Senses of Place--Y De Placer--in Baja Arizona (A Sense of Place‪)‬

I am out before dawn on a late August morn, chaotically wandering around like a senile naturalist lost in the midst of a city. But Tucson doesn't exactly seem like a metropolis to me; it feels more like a patchwork of neighborhoods, barrios and colonias packed tightly into the same desert valley like so many sardines jammed into a greasy tin. The more I walk the summer streets of Armory Park Neighborhood, Barrio Viejo and Barrio Anita--their quelites and Bermuda grass and verdolagas growing out of every sidewalk crack and every pothole--the more I feel like I am crawling around the aging, disheveled body of a former lover, a woman I have not seen since her youth, but whose exaggerated curves, dimples, and curls I vaguely remember.