The Southwest: Texas, Part the Second, New Mexico, Arizona

Texas takes forever.

No, really. There isn't much to say about the portion of Texas we drove through on Saturday night. It seems like west of Austin, there's... nothing. Like really, nothing. Not even tumbleweed. At least along I-10, for sure. That is a terrifying trip, with crazy winds that were pushing the truck around in the pitch black. The stars at night may be big and bright out there, but not much else is! We fueled up at an abandoned gas station, slaughtered hundreds of mosquitoes on our windshield and grill, and saw another rest stop with so many crosses (some juxtaposed with eagles) prominently displayed, Joy thought we were in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Creepy is not enough of a word. LOLOL. I started to believe that Texas is really just an endless loop in the space-time continuum.

But then we hit New Mexico.

The first plan was to drive as far as we could on Saturday night - at least make it to New Mexico - so we decided on Carlsbad. Unfortunately, since we were working a flexible plan, when we rolled up on Carlsbad at about 1:30, 2:00 AM or so, and every hotel room in town (according to the dude at the Best Western, who was probably the sixth or seventh hotel we'd called), so we ended up driving another hour and a half or so to Roswell (we rolled up at about 4:00 AM), where we actually got a really nice hotel room for a pretty good price, and slept about as hard as we have on any part of this trip.

So we woke up and drove right out of Roswell - we had little interest in alien tchotchke. After hitting a diner that took an hour and fifteen minutes to serve us one piece of French toast, a couple of slices of bacon, some hashbrowns, and a breakfast burrito, we got rolling through NM in the daylight.

One thing that ought to be said is that the mesas out there are a little awe inspiring. They're quite incredible, and honestly, I felt during most of my time out there that pictures were a waste of time. I don't think a photograph is capable of capturing the size and grandeur of them. The other side of that, though, was the obvious poverty that seemed to pervade many parts of New Mexico. There were many run-down trailers and shacks sprinkled through the countryside, and much of it looked very depressed. The people there weren't unkind, but less openly friendly than in Texas or the South; there was something harder, I think, about the people there.

Aside from the mesas, though, I didn't think much of the landscape. There's a ton of small, scraggly, brushy little plants on a whole lot of dirt. LOL. Though overall, I much prefer New Mexico to Arizona.

Arizona, for the most part, looked a lot like New Mexico, only with sort of shockingly cartoonish advertisements for Indian reservations and goods off the highway. Huge, ridiculous teepees, "cave paintings," and other American Indian cliches littered the side of the road. On the one hand, it's pretty obvious that people on the reservation need to make money where they can, but on the other, it seemed like as soon as we'd crossed the boarder into Arizona, the means by which they had to do it was a matter of American Indian Samboism. It was weird and kind of sad.

People are, again, less friendly out there. They were looking at Joy as though they'd never actually seen a black person in real life before, and at a Mexican restaurant in Flagstaff, while I was sitting on a bench near the front of the place, waiting for my take out, this woman came up to me and asked, "Are you open right now?" So I guess brown people are always assumed to be the help in Flagstaff.

There's a little downtown part of Flagstaff that seemed to be geared toward college kids, and it was cute and funky. It's a very outdoorsy mountain town, with lots of places to get gear for snowboarding, skiing, and the like - but also, guns. LOLOL. Also, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart was pretty much the only game in town in Carlsbad, and they seem to be a pretty big deal out in the Southwest, and in this way, I can see really clearly how it's destroying the culture and changing economies. I'm guessing a lot of locally-owned hardware stores, grocery stores, general stores, and other sorts of merchants have been put out of business by the big blue beast, and it's just sad to roll up on Wal-Mart and see the people there. I don't know.

I'm losing coherence again, so I should wrap this up.

We saw the Grand Canyon, which was certainly a highlight of the trip. I do wish we'd had more time there - despite all the other tourists and the construction (yes! There was construction at the Grand Canyon - I think they were building a restroom at one of the lookout points), it was still incredibly humbling and beautiful and moving. I could have sat there for hours, just meditating on the size of it, and the size of we tiny things scurrying around its edges.

