ROUTE 66 2015

Tuesday 14 April to Tuesday 21 April, 2015

A Carefree Landing

The condo Adrian and Linda have taken for a month is just off East Carefree Highway on East Carefree Drive, although if you assume turning right on EC Drive is going to work out you are mistaken. EC Drive is obliterated by a confusion of tiny traffic circles, and streetlets called Ho Hum Drive, Ho Road, Hum Road, (no kidding), Easy Street, Wampum Way, which violate and encircle what can only be described as a distributed strip mall. We luck out the back way and 200 meters further, past several similar townie-pueblos we arrive.

On Sundial Standard Time

On the occasion of our second breakfast at the Black Mountain Coffee Shop everything goes clear for me. At Breakfast One, full of admiration for the fluffiness of my Spanish omelet (I value fluffiness...conversational, political, but most of all with respect to hair and omelets) I wondered what the fuck was in my coffee cup, and I tried an end-run when offered a refill. 'Can I get a Cappuccino?' I wheedled, figuring if I asked for an Americano it would be an insult to their brew.

'Oh, we don't have that kind of coffee', the young server said completely without shame. (At breakfast Two an older server, when I asked what kind of tea was available airily replied, 'Oh, I don't know. I'll bring you some samples.') She was nearer my age and I'm not proud of my own memory, but it left me perplexed.

I've got it sorted now. We're all amateurs down here. Second to life. Even if you're a fourth generation suburban south-westerner the ethos demands congruent behavior. Nothing annoys a retired Chicago lawyer who just wants a cold one like the brisk false confidence we're forced to put up with at home. In Starbucks or Walmart..maybe even in the bar at the Arizona Biltmore, what works here is the offhand interrogation of our genuine nature. The server and the served comply. in Carefree—and I imagine in Scottsdale and Tempe and Chandler and Mesa (and Glendale except perhaps for the hockey fans,) the social contract is not with authority but with other new lives.

Remember how I didn't ask for an Americano? One of the features of amateurism is that we're all a quick-study. Which I don’t find especially re-assuring.

Strangely I have not seen any children...except in restaurants.

One of many at the Carefree Connundrum

Carefree Classy

(Picking up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream, I wonder how the old folks are tonight)

Fiat Voluntas Libertatum

That Latin was originally Fiat Voluntas Tua—the title of the third section of Walter Miller Junior’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, which I thought meant ‘Let there be anything you wish’, but which in fact translates as ‘let God’s will be done’ which wasn’t the idea, so this is better.

During the early stages of our progress along Route 66 I was musing the unharmonious nature of America. Not that Canada has escaped the Picketty-ian injustices of the great human experiment in the outcome of expansion and exploitation; and we have similar fossils of aspiration embedded in our culture.

Considering these embeds I thought to check on line to see if I correctly recalled the motto of my Manitoba birthplace. Yes, I did: Commerce, Prudence and Industry, although in 1973 it was changed to Unum Cum Virtute Multorum (One with the strength of a host.) So bland...just another A Mare Usque ad Mare...an assessment rather than an urge.

What's the US motto? E Pluribus Unum—Out of Many, One. Nope, since '56 it's been In God We Trust. (Speramus in Deum...I looked it up, and I'll bet you could ask a hundred people on a downtown street and not find one who knew that Latin.) The adjustment does seem apposite for a nation essentially founded by separatists seeking religious freedom.

Canada was opened up by fishers and fur traders in the early 16^th century, though Commerce, Prudence and Industry doesn't exactly fit until The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay was incorporated by English Royal Charter in 1670. John Cabot had planted a cross on the Gaspe, but the British were all business.

If Canada were to update From Sea to Shining Sea what might we endorse? I'm stickin' with Commerce, Prudence and Industry...hoping that that first element will someday be replaced by a single word meaning "we are finally working our way out of the mess we have made for native people". Justice, perhaps.

Using the same three-legged model for America I would like to suggest Freedom, Worship & Service. Perhaps this would serve the breadth of the American psyche, while interrogating these fixtures for both adherence and aspiration. For reasons of time and space I won't explore the dimensions of gathering for worship: the sacred traditions, increasingly examples of vast association-free community churches; or the secular celebrity alternatives, Oprah, the NFL. Or of service, be it deist, community, or otherness. In any case, Hanna Arendt thought that the most important thing we have to offer is our attention.

Freedom, it seems will always be trump. The Mayflower Pilgrims are a more deeply satisfying exemplar of freedom than the Virginia Company whose new world adventures had begun some years before, (and well in advance of the Hudson Bay Company); besides, the colonists they dispatched were not fleeing religious oppression but were mere agents of commerce. And of course the Plymouth colony survived and prospered and is the trumpet of Freedom's victory. The more worldly enterprise of the disappeared Roanoke Island Colony is not. Jamestown is not.

American Koan: The Eagle says Freedom fears dilution and adulteration. It is the absolute whose borders must be vigilantly monitored and defended. Those who do not defend Freedom with a restless zeal are troublesome and deserve sanction. Freedom to pursue the American Dream is not subject to question although the Dream itself may be qualified; unless it is simply the dream of Freedom. Which is not enough to satisfy those others who begin their dream outside Freedom's boundaries.

The eagle sees beyond the border.

What is freedom to do?

Bigger tent or tighter turnstiles.

Imagine the answer.

Other Saguaro

The Arizona Biltmore Blues

We have just parked the car in Valet Parking. The Biltmore car jocks have a refined touch: When we come out there is a parking standard placed right up against the Mazda's rear bumper. Truly classy.

