Road Trip: White Sands

If you were going to design picnic benches on Mars, you'd probably come up with something like this.

(White Sands National Park. Photo by Jeanne)

To recap: We had arrived in New Mexico from Arizona. My friend Martha had told us that sunset at White Sands was the time to be there and so we drove all day, arriving at the park an hour before magic time. Weatherwise, it was superglued at 106º.

Let me be honest.

I. Hate. Heat.

But I swear to you, when you're in White Sands, temperature loses all relevancy.

It's like you've entered some crazy cartoon world, surrounded by sixty foot mountains of granulated sugar as far as the eye can see.

The kids took off with their plastic sleds and I started snapping photos like I was David Bailey in "Blow-Up." "Over here!" "Okay -- now go for it!" "Yes, yes!" "That's it, darling!"

(Photo by Jeanne)

The sun slipped lower and suffused the landscape with ethereal reds and pinks. It was all very Sofia Coppola-ish.

But even photos don't capture the bliss of what it felt like to be there.

So hopefully this will:

Road Trip, Detour One: Arcosanti

So we were headed to a 1970's architectural community in the middle of the Arizona high desert. Jeanne, my travelling companion, had heard from her friend Chloe that it was a pretty intense place.

It was on the way to Marfa, Texas so we figured, "Why not?"

(website HERE)

Intense was an understatement. Our first thought when we pulled up to it was that it was a leftover prop town from "Planet of the Apes."

(Photo by Jeanne)

The brainchild of Italian architect Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti was started in the 1970's, ran out of funding a few years later and is now an educational urban laboratory manned by a community of devoted volunteers.

(Photo by Jeanne)

About 70 people live here full-time -- guiding tours, running the vegan café and working in the bronze foundry hammering out the famous Soleri windchimes.

We had arrived too late for the 4pm tour so we struck out on our own. With the uncanny radar of nine-year-olds, the boys homed in on a stray ball and went to town.

(Photo by Jeanne)

Free to wander, we started snapping photos. Have I mentioned that everywhere we turned, there were circles?

(Photo by Jeanne)

Circles.

(Photo by Jeanne)

Circles.

Circles.

(Photo by Jeanne)

Okay, it was all a little eerie.

When we stumbled upon the winged amphitheater, my imagination took flight. I couldn't help thinking of the chairs as white-garbed acolytes sitting in rapt attention.

(Photo by Jeanne)

We drove about half a mile down the hill to our rooms. (Volunteers live in dormitories up at the main compound.)

Evidently, the guest quarters have yet to be completed.

The rooms were...well, let's just say they were all about the view.

And the view was incredible.

But the boys were tired. And overheated.

(Photo by Jeanne)

And it was 105 degrees. And there was no air-conditioning.

So we used our first Road Trip Chip -- the one that says, "Never be afraid to make a spur-of-the-moment decision."

And with the unshakeable dream of an icy hotel room in our heads, we got back on the road, turned up the music, drove another 80 miles and found an icy refuge in Tempe, Arizona.

(Jeanne and I thinking of air-conditioning)

* * * * *

Editor's Note:

Apparently, the room to stay in at Arcosanti is the Sky Suite (a futuristic bachelor pad, up at the main compound and with A/C) but it was booked already.

* * * * *

Up next:

An Other-Worldly Mind Meld at White Sands, New Mexico:

"My eyes are telling me that this should be snow...so why is my plastic sled melting?"

Road Trip - Marfa and Points Beyond

There were deserts of sand...

and pillars of light...

and waves of heat...

and meals on wheels...

and flickers from the past...

and mile after mile of endless possibility.

Out here, it's America.

I'm on Interstate 10 and headed home to Hollywood.

Full recap soon.

The Way We Live Now

The April issue of World of Interiors arrived in the mail on Saturday. And as much as I'm enjoying the love troubles of Lily Dale in "The Small House at Allington"...

...I'm afraid that WOI trumps Trollope.

