I Love Arizona!
There are serial killers on the loose in the metro area, and there is a mood about the city that feels a little strange. Pensive. People are edgy, yet the weather has been wonderful for this time of year. The blast furnace a few weeks ago at 118 was followed by a terrific week of thunderstorms and rain, and this past week has been mild, balmy. Not hazy humid, but big fluffy, Midwestern-looking clouds floating around a brilliant blue sky type of humid. I noticed the shadows had changed today. With the mild tempuratures, it almost reminded me of fall.
The past few weeks, people in the library have been very strange. Is Mercury retrograde? Is Saturn transiting? I see some weird stuff on a daily basis. Its part of the job, dealing with the public. Sometimes it is really great, and I feel I've made a difference. Other times, its not so fun and I have my poker-face on, plus my non-reactive "weirdo-shield" up to deflect the negative energy away from me. These past few weeks have been exceedingly difficult. Belligerent, completely unreasonable people assail us with sheer lunacy. A 400 lb. man accused me of taking a $5 bill from his pocket while assisting him with the printer. Believe me, there was no way in hell my hand would have been anywhere near this dudes pocket. No sir-ree, no f*&ing way. How am I supposed to react to this shit? We found a pile of shit - literally, not metaphorically - in the reference stacks. A pile of human poo just sitting there. A diaper malfunction? I can only hope. The volume of it would suggest a FULL adult. Who the hell squats in the stacks and takes a crap? Who does this?
A man appeared yesterday in our café and started talking to the two giggly, blonde co-eds who were working the counter. He asked them what they knew about the Baseline Rapist/Killer and the Serial Shooter. Did they go out alone at night? Did they have boyfriends? When it was overheard by a patron that the man was talking about being involved in a criminal investigation in Washington involving a serial shooter, the patron came running up to Reference, kind of freaked out. Then followed the café manager, also freaked out. We called the non-emergency dispatch, told our story and the cops were there in two minutes. Turns out, the guy is a psychic. Just got off the bus from Florida because he wanted to assist with the current investigation of the above-named villains. He did the same thing in D. C. a few years ago with the big serial shooter case there, and got himself added to a suspect list. I felt bad for the guy in a way - wandering the country, trying to help, no one believing him. Welcome to Arizona, dude. You might want to try Sedona.
My city is changing a lot. When we moved here 11 years ago, it was a sleepy college town, with old bungalows and quaint shops along the main drag. Now, its gone corporate. I counted 6 construction cranes around town. Campus has exploded with new buildings and infill. High-rises and dense urban housing are closing in around us. Light rail is going in less than a mile away from my front door. A new mega-mall will open a a few miles away, next summer. We are building up. Land is gone, and expensive. I've lived in Los Angeles, and there are things I miss about it, like my favorite Thai restaurant, but I choose not to live there now because there are way too many people, and I like it HERE. C'mon, I wear flip-flops to work, what's not to love?!? What I wouldn't give for an acre in town so I could build my straw-bale house, plant my garden, and create my own little urban compound. Despite all of the changes, though, I still love my college town, and for now, for the life that I've chosen at this stage of the game, I don't want to live anywhere else. When I visit family in Ohio, I enjoy myself for about two whole days, and then I ache to get back to the desert. I enjoy the heat and the cactus. I enjoy monsoon season, and the other mini-seasons we have. I like that we don't change our clocks. I like that we have a woman Democrat as our guv'na, and she manhandles the fundamentalists in the legislature. I love the shadows and light, the topography, the arc of the sun, the smell after it rains. I love the unspeakable beauty of the flora and fauna, the rocks, the secret hidden places that I visit in the wilderness. I love this place. I just wish everyone would stop moving here. The city is big enough already. No more. Go away. Quit bulldozing my desert, my temple of sanity. It breaks my heart to witness it.
The past few weeks, people in the library have been very strange. Is Mercury retrograde? Is Saturn transiting? I see some weird stuff on a daily basis. Its part of the job, dealing with the public. Sometimes it is really great, and I feel I've made a difference. Other times, its not so fun and I have my poker-face on, plus my non-reactive "weirdo-shield" up to deflect the negative energy away from me. These past few weeks have been exceedingly difficult. Belligerent, completely unreasonable people assail us with sheer lunacy. A 400 lb. man accused me of taking a $5 bill from his pocket while assisting him with the printer. Believe me, there was no way in hell my hand would have been anywhere near this dudes pocket. No sir-ree, no f*&ing way. How am I supposed to react to this shit? We found a pile of shit - literally, not metaphorically - in the reference stacks. A pile of human poo just sitting there. A diaper malfunction? I can only hope. The volume of it would suggest a FULL adult. Who the hell squats in the stacks and takes a crap? Who does this?
A man appeared yesterday in our café and started talking to the two giggly, blonde co-eds who were working the counter. He asked them what they knew about the Baseline Rapist/Killer and the Serial Shooter. Did they go out alone at night? Did they have boyfriends? When it was overheard by a patron that the man was talking about being involved in a criminal investigation in Washington involving a serial shooter, the patron came running up to Reference, kind of freaked out. Then followed the café manager, also freaked out. We called the non-emergency dispatch, told our story and the cops were there in two minutes. Turns out, the guy is a psychic. Just got off the bus from Florida because he wanted to assist with the current investigation of the above-named villains. He did the same thing in D. C. a few years ago with the big serial shooter case there, and got himself added to a suspect list. I felt bad for the guy in a way - wandering the country, trying to help, no one believing him. Welcome to Arizona, dude. You might want to try Sedona.
My city is changing a lot. When we moved here 11 years ago, it was a sleepy college town, with old bungalows and quaint shops along the main drag. Now, its gone corporate. I counted 6 construction cranes around town. Campus has exploded with new buildings and infill. High-rises and dense urban housing are closing in around us. Light rail is going in less than a mile away from my front door. A new mega-mall will open a a few miles away, next summer. We are building up. Land is gone, and expensive. I've lived in Los Angeles, and there are things I miss about it, like my favorite Thai restaurant, but I choose not to live there now because there are way too many people, and I like it HERE. C'mon, I wear flip-flops to work, what's not to love?!? What I wouldn't give for an acre in town so I could build my straw-bale house, plant my garden, and create my own little urban compound. Despite all of the changes, though, I still love my college town, and for now, for the life that I've chosen at this stage of the game, I don't want to live anywhere else. When I visit family in Ohio, I enjoy myself for about two whole days, and then I ache to get back to the desert. I enjoy the heat and the cactus. I enjoy monsoon season, and the other mini-seasons we have. I like that we don't change our clocks. I like that we have a woman Democrat as our guv'na, and she manhandles the fundamentalists in the legislature. I love the shadows and light, the topography, the arc of the sun, the smell after it rains. I love the unspeakable beauty of the flora and fauna, the rocks, the secret hidden places that I visit in the wilderness. I love this place. I just wish everyone would stop moving here. The city is big enough already. No more. Go away. Quit bulldozing my desert, my temple of sanity. It breaks my heart to witness it.
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posted by AMO at 7:06 AM
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