Tucson

People drive fast in the desert. Faster even than the cornfields of Illinois. Both have the same cause: nothing to see and you've got a ways to go. I arrived in Tucson 2 hours before I planned, but Grandpa was home and let me in. Now this is my Grandfather on my dad's side, he's 90 years old, has to carry oxygen with him where ever he goes, but is still surprisingly active. He lives in house that connects to the house where my uncle Charlie lives. They live at the edge of the desert. You can literally walk five paces from their house and se nothing but cactus and mountains. I find that as I get older I appreciate that more. I'm still at the stage where I feel the need to have the connections of a large, nearby city (mostly for movies), but when I was younger I used to look at scenic views and be less impressed. Why is that? The temptation is to belittle your past self -- to say "Well I wasn't mature enough to appreciate such beauty." but that seems to easy. What is it about advancing age that leads to an interest in "natural" views? I think it has something to do with patterns. Natural vistas have been created by the complex and subliminally perceptible forces of weather and evolution. Both these processes are so huge that they resist any straight forward law or rule. Skyscrapers, cars, roads, and other works of humankind have clean lines, but they are exposed to weather so they are imperfect. There's always cracks or smears or misalignments or whatever. And these are out of place and spoil the beauty. While nature not only has far more subtle patterns, these patters are not opposed to weathering. They were created by weather. So the fractal arrangement of a tree's branches are in harmony with the fractal pattern of erosion on the side of a mountain -- It all melds together into one coherent scene. Thus I have explained why nature is beautiful and will now retire for the night.

I'm writing this... whatever, on a '486 that has sat unused in my grandfather's spare bedroom for ages. I don't know how long it's been here but I have some hints: It has no mouse, it has WordPerfect 5.1, the clock battery had died so I had to re-enter the CMOS information (oddly enough, it all came back to me -- while I still don't understand win95/98), it has an IBM 12inch monitor, it has a 5 1/4 inch drive, and a 240meg hard drive. I'm writing this in Notepad so there may be some spelling mistakes when you get this email. I had to figure out how to use windows without a mouse -- I am a master of early 90's technology!

This morning I rode my mountain bike near some actual mountains. First time ever. A few miles down the road from Grandpa's pad is a monstrous set of trails accessible to bikes. I actually got to ride though a pass! Whoo Hoo! I had to cut the ride short as there wasn't many places to stop for sports drinks like in Las Vegas. After that we went to visit Aunt Sis and Uncle Shorty. I have no idea what there real names are, although I'm pretty sure that they are the brother and sister of my Grandfather -- well, not real sure. Anyway, Aunt Sis is 92 and Uncle Shorty is 86.5 and look suspiciously healthy... Tomorrow I'm going to demand they show me their fountain of youth (who knew it was hidden in the desert?). They kept commenting on how much I looked and sounded like my father. Hmm. I took it as a compliment. Grandpa has all sort of pictures of me on his walls. They range from age 1 to a few years ago. I have decided that at all ages until now I looked like a freak. And with that said I'm going to bed.

Today I went to a cool canyon and hung out with my cousin Elizabeth. A fair amount of the people receiving this email are about my age and I bet you find this scenario happening with alarming regularity: You meet a charming young relative and then, a scant 7 years later, they're on the verge of adulthood. Farmer, the guy who wrote the "Riverworld" series of books, spent some time talking about how time moves faster as you get older. When you're nine, seven years is forever. Hell, when I was nine five hours was forever. Those long drives up to our cottage in Michigan seemed to stretch on into infinity. Hour after hour of trees passing by and nothing to do and my parents would be reading some boring book about the 14th century. Now I'm the guy driving 14 hours at a time and listing to that very same book, "A Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuckman. For fun! Huh. Now some of this has to do with my increased freedom - I call the shots on the road trip now. And yet, as I met my now 16 yr old cousin, I couldn't help but feel that there is something to this idea that time does move faster as one gets older. Which would explain why my uncle, grandpa, Shorty, and Sis were so confounded by my appearance.

Elizabeth had further conspired to confuse me by changing her hair color a few days previous - thereby thwarting my attempts to recognize her by looking at grandpa's pictures. So we said hi, headed off to Something or Other Canyon, and in the car I could only think of two things to say: "You look so different" and "How's school going?" Luckily I remembered how much I disliked those conversation starters when I was in high school. It wasn't that they offended me or anything, it was just that there's nothing to say about either. Yes, I don't look the same… I'll try not to change any more. How's school going? Well… uh… It's still there and I keep showing up most days. Every teenager feels a vague resentment towards high school. The clever ones recognize it's usefulness in the grand scheme of life but, having spent a lifetime sitting in desks for hours, being yelled at when you didn't do anything wrong, asking for permission to go to the bathroom, and any number of other injustices/imprisonments, it's hard not to have mixed feelings about the institution. Whenever asked I avoided the standard "school is important lecture" by giving some sort of non-answer. So, instead of all that, I asked her if "they" had started bugging her about college yet. She said that, yes "they" had indeed started the bugging freshman year. I avoided asking her where she planned to go and thus, having broken the ice, we went on to have a quite pleasant conversation about movies, my job, Tucson, and such.

Sabino(?) Canyon was as beautiful as promised and we had a nice hike through desert/mountain terrain. My uncle is currently debating whether or not to help Elizabeth get a car. So, as a professional assessor of 16 year olds, I thought I might help out. Given that she knows who Kubrick and Sales are, and that I had no idea when the same age, she must be more mature then I was, and hence: Ready for Car Ownership. My advice is yours to take or leave since I am not certified in Arizona and my opinion has no legal basis.

The day I left, my uncle, Elizabeth, and I went to see "Summer of Sam." It's probably the best porn film I've seen all year. Judged solely as a piece of cinema, it has some serious flaws. Anyway it was a bit odd watching orgy scenes with Elizabeth sitting next to me, but I relaxed upon remembering that I saw "Risky Business" with my parents and Grandfather. I think one of the 10,000 rites of passage is seeing a sexy movie with older relatives. Odd and somewhat embarrassing, but it has to be done before you can truly become an adult.