When I look into the street across the way and the rest of this decrepit neighborhood, I realize the gross differences between the two realities I have experienced as of late — here I feel kind of dirty and beaten down by the “neighbors” and the shabbiness of the blocks. In Vegas I felt returned to life, and I cannot wait to leave this palpable lower class mentality behind me. I associate to teaching in a ghetto school about 45 years ago and how demoralizing it was for me, a kind of death in life. I knew that if I didn’t get out I would be eventually worn down to a nub. And I did move away and taught in a better school system. It is akin to knowing in your heart of hearts that you know better, deserve better.
In the three years I’ve been here I’ve watched the neighborhood become seedier and my house plummet grossly in value. Struggling, Jane and I have cashed in all our chips and charged our cards to manage a respectful down payment in order to sustain our mental well-being, and we have been successful at it and we are grateful to leave. I could not sell my house but I did rent it out to an elderly couple for a 5 year lease which in itself is remarkable. I dream of selling the house for it is a psychologogical drag on my mind, like resistant feces on one’s sole. I want to be rid of this home for it is a drag on me but I will get a depreciation write-off on taxes. I must give up control of a house I spent so lavishly on to bring it up to snuff. In New York one lives side by side with all kinds of differences, and one makes do with one’s apartment, condo or house, and one’s idiosyncratic neighbbors. For some reason out here the decay, inner and outer, is vastly more apparent in the severe sunlight of the Southwest. In New York shadows conceal both wealth and misery, it is chiaroscuro. I will feel better when I am with my own kind, leaving that up to your conjecture. I may not have the money but I know class when I see it or when I exercise it. Tucson and its surrounding burbs has no class, it is a cow town forever. I am out of here! I accept the mistakes I have made but I have rectified them as well.
I was selling off furniture in my house for a few months to gather monies. On one occasion a local resident who had migrated to Green Valley purchased a water fountain I had. Asking about our reasons for leaving, she offered up that she could not grasp our departure because Green Valley was “paradise.” I ask you: who is the real schmuck? In her mind she came here, spending her savings to buy into “paradise,” and how could she accept that she ended up in a cow’s asshole. What is unimaginable to me is very imaginable to her! It takes time to decondition oneself and that never ends. Taste like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. However, given all the the particulars, she is a deluded woman. Much like telling a religious individual that religion in itself has killed more human beings than in all the wars since recorded history. It cannot be taken in and so it is dispensed with. So, I slink away looking for a newer horizon, the game is gone, the sheep farmers are fencing in the land, the towns are bringing sin and vice.
I go to “hide out” in the land of Canaan. I will dwell among similar kinds, share similar values, conditioned as I am. Blind as we all are. In my blindness, I will write a little, live a little, make merry, make a whole lot of mistakes once again, and so on. I like the wisdom in that old adage that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Who needs two eyes? I see a better way, a better truth and I went for it and apparently I will live it out.
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