the smell of barbecue instantly hooked into me when i got out of my truck.  it was wafting over from a great looking eatery and bar, and despite my stomach issues i knew it was going to have no problem drawing me in.

but first i thought i’d wander up the road to see what i could find.  i stopped into a local market, and a couple of consignment shops and antique stores.  besides that i mainly found more of the same pleasant sense of quiet.  i popped into a visitor center to see if they could point me in the direction of a nice short hike.  the lady was helpful enough, but for all the handout materials they had none was about hiking trails.  instead she had to verbally explain to me a couple of options, which included some dirt roads and a bunch of turns, and a reliance on my attention span and memory that wasn't very realistic.  i knew about halfway through her directions i wouldn't be stepping into any hiking boots that day.

besides, my stomach was still on the mend and the afternoon was starting to creep by already. so i headed back towards the barbecue joint, scouting a little more as I went.  it might be a fun trip to take with a date or something, but a little too quiet for a proper solo adventure, was the take away i got.  there was a nice, quiet little park area where i could have a private phone call with my relative, if i wanted to call them up and open up that that can of worms about the church question.  but I held off and decided to hit the barbecue place first.

***

the restaurant was a  large, wide-open space with plenty of stools at the bar and rustic character and plenty of grit, so it was a perfect pitstop.  my stomach was still twisted in knots though, so i had to be careful about what i ordered.  the bartender recommended a sour from the beer list, and i tacked on a side of macaroni salad for the moment and a pulled pork sandwich to go for later, and relaxed and chatted up the bartender a bit.

she was young and friendly and had an eager energy to her that made conversation easy.  i hoped to gain a little local insight to the town, but she had just moved there a couple months earlier with her boyfriend.  they'd been living the van life for about a year, having come from the midwest and somehow finding their way to this little nook in the desert.  real drifter style – the type of person whose curiosity and authenticity couldn't help but shine through, and i liked her pretty much immediately.

i had about a dozen questions for her regarding van life and the travels that they’d had so far, but I could tell my stomach was  still a time-bomb, so they would have to wait.  it was no emergency, but i’d been been pretty traumatized all week and wanted to be as careful as possible.  and it was still a couple hours back to home, so i passed on the second drink, thanked her and promised to return, grab my food and headed out.  on my way i thought once again about taking a few minutes to sit in the park and make that phone call, but i had no appetite for it so i just climbed into the truck with my bag of food, did a short lap around the town and took off instead.

*******

the ride home felt like it went by about twice as quick as the drive up.  i didn't mind at all.  it was getting late in the afternoon, and the shadows were beginning to stretch out and the air felt cooler.  there were more cars on the road, and so and as i made my way back to Oro Valley the feel of a Friday afternoon commute began to take shape over that ribbon of asphalt i was following home.

i wondered why i’d been so reluctant to pick up the phone and call my relative, especially since the topic had burned a hole in my thoughts just earlier that morning.  maybe it was because touching the subject would come too close to questioning someone's faith, and i didn't want to steer things in that direction.  maybe everyone just needs something to believe in and hang on to, in this swirling world of endless people and perspectives and egos and tragedies and beauty and suffering and change.  maybe it's just a way to put a lens on things to help put a little order to the chaos, and sort things out.

regardless though, i guess i just felt like letting things lie where they were for the moment.  politics and religion are two topics the require heavy lifting if you're going to do anything but hear yourself talk, and i was running low on energy, and eager to get home to my comfy little bungalow in the city, and feed the cats and relax.  and after i made my way through the monotony of highway traffic through the suburbs i came down through the foothills and into the fading light of the grungy little city below.  there was the normal display of street people and junky cars and rundown storefronts peppered in along the way as i went.  at one point i pulled up next to three bearded guys hauling a piano in an old, small pickup truck, with a bumper sticker that read “I'm not like most teens. I'm 37.”  i laughed at that, and felt oddly at home. like just another stray trying to make his way in a city of strays…

***

before I got home i received a text from a friend.  it didn't say any words, just had a pumpkin emoji, a poop emoji, fire emoji, and an angry face emoji.  i knew immediately it must be something political, so when i walked in i turned on the tv right away.  my YouTube feed was filled with the disastrous oval office meeting with the Ukrainian President.  i sat there in silence for the next hour or more, trying to process what my eyes had just seen.

two hyenas, bloated and sick with money and power and an insatiable greed for more, tearing at a man, a good man, a defenseless man, a man who would rather do anything than succumb to or become one of the revolting creatures gnashing their teeth at him, but whose peoples lives were held hostage in the balance, and so could do nothing but suffer the abuse.  that's all I saw.  there was nothing more to see.  the right-wing infotainment channels would earn their keep and try to spin it in this way and that, but anyone with any honesty in their soul had to see the hollowing out of any sense of nobility or decency or trust that in the white house.

it was well into the night before i took a break from the tv and poured myself a glass of wine and stepped out into the porch to have a look up at the blackness in the sky.  i was shaken by what i’d seen.  disgusted and infuriated, even.  not in a long time had i felt the visceral sense of loathing that i did as i watched that ambush play out on television.  never in my wildest dreams growing up would I have ever been able to imagine this country so thoroughly disgracing everything it was supposed to stand for by it’s own leadership, and openly take the side of a dictator over a democracy.

but this is who we are now, like it or not.  we had an election, and this is what we chose.  we could've picked honesty over lies, courage over cowardice, decency and public service over vulgarity and egomania.  but to the despair of many of us, we did not.  and in one sad, gut-wrenching night this nation had revealed something horrible about itself that would echo through the ages, and we might never recover from…

***

i’d had a sense of shock on election night, just like i had some shock here.  shocked, but not surprised – as it's come to be said.  liars lie, rapists rape, thieves steal.  it's in their nature, and the nature of the two creatures tag-teaming the leader of a war ravaged country could not be more obvious to anyone with two eyes, a brain and a backbone.  what was shocking, though,  was that those were the elements that had obviously been so willingly set aside by their closest supporters.  and so my mind went back once again to my question, and now it burned in my mind even greater than before.  how Christian all this seemed indeed, in a disgraced 1980’s tv evangelist sort of way.

i remember in previous talks with my relative the subject of a moral decline being like poison to our country.  i now found myself in absolute agreement with that sentiment, just not in the way he had meant it.  what good are wholesome family values if the individual is willing to shut their eyes and their ears to the forces of corruption and greed and malevolence? how can one set an example for standing up for anything good while at the same time bending over backwards to make excuses for the inexcusable?  there had once been a gray area between left and right, red and blue, right and wrong - but that gray area had been shrinking fast, and if there was any left it sure as hell was hard to see it at the moment.

the funny thing was that during our conversation i’d brought up my very fear that we’d end up on the side of Russia. it was an idea dismissed as lefty hysteria.  and yet here we were, less than 24 hours later, stepping very publicly in that very direction.  it should have been enough to make me want to call and get an honest opinion before enough right-wing spin seeped in to help shape a later response.  but i didn't.  i didn't want to talk at all, actually just sit and watch and wait, like everyone else, i guess.  besides, at least i now knew why i didn't call before with my question - it turns out i didn't give a shit about the answer.  who cares about why anyone goes to church, when all that really matters is what they do afterwards…

and so i’ve been writing since i got home, and again the next morning - my only therapy to exorcise the demons from a long, ugly night… but in any case, hopefully things steady out over on this end, despite all the craziness of the world right now.  now more than ever i guess is a time to make sure we take care of the things we can control, and try to let go of the agony over the things we can't.  so I hope all is well on your end, and i'll be in touch again soon. take care of yourself, be good and i’ll try to write again soon.