But alas, we had to get to LA, which was still eight hours west.

The rest of Arizona was generally unimpressive and long. It was mountainous, yes, but still shrubby and brown. It was a good feeling when we got to California - but that'll have to wait. :D

In Which I Write Because I Don't Wanna; In Which I Write Because I Don't Wanna Forget..

I missed being surrounded by people speaking Spanish.

That was the first thing.

I stumbled and forgot sometimes what language to speak; people addressed me in English, and I felt like there was a mental emergency braked pulled before I responded in Spanish.

That was really strange, because it didn't happen like that in Spain at all with English.



But I'm screwing up the time line - the truth is, that wasn't the first thing. The first thing, probably, is that I took an evening (for Spain - 10:15) flight out of Barcelona to Dublin. But that's not the first thing, either. Before that came my last day in Spain, which I spent contentedly packing; after I'd had most of that done, I went for one last look at the Mediterranean, and some sun. Thus energized, I finished up my business, cleaned the apartment, and got ready to go.

What struck me in the airport, which hadn't before in other contexts, was how many people travel to other countries without speaking the language of the country they're visiting.

I was hungry - I got a little sandwich at a little airport sandwich place, and sat at the counter, watching the other customers come up. It was really surprising, how much pointing went on, how many fingers held up. This seemed like such a vulnerable position to be in - of course, communication eventually happened, the message was sent and received - but that was in the airport, where things can generally be counted upon to go a certain way. But how does it work elsewhere?

Even Italy seems a little intimidating to me, and there have been times when I've been able to understand whole conversations in Italian because of my knowledge of Spanish. But these Germans, these Russians (whom I've noticed seem to comprise the majority of non-Romance-language or English-speaking travelers), they're all up in it, traveling with their families, with their friends, and getting by. Sometimes they don't really speak that much English, either, but they get by.

I think there's something to that. Maybe - I don't know. Despite the fact that I've spent this trip very focused on elements and objects (sun, sand, sky, architecture, art, history), and not really been spending the majority of my time with other people, I've still really enjoyed being able to talk to the people hosting me, as it were.

(Though contrary to rumor, -not- everyone in Dublin is immediately warm and friendly - at least not as far as I've seen. Most, definitely. But then, I've looked very much the tourist the past few days with my backpack and my hat - in Spain, I blended much better. LOLOL. Even so, in general I've found Dubliners to be kind, helpful, and funny.)

In any case, the overwhelming majority of the natives I've met - in Barcelona, in Mallorca, in Dublin - have been nothing but helpful, fun, engaging, interesting and interested. I've enjoyed talking to them, learning the character of the citizens of these cities and comparing them to the cities themselves - wondering how they influence each other. I certainly plan to travel in the future, and I hope to have the opportunity to learn a little of the languages of the places I'll be going when I do. I don't anticipate much trouble with French or Italian - maybe Portuguese for Portugal or Brazil. But I think I would like to visit Germany someday, or North Africa or the Middle East.

(I don't know that I've given up hope on Arabic, but it's not an effort I'm particularly willing to exert at this point in time.)

Anyway, this has become a pretty major digression. I don't know how I feel about the idea of seeing places without being able to communicate with the people who inhabit them. I certainly think that many of the works of art I've seen could be appreciated in any language, but for example, I visited Kilmainham Gaol today in Dublin - and there, in the museum section, everything was in Gaelic and English, and the tour was given only in English. I don't know if historical sites are of any interest to people who don't share the strange sort of cultural commonalities we of the formerly-English-occupied world do, but I was interested in the historical aspects of Spain I was exposed to - but then, I have a hereditary stake there, too - especially in Barcelona, where my grandfather's family was from originally. (Maybe his grandparents and up, I think.)

But then, I'm a history nerd. I don't know why other people travel. Architecture speaks for itself; art does, nature does. Beaches certainly do. I don't think every vacation necessarily needs to be an anthropological excursion. So I guess those things draw other people, too; landmarks, food, music, climate. Those can say a lot, too, about a people, about a place.

I'm interested. But I still want to learn another language.

I just have to decide between French and Italian next.