What is it about this particular magazine that arouses such heart palpitations in me? It's not just the glimpses into castles in Tuscany, flower-bedecked dower cottages in Sussex or F. Scott Fitzgerald-ish villas in Cap d'Antibes that make my palms clammy -- it's the life and soul that seep out from every photograph. Rarely does WOI feature people in their interiors, but one is still filled with the sense that the Aga cooker is heating up something fragrant, the sofa cushions are warm to the touch, and just around the corner there's an Alsatian snoring away on a kilim. It's high style that's inviting and embraceable.

This ethos of embracing unfussy comfort seems to be gaining ground lately. On Saturday, the "Off Duty" section of the Wall Street Journal had a wonderful article called "The Rise of the Personal" which documents the current passion for creative imperfection. "The [new] fantasy of the undecorated house is Tuesday morning as it is actually lived," as writer Katie Roiphe so brilliantly puts it.

Now don't get me wrong. I have massive reverence for interior designers -- Peter Dunham, David Netto, Nicky Haslam and Jacques Grange among them. To me, these decorators possess the innate knowledge that people want to live in homes that mirror their own passions and idiosyncrasies and not someone elses. They use their immense talents to create glorious possibilities for their clients, ones in which comfort, wit and sincerity are always in plentiful supply.

Continuing this same theme, I went to a party last Tuesday:

Look Everywhere

If every person were required to adopt a motto that encapsulated their view of the world, mine would have to be this:

(Available HERE)

Whether it's the crimson red of a Royal Air Maroc boarding pass that leads to buying a new bedroom lampshade....

Or the kitchen scenes in "Downton Abbey" (can we pause to drool over that series for a moment?) that suddenly make you reconsider a flagstone floor....

Or the reckless spread of flowering potato vines at a local restaurant that spark an idea for adding style to a front door....

"Aha" moments are everywhere if you just look for them.

When it comes to travelling, I am most enticed by destinations in which there exists a precarious balance between unruliness and order. The souks in Marrakech were not only a kaleidoscope of culture, they were a barrage of colors, textures and ideas. Yes, it was hodge-podge; yes, colors clashed; yes, there was more pattern-on-pattern that seemed possible for the human retina to absorb, but everywhere you looked there was something that seemed to jumpstart a dazzling flash in your brain.

And don't even get me started on Scotland.

Or click HERE.

The Persistence of Memory

How on earth can a clump of tissue possibly capture and store everything -- poems, emotional reactions, locations of favorite bars, distant childhood scenes? The answer is that brain cells keep one another on biological speed-dial, like a group of people joined in common witness of some striking event. Call on one and word quickly goes out....

~ Benedict Carey, The New York Times

(Pieter Brueghel, "The Fight Between Carnival and Lent," 1559)

* * * * *

When I rounded the corner of the medina and saw the man sitting there, a sensation pierced my brain -- I know this picture. The man, the blue djellaba, the massive slab of flesh -- I have a file in my head already that contains this image.

(Morocco, December 2009)

There was no time to tease out the origin of my long-dormant memory, so I quickly snapped a photo and hurried to follow my husband and son before they disappeared headlong into the narrow alleys of Essaouira.

(Morocco, December 2009)

For the next few days, the image nagged at me. Where had I seen it before? The clues I kept getting from my brain cells were scattershot and confusing: Bohemianism. Loucheness. Smoky pubs. And instead of beef, I kept thinking of bacon. Why were these words so insistently linking themselves with a photograph of a Muslim butcher?

Finally it came to me.

(Francis Bacon)

(Man with Meat, Francis Bacon, 1954)

It was kind of stunning to realize that my brain had been on top of things (so to speak) the entire time, alerting my mental troops to harness any word or image I had ever associated with Francis Bacon. Sure enough, each clue led back to a connection I had made with him at one time or another.

Now whenever my memory is jogged, I think of Mr. Carey's description:

"Brain cells keep one another on biological speed-dial, like a group of people joined in common witness of some striking event."

From now on, I am visualizing my brain cells as villagers in a Brueghel painting, each one the possessor of a specific set of images and memories.

(Brueghel, "Netherlandish Proverbs", 1559)

When the call comes in -- "Alert! Need source image for Moroccan butcher!" -- they rally their neighbors and shout hints from the streets and rooftops, all trying to help the poor forgetful Gargantuan in whose body they reside.