Phoenix. My thoughts on Phoenix.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
The desert is a heat without warmth, a flame without bite. There are no seasons here, it’s unnatural. The heat will eventually beat you down. The sun is an enemy. Or as we say, a nuclear explosion in your face every second.
It’s been several months here, and is now been an iron home–sometimes it seems somewhat sterile. I have fears that there is no culture here already established. This truckstop town, so cut off from what one could call polite society or class, is nevertheless, full of festivity and celebration, but not culture or leisure. Many people here know festivity and celebration, and yet it seems to be without this idea of true leisure or purposeful celebration. Everything I say is a half-truth. If, however, one had to choose between festivity and sophistication I would choose to have festivity without class, rather than class without festivity.
Love: a word seldom uttered in the desert, though happy folk are bred here. Vague, much too much vague. I guess what I mean is that people here are generally happy, but I feel personally a lack of love in their joy.
It’s been a sort of vague existence; many times I’m in a sort of sedated ecstatic state (mostly in my commutes), and I’ve forgotten the feeling of being torn between two things: the taste of bitterness is only a numb distant sensation. Idleness consumes my off days, and my thoughts are slow and concenter’d. The books grown dusty, the water filtered, and food is not even good to taste–except my brownies that I just made, those are delicious.
On the contrary:
I play a lot of music and I am getting better.
I’m learning more songs and forgetting a lot too.
I’ve been practicing MacPherson’s Rant most recently.
I love what I do during the week: teach art to 6th, 7th, and 10th graders. I feel at rest and fulfilled in my work. The school culture is genuine; although the work is profoundly time consuming, it is meaningful. My artistic ability is at an all time high, due to having to know exactly what’s going on, how and why, and being forced to articulate that has helped me see things that I never understood completely. For now this is what I am being sustained by.
Please pray for me, as I try to make the best of this life out here in the desert.
Farewell, all my dearest,
Peter Bloch
Peter, all this is but a morsel of the evidence of why you should be back here in my arms in the lovely, mildly humid, largely inconsistent climate of good old Irving, TX.