on the road again

I haven't written in several days due to a bit of a road trip through Arizona. Photographs were taken as I tried to hold onto my camera while pointing it out the opened car window while traveling at 80 mph in a white air-conditioned Miata. Obviously I wasn't driving. We decided to check out Arizona as a possible place to live at some point in the future. The winter-in-Taos thing has become a family issue with dreams of balmy breezes in January dominant. It was blazing hot but that was the reason why we decided to go at this time of year. Find out the worst before winter warmth tricks us.

Tucson area
A few days in the Sonoran desert. Lots of desert beauty, lots of saguaro people still wearing the remains of their spring hats of cactus flowers.Lots of gated communities, strip malls, golf courses, 1950s horse ranches.

Scottsdale
Picture perfect. Lots of Ferraris, fashion, flowers. A great Italian restaurant, Tutti Santi. Excellent food, nice atmosphere, Sambucca with three coffee beans in it for dessert. Don't ask about the coffee beans. Every time I try to find out about this Italian custom (I asked in Italy too) I get a different story. This one was that the beans represent past, present, future. We are advised: eat two, leave the future intact! I'm convinced that the Italians have no idea how this tradition started, but it makes a nice story to pass on as one reviews the bill for dinner. And I ate the third bean.

Arcosanti
In Cordes Junction (sort of nowhereland between Phoenix and Sedona).
Paolo Soleri's dream of Archology - urban architecture and ecology. A self-sustainable environment where people are not crowded in upon each other and everyone has good quality of life. Italian-born Soleri, who is now 91 years old, was once a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. He began developing his vision of an urban laboratory in 1970, creating beautiful sonorous windbells to pay for it. The project remains incomplete - even though students and professionals still come to the site to work. Soleri became famous and his bells are known and collected worldwide (also produced at Cosanti in Scottsdale). Whether Arcosanti will ever be completed remains a mystery. It certainly won't be during Soleri's lifetime. It feels at once both ancient and modern . One could be in Pompei 300 years ago or Manhattan today. An area I particularly like is the central domed space that looks out past cypress trees to an open valley where a warm breeze blows. This dome is unfinished but like Pompei, the color pigments that were embedded in the silt construction in the 1970s still glow with deep color.

Sedona
Vortexes, new age crystals, designer women walking designer dogs on pink sidewalks. The landscape is breathtaking. I'm convinced that the creators of the movie Avatar were partially inspired by this landscape! It is otherworldly. (If totally inspired the blue people would be pink).

I didn't knit a stitch or read much. It seems we were in constant motion. Sometimes driving through dark pockets of wildfire smoke, sometimes through incredible landscapes or the outskirts of polluted hot cities. We haven't found a place in Arizona to make a new home and green cool Taos looked awfully good when we woke up this morning.

The bell is the best part of morning
                                Lorca