I ♥ Flagstaff

I once walked all over Flagstaff when I spent a couple days here by myself on my way to teach at Art Unraveled in Phoenix. It was where I learned, after 20-something years of marriage, that there was no longer any reason to pretend that I wanted to be independent. While I was perfectly capable of driving myself across the desert and finding food and entertaining myself, it wasn't much fun to do things I knew The EGE would have enjoyed (it was a whole complicated arrangement: we went to the Indian Market in Santa Fe for my birthday, staying in Albuquerque because Santa Fe was full. I put him on the plane in Albuquerque to go home and teach (school had started, and he was still teaching) and then drove to Flagstaff and on to Phoenix. On Friday after school he flew to Phoenix, where I picked him up at the airport--he and some big cowboy had entertained the whole plane for the whole flight--they got off the plane together, and I knew something was up because everyone else was kind of following them, grinning expectantly like they were waiting to see what was going to happen next. The EGE and the cowboy were laughing, and everybody looked so happy, and I knew I'd missed a great time.))

Which reminds me: Art Unraveled is where I met Richard Salley and his wife. I got to talk to him a couple weeks ago, remember? He's just retired from teaching, and they've moved to Santa Fe. He called yesterday while we were driving through the Mojave, and we're going to meet for drinks this weekend. So cool how life is: you meet people from everywhere, and then, years later, you hook up with them again in some other place, far away. It's one of our favorite things. Like getting to see Ty and Marcia Schultz last week after so long. And meeting Theo and Judy Wise and, and--yowza!

Anyway--the REASON I ♥ Flagstaff has nothing to do with any of that. We didn't get here in time to look for the little wine place--it's probably long gone, anyway. But when I checked the phone book for a grocery store, I found New Frontiers Natural Marketplace, which could have been cheesy or lame but turned out to be fabulous--almost exactly like a small Whole Foods but without the wine. The salad bar was good, with some fabulous tofu. And the "Hot Food Bar," which is a horrible name but is wonderful, nevertheless, had broccoli and something with various kinds of squash that was perhaps the best thing I've had to eat since we left home. Fresh bread, some (more) cheese (my personal weakness and why I'm not a vegan), fizzy water. It was wonderful, and so I love Flagstaff. Some might think it sad that I love a town for having a decent grocery store, but there you go.

This morning I'm thinking a lot about Place--about places I love and places I loathe and what makes the difference. Midland is home, but I'd never rec. that anyone choose it as a Pleasure Destination unless their goal in life is to hang out at Starbucks on the interstate and watch traffic go by. It's comfortable to me. But the two cities I love to visit are Santa Fe and New Orleans, and they're just about as different as any two cities I can imagine. Santa Fe is cool and high and dry, and the people are white and Indian and Hispanic, thin and hippie-ish. Hardly any black people at all (and no red drinks, The EGE will point out). It's easy to find food I can eat--lots of vegetarian. It's an early morning city, where people are out early, walking their dogs. After dark, there's not much to do. It gets cold quickly once the sun goes down.

New Orleans is hot and damp and sea-level-ish. Lots of black people. Not a lot of hippies--you don't see a lot of thin, serious white folks in Birkenstocks. People are much larger--it's a whole different kind of food place. Much harder for me to find things to eat unless we go to a restaurant and have fish--even the beans are cooked with meat. Things are slow in the morning, but they go on late into the night. Perhaps it's the temperature--people wait until the sun goes down and it begins to cool off. Fabulous music everywhere.

But however different they are, I love them both. Santa Fe in June and New Orleans in August, usually. They're places that have always felt familiar, as if I knew them in some past life. Except I don't believe in past lives, so that's not it. It's not the people or the shops or the architecture or the food. It's not the history or the myth. It's something about the odor in the air, about the way the light looks, about something I can't grasp that just makes these places feel like I've known them before.

Take, for example, the Cafe du Monde. Because I read so much, I had read many books (fiction and non) that had some writer sitting at a table at the Cafe du Monde, making notes. When we went there, it looked nothing like I'd imagined. It's sticky and loud and hot. But I love it. When I'm there, I'm There, sitting at the table and not imagining some other table, not day-dreaming or visualizing anything else but having a sense of being somewhere that's lived in my imagination for as long as I can remember. We go there and have a beignets and cafe au lait every year, amid the noise and pigeons and crowds and unrelenting stickiness, and I adore it. I'm there, and my brain taps into something I can't grasp well enough to even articulate. I have no wish for it to be anything but what it is--I'm not one of those people who long for a past time, a time when I foolishly believe things were better, more romantic, easier, nicer, whatever. For us--for me and The EGE--any time before our time would have been a constant battle. So that's not it. I can't explain it. The French Quarter is New Orleans is my favorite place in the world. Dirty, noisy, smelly, crowded. And very nearly perfect.

In Santa Fe, it's a sense that this is where People Like Me come from: pale, wiry hippie-ish women. I look like I belong. Well, kind of. I see other women who look like me (more or less). Plus it smells familiar--I think it's pinion, which must grow around the places I grew up (Farmington, Cortez, et. al.) I'm guessing the light and odor is similar and that triggers something in my reptile brain.

And then there are all the perfectly lovely places that just don't do it for me. While they're fun to visit once, and while the people are often wonderful, there's something off. The light isn't right, or the odor of the air is odd. Portland and Seattle are marvelous, but I could never spend much time there. They're way too cold and damp and grey, and the people dress in black and look so depressed. Los Angeles smells funny (the French Quarter stinks to high heaven, but after about an hour, it seems perfectly normal to me--I have no idea why this is so). Santa Monica and Santa Barbara are lovely, but. . . .

The cities in Texas--Dallas and Austin, Houston and San Antonio--are all familiar to me from many, many visits over the course of my life. I can find my way around, the people sound familiar, the weather is good. But they don't have That Thing, whatever it is.

What about y'all? Do you feel this? Is there somewhere that feels as familiar to you as your skin for some odd reason? Why, do you think? Tell me about it.

And if you're in Santa Fe this weekend, remember there's a jigsaw puzzle on the second-floor landing of the Hotel St. Francis (at least there'd better be). Plus, of course, afternoon tea and a nice bar--