Phoenix, Arizona

We spend a week in the curious melange of the American Southwest. It is a place to which thousands of Americans flock anew every day, but to which they must also bring their own water. The seguaros have known this for years, of course--that's why it takes them a hundred years to grow five feet in height. But human developments of homes, golf courses, rec centres, and pools sprout up in this arid clime as if there were a fountain of youth under every desert stone. Some strange inversion of values has drawn God's people back into the wilderness, where terebinths and cedars wither as seedlings and where milk and honey need swift refrigeration. And they need hand cream--lots of it.

But there is redemption in the newly populated desert.

Yesterday we drove in traffic for the first time since leaving Los Angeles. There, sitting behind the steering wheel, I relived some ancient dream: relaxing in the comfort of a beige bucket seat, sipping air filtered through the carbuerators and mufflers of countless cars while the gorgeous golden globe of the sun set in a wide polluted sky. Certainly this is how Phoenix is meant to be experienced. The cowboys can have their sunsets over the brown sandy fields of cacti, putting their lips to tin coffee cups. I will celebrate the dusk on a pale grey sheet of asphalt, my lips caressing the steel tailpipe of a Honda Civic. That's the real Phoenix, now.

I wonder if I'll be able to get a fix like that in New Zealand.