Sending Love to Arizona

My friend and fellow blogger over at Whaddaya mean, Do I Have Room For Dessert?" is calling on bloggers and tweeters to send some love to Arizona in the wake of the shooting. She writes:

"In all this bad news, I am saddened that a place I love–Arizona–has taken such a beating lately. I spoke to my grandmother, the Tucson native and Southwestern arts dealer, this morning. My grandmother says if there’s any one thing you can do to help Tucson right now, it is to 'fight the rhetoric of hate.'"

So today I'm sending Arizona my love. My family took a vacation there when I was in high school and I vividly remember Tuscon especially. The landscape was so different from Connecticut and Vermont (pretty much the only two places I'd been prior to this trip!) The rocks were SO red, the sky was SO wide.

Tuscon also stayed in my memory because it was steeped in magic. There were people off the side of the road admiring the scenery while looking for feminine or masculine vortexes. Magic was that close--just pull over the car and you might find it.

At around the same time, Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet came out and I was enthralled by the lush, Catholic imagery.Combine that with my strong wish to BE Buffy Summers (like, a scrapbook was involved). Don't be scared, Buffy. I got rid of the scrapbook eventually.What you get is my quest to find a turquoise cross in a style similar to Luhrmann's movie. It was a shallow reason, but maybe you will forgive me since I was only in high school at the time. I'm pretty sure I went to every single turquoise shop in Tuscon--no small feat! Finally, I found this:I'm wearing it now, in honor of those who have suffered from the shooting but also to remind myself of my trip to a strange and beautiful place at a time in my life when I felt very strange but never beautiful.