IMPRESSIONS OF NORTHERN ARIZONA

If Emily and I don’t go on a road trip every once and a while, we get cranky. We just did one up to Sedona, through Jerome, and back through Prescott. We discovered a great restaurant, a fantastic beer, and a kick-butt hot sauce, among other things. And took a lot of pictures. 

I could show them in order with a blow-by-blow record of it all, but that can get boring. It’s the mistake most people make when doing travelogues.

What I’m doing here is mixing it up, writing some sideways thoughts, and putting it all together like a surrealist collage.

Surrealism is a hundred years old. Journalists use the word to describe current events. Pay attention, mon amis, Le Revoluçión has just begun. Muhuhahahahahaha!

I love when a road trip is like exploring a surrealistic landscape. Arizona is good for that. I learned that from Mexico—it makes Salvador Dalí look like an amateur.

It can also get stark, raving sci-fi. Futurism new and old, Pre- and Post-Apocalypse scenes, impressions of intergalactic, transdimensional, and time travel.

Guess it helps to have a killer imagination.

And no drugs are needed for these kind of trips.

Like when we end up in one of those shopping centers that keep popping up along the highways that crisscross the wide open spaces. Install all the usual corporate franchises and the suburban sprawl will grow around it like a cancer.

This is probably how it’ll happen on Mars. Monstrous, sharp-toothed machines will be sent in advance, chew up the real estate, and shit out printed stores, restaurants, and parking lots. They will also build robots, who will welcome and provide customer service to the first astronauts who will argue over which fast-food joint should host their press conference.

How long before the robots will look at the humans, and ask, “What do we need them for?”

Within a generation, young “natives” will be dying of boredom, lusting after something to consume that will make them feel alive.

Meanwhile, others will be going on cosmic road trips, keeping their eyes out for the weird.