I am in Phoenix, and have been here since last Monday. I have come to visit Jehara. I wanted to bring Cosmo, but it was too complicated and expensive since I was flying on two airlines. He is staying with his girlfriend, Angel, a sweet little dachshund. Well anyway, my flights could not have been smoother. I flew on American Airlines to Austin, and then to Phoenix on US Arilines. It has been really good to see Jehara and Pastaman.
Jehara lives in downtown Phoenix in an artsy little neighborhood that is near the art museums and of course a library. She has a quirky landlady. The place has a cute courtyard that is decorated in an eclectic way. The front door faces into the courtyard. Her landlady has three dogs, a docile old black lab and two Chihuahuas, one of which seems to be a little bit psycho. We have hardly used a car at all since I have been here. We have walked or used the light rail to go everywhere. This has been interesting to me since I come from Dallas, the land of cars only. The light rail is amazingly easy to use.
The first night we walked to a Mexican restaurant and stopped at a small shop nearby. Inside the shop they had pieces of art made from various local artists. One of the things that I found to be most interesting were these art pieces made from the wood that is recovered from the inside of a Suaro Cactus. apparently, once the cactus dies they are able to harvest its core interior that is smooth and beautiful. On the second night jehara cooked and we had these truly awesome margaritas and played scrabble, which I lost (only because I was drunk).
When I was here for Jehara’s wedding I had gone to this little metaphysical shop called Fantasia. I wanted to go back, so we took the light rail and walked to the shop. After shopping there, Pastaman picked us up in the car and we went to his parents house for dinner. I really love his parents, especially his mom. She cooked a marvelous dinner of veggie Mexican food. It was a feast of veggies, chips and queso, tacos, soup and margaritas. We played games and watched a recording of the women’s long ice skating program from the Olympics.
On Friday we saw “Alice in Wonderland” which was pretty good. It has me wanting to read the books again. That night we went to “First Friday” which is an open house for art galleries in downtown Phoenix. They also have a street fair with artists, various vendors and bands playing. It was a great place to people watch!
Saturday, The Heard Museum was having a festival featuring Native American art, music and dancing. One of the musicians playing at the festival was R.Carlos Nakai. I happen to really love his music and was very excited to have the opportunity to see him playing live! His music features the Native American flute, and he creates beautiful cross-cultural, modern, world-beat jazz. He was awesome! His aura was amazing, even from a distance. I have not often seen such vibrant colors in an aura, and he had the golden halo which is rare to see. After I listened to his music I meandered around looking at the different artist booths. There were some incredible sculptures, paintings, ceramics and jewelry. The one thing I did not like about the festival was the set-up. The entrances were very difficult to find and the organization of the booths was a bit chaotic. I aimlessly wandered from booth to booth. I could have stayed longer, but I had to meet Jehara back at her house because we were going to see a play that evening.
Saturday night we met some people and went with them to see The Vagina Monologues. We were in this one chicks condo waiting for someone else to arrive and her dog was acting a little spastic, which is normal for a dog when they get excited about new people in their house. What happened next shocked me completely to my inner core. This chick picked up her dog by the front legs and then literally threw him several feet towards the couch. the dog landed with a thud on his head on the back of the couch and gave a little whimper. Man, I am telling you she could have killed that dog the way she threw it. The dog was very frightened after that, and just sat on the couch stunned. I just don’t understand why people like that have pets. They are not toys, they are living breathing souls that deserve love and respect. Once the other girl got there we left for the play. I have never seen it performed live. It was very interesting. I had really high expectations since I had heard about how it was when Jehara did it at UTA. It was good to see it, but I was a little disappointed the way ASU put it on. There were no interesting lobby displays, and they herded us like cattle once they opened the doors. During the performance it was very distracting when they kept letting late people in. They would open the doors which made loud creaking noises and then light would pour in. It was very distracting. The director did her opening introduction reading from a computer, and it was very weird. They also did a lot of action on the floor in the front of the stage which made it very difficult to see some of the performers and I had to move around and strain to see them. I liked the play, because of the content, not because of the performance of that evening. Then at the end when they were making closing announcements they had a wedding proposal. Quite frankly, it was very uncomfortable and strange. After the play, we went to this Mexican restaurant that was pretty good. The prices were good and they had a good menu.
Sunday, Jehara and I went to Sedona for a psychic fair. They had free lectures that were very interesting. We participated in a healing sound circle and we went to the Chakra Balancing lecture which was amazing. I had some readings which I am still processing and will write more about later. It has been a whirlwind couple of days, and I am exhausted. I have been having a great time.
Posted in Friends, Fun
Tags: Arizona, Friends, Fun, R.Carlos Nakai