I have been encouraged to have a drink at the bar. Other energies are in play, but I must dance with the meme which fetched me, and her name is fancydrink famousplace. So we strike out for the Wright Bar.

Much of the visual success of the Biltmore's public areas is attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright who was an on-site consultant to the architect of record, Albert Chase McArthur, for four months before the hotel opened in 1929. Wright was never licensed as an architect in Arizona (what!), but his unit block design—a notable success in four of his LA houses—dominates the lobby; although apparently he and McArthur had differing opinions as to the shape of the units. Additional FLW touches and references have been added over the years as the Wright brand has augured its way into our consciousness.

Some details: The men's room urinals are separated by five and a half-foot high polished wood dividers...well-lit personal caskets. (Compare with the Southwestern Special in Carefree, above) I'd have taken a picture but mindful of the instructions in the JCC men's locker room abjuring cellphone usage, I choose not to.

A large ballroom gusts intermittently with laughter. Several cocktail party-clad adolescent girls have coalesced just outside the glass doors and I ask them what was being celebrated, noticing that a fashion show of some sort seemed to be in progress. A slightly older young woman explains that this is a luncheon for Angel Mamas...parents of children with cancer...an encouragement and an endorsement of their fund-raising powers. There is every likelihood that I am speaking to siblings of children of cancer, and that's enough, although I do take picture.

On the way to the Wright Bar (not Frank & Albert's Bar just before which at the brilliant window wall overlooking the Biltmore's baize-like front lawn there chats a dignified circle of a half-dozen early adolescent girls with hats, purses and gloves sharing a high tea table which features those three-deck serving stands of cakes and scones.) Eloise at the Plaza. Nice. But who in Wikipedia is this Albert biting on our celebrity architect?

Piano music floats up as we approach the true bar of the Biltmore. It's a familiar tune, but with the professional grace notes it took me a moment to identify Willie Nelson's Crazy which only a few weeks ago I had performed with Donna and Wendy at a choir cabaret evening. I pick up in the middle of the first bridge (...what in the world did I do?) The piano player beckons me over and we repeat the verse and the bridge again. A few people stop, and a woman who is later revealed either as an employee or perhaps a regular guest steps in on the last line. We are all pleased. The piano man says I sold it.

Jerry Harris, whose business card simply reads 'piano music', asks me what my exit song is. Twentieth Century Blues, Noel Coward. He says he loves Coward but doesn't know it...what else do I have? My Funny Valentine. Takes a moment to find a key...Eflat he says, Willie's actual Crazy key, and I fake my way through the Pal Joey/Sinatra version... rushing the pulse of course. (When I auditioned for my choir and failed to accurately reproduce most of the intervals requested, Harriet shrugged it off, remarking that everything I sang sounded pretty good anyway...a third, a fifth...somewhere in the key. I think they call it folksinging.)

We three travelers are finishing our fancy drinks at the bar and Jerry comes over on a break. I tell him how much I appreciated the moment, (Adrian and Linda have taken several pictures), especially since I have been grieving my two Wednesday choir practice absences during our trip. An Italian maestro, Alvaro Lozano, had been persuaded to assist us in polishing a few of this June's concert pieces. I am so sad to have missed that, but grateful for the mitigating effect of my Biltmore opening. Thanks again, Mr. Harris.

Talking Stick

David Romero, the owner of the Storyteller Indian Store is Navaho and Mexican. He styles me the ethno-history of the Jemex and Cochiti fired clay storyteller dolls which fill two large display cases. I buy a storyteller grandmother with two children on her lap, a listening one, one covering an ear, for Tess and Audrey, growing a little concerned afterward about forcing identities on them. But of course it's not about character or even temperament: one child is ready to hear the story, one isn't ready. Better yet, it's two aspects of any child: sometimes you're ready to hear a story and sometimes not yet.

A few years ago David visited with Ojibway people north of Dryden Ontario. He had taken a variety of southwestern Indian jewelry with him and was delighted to be able to trade for, rather than purchase local leather and beadwork. This is what he chooses to tell me about his trip to Canada.

The next time I see David I tell him how I have resolved the potential difficulty of the two children on the storyteller's lap. Thus, not necessarily two different children, but a dichotomous child who may be ready to listen now or later, and I offer as an equivalent the child in the Haggadah who is unable to ask, and whose path to asking is the important consideration. I don't mention the other three kids—the wise, the simple and the wicked— archetypes harder to connect to the Indian storyteller children. He doesn't say much.

I have the best kind of dream on Sunday night. An stirring dream with a warm residuum. My friend Carol who I have known for more than 20 years and for whom I have warm affection and great respect is standing close in front of me. I am carefully removing parts of her clothing—long narrow feather-like fans cunningly fastened at her neckline, along her collarbones. I lean in a little and kiss her on the forehead. On Monday morning I think how the dream surely imagines a ceremonial experience, and must be connected with the visits I have been making to the Storyteller Indian Store. So I walk over again to tell David.

This is my final time in the store. David is just finishing up with a customer who is talking about a person for whom he could use a talking stick...or even a twig—he gestures with his empty fingers. In a burst of smart-ass-erie I ask if an invisible talking stick is more, or less effective. The customer unhesitatingly opts for the actual stick, otherwise it cannot be passed and the person will never stop talking.

After saying good-bye and offering David my best wishes, I realize that the point of a talking stick is not to stop a person from talking but to create the opportunity for a person to talk.

I wonder if this Arizona state-of-mind will travel well.