Let Me Call Myself an Arizonan

I wish I could call myself an Arizona native, but that would be a lie. I was born in California, in Sacramento, in 1983. I moved to Arizona when I was seven. Neither of my parents was born in Arizona, either. My Mom is from Texas and my Dad is from either Wyoming or Utah; I can’t remember which one. Technically speaking I am a native of California.

But I feel virtually no emotional attachment to California. It’s Arizona that I love. When I look at a map of the United States, or a map of the world, it is Arizona that wins my admiration, and not California, or any other state, or any other country. It is Arizona that always draws my eyes and my thoughts.

If it’s a topographical map of the country I’m looking at, I look at Arizona and think of the way the elevation changes from the Colorado Plateau in the northern portion of Arizona to the way it eases down to lower elevation, to the Valley of the Sun, the beautiful mammoth of the Phoenix metropolitan area. I look at the Grand Canyon. I look at Arizona’s rivers and lakes, her valleys, her mountains, her cities and her towns.

If I’m looking at a road map of the United States, it’s still Arizona that draws me. It’s true that I do spend a little time looking at the rest of the country, seeing where the highways lead. I’ve spent a good amount of time looking at maps of New York, for instance. Now and then, New York fascinates me. I look at the bridges, the roads, the thickness of New York City, the countryside, the tiny bit of shoreline it has around Long Island, and while I gaze into the lines and symbols of the map, I imagine all the vibrancy and life that’s going on there.

Sometimes when I’ve browsed a map of New York, I’ve looked at the JFK airport, the busiest airport in the world; the Statue of Liberty; Wall Street, where all the stressed-out men in business suits are; Broadway, where culture is made; Central Park, where tourists walk, and hobos beg for change, and musicians play; Queens, which I don’t know anything about at all, except that I met a guy from Queens once; Harlem, where Langston Hughes wrote poetry; the Bronx, which sounds like a rough neighborhood; Greenwich Village, where Bob Dylan got his start playing his acoustic guitar and harmonica in coffee shops; the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where poor, poor Jews have lived and died, and made matzo balls.

I look at all of those places on a map and I imagine what it would be like to be there in New York City, on the streets buying a hot dog, or feeding pigeons, or hailing a taxi. I don’t imagine being in New York City for too long, though, because I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable there. I would always be an outsider.

No, I’ve never been to New York, and I don’t intend on ever going there. I have nothing against New Yorkers, just like I have nothing against people from Connecticut or people from Argentina or people from Papua New Guinea. I’m sure they are great places with great people, but New York and all those other places are too far away, and they’re filled with strangers.

Still, I like looking at those far away places on a map now and then. But I think it’s important to point out that every time I’ve looked at a map of New York, I’ve been in Arizona. New York and all those far away places to me are like stumbled upon photographs of people I don’t know. The photographs are pretty, but they’re dead.

I, on the other hand, and the other Arizonans I know and interact with, are very alive.

And so if Arizona is not my home simply because I wasn’t actually born here, then I have no home. If Arizona is not a place with which I can feel familiar, then I am nothing more than a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth, with no Promised Land in sight. But if there is a place with which I can feel intimately and spiritually familiar, then that place is Arizona. If there is a Promised Land for me, then that Promised Land is Arizona.

Please permit me, my readers, to call Arizona my home, and let me call myself an Arizonan. Calling Arizona my home really makes no difference in the behaviors I will exhibit- it’s just a semantic thing, really- but it will do a world of good for my mind and for my spirit. I will go to work and go home and eat and sleep and pay taxes whether or not I get to identify myself as an Arizonan, so if it’s just the same to you, I’d like to call myself an Arizonan.

I wish to call Arizona my home for one reason and one reason only: I’ve spent most of my time here. That’s it. The simple fact that the majority of my conscious presence occurred in Arizona means something important, at least to me.

I wish to identify myself by the ground that I have walked on and ran on and slept on for most of my life. I wish to call myself an Arizonan, and I wish to live up to that title simply by staying within its borders.

This feeling of wanting to be a part of Arizona isn’t new. I remember wanting to be a part of the earth so much that when I was a child I spent a lot of time with a shovel in my backyard, digging a big hole, and laying in it. I told myself at the time that I was making a fort, but I see now that I was really trying to get closer to the earth, closer to Arizona.

There was a time in my life when I wanted to leave the state and see the world, when I was a teenager. Teenagers have mixed up ideas. I left for a while, and it was cold outside of Arizona, and I could feel Arizona call me home, and I answered her call, and here I am, in Arizona.

I don’t understand travelers. I think there must be something wrong with them. Do they have a stirring in their hearts that won’t let them settle down? What is it that keeps them traveling? It’s like they’re looking for something, but they only have to go to their own back yard, to the land of their nativity, to have the spiritual well being that I have. I can’t believe people would be so shallow as to travel to someplace far, far away just for the food, or the climate, or the little trinkets they fill up their garages with. No, there must be a deeper, darker motivation for travelers to stay on the move.

Arizona is changing, though. Phoenix sprawls. Tucson sprawls. Even Flagstaff sprawls, though not as quickly as Phoenix and Tucson. A new copper mine recently opened up in Graham county. Houses in small towns get torn down. Barns and fences get torn down. New structures are put in their place.

I welcome the change, as long as it happens slowly enough so I can watch it change. I like watching construction, and chatting with people about new stores that are coming into town, new housing developments being raised from the desert ground, new parks, new malls, new schools, new factories, new farms… I like it all.

I think we ought to build more roads, and more houses, I like to see Arizona clothe herself with grandeur and glory, so that she’ll be the envy of all lands and all people. And I want to be a part of it- of the great history of Arizona.

I’m happy to say that soon there will be a loop 303 in the Phoenix area, and after the 2010 census, Arizona will most likely get more U.S. representatives.

The Earth itself is changing. The ground I walk on today isn’t the exact same ground I walked on yesterday. Erosion gradually makes the ground change. And the asphalt we drive on gets worn down a little every day, until we need to lay down more asphalt. The air that I breathe in the space I occupy flows in and out of me, and in and our of the state, blowing around and around, perhaps in some sort of pattern, perhaps in no pattern at all.

I would like to call the air I breathe Arizona air, and I do call it Arizona air, out of a sense of home pride, maybe, but truthfully the air I breathe could have spent more of its time in Indonesia, or over the Atlantic Ocean, than it has in Arizona.

I remember one time when I was growing up, on an elementary school field trip, my class went to the San Xavier Catholic Mission, a few miles south of downtown Tucson. It’s a beautiful area, and if you are ever in the area, I suggest you go.

Over the entrance to the old church building, there are two stone carvings of a cat and a mouse, and every year they get closer and closer. The old people swear there’s been a change of a few inches in their lifetimes. The stone cat is inching closer and closer to the mouse. When the cat finally catches the mouse, in a hundred years, perhaps, that’s when the world will end.