Anthem Orange and Black
I had a vision several month back. It felt like a dream, or déjà vu, or something else, but I knew it wasn’t normal. It was frightening. It was a vision into the future. I was seated next to man who told me about his retirement plans. We were on a Greyhound bus coming down the long grade on the highway from Flagstaff to Phoenix, Arizona. He was a nice man. He told me he was a mail carrier, but that he was looking forward to his hobbies and pleasures. We chatted about cactuses, wildlife, about geography and the mountains. He was knowledgeable and interested in his surroundings.
Then it came, my first perception. Out the window loomed an impressive expanse of subdivisions, houses, all the same shape and size, each and every last one with the same cardinal orientation, landscaping, and the same big garage doors that looked like some cynical smile. The flags were blowing in the wind, red, white, and blue. Multiple cars, every other one a massive truck or SUV. Sprinklers sprayed water across the lawns and gardens with hardly a pedestrian in sight to enjoy the clear air and unnatural foliage. It was Anthem, Arizona. A large billboard proclaimed, “Anthem!” A pale skinned girl clutching a baseball bat grinned in her little league uniform. One could smell the apple pie. “A wonderful place to raise your family” read another sign. The suburban expanse went on and on, spreading like an oil slick across the desert. Many of the homes were already inhabited. Supermarkets and strip malls, the new designs popularized in Southern California under the moniker of “Town Squares,” were already doing business. Parks, fields, schools, offices, the whole paradise was already laid out and neatly linked together by little rivers of steel and asphalt, roads. Anthem, by Del Webb.
We passed through and the vision of this dreamy Americana subsided. But now I was utterly confused. What was that?, what is Anthem? Was it a northern suburb of Phoenix? It was, but no, it was something more. It was a recreation of a suburb. It was an imitation, a place evoking suburbia. It was homage to the escapism and the isolationism of affluent America, an escape that was promised and delivered to the White affluent middle class of the post war U.S. It was a habitat and a monument to those now calling out greedily and ignorantly, “where’s mine?!” It would be the home to thousands of Arizonans, members of the suburban class – those who live in suburbs, drive suburbans, a genuinely reactionary and dangerous lot of people. Many were already there eagerly filling shopping carts with thickly packaged foods, permanently fresh selections of vegetables, pumping gas, watching television, taking their Wellbutrin, fitting into that pair of tight jeans, or not. They were there already, and more were coming. They’re out there right now, playing golf, hanging yellow ribbons, asking, “Why do they hate us?”
My perception into this America subsided. The bus rolled into Phoenix. The sky was red and brown from a dust storm, or was it smog? It was both. The sun was setting which only intensified the Marsian landscape. Out the window I gazed upon emptied out factories, warehouses, mean streets. The vegetation was dying. Not a drop of water was in sight. This was not America, not Arizona, this was not Phoenix. This was a vision of the future. Anthem, the green lawns and cornucopian SUVs, and now a dead city, a Phoenix that had no hope of rising from these ashes. The streets were stained, smelly, baked. The driver informed us that the temperature outside the bus exceeded 110 degrees. He recommended that we remain on the bus while in the station. We drove into the Barry Goldwater memorial terminal of the Phoenix international airport. It was a dark cavernous structure lit entirely by intense high pressure sodium lamps. Everything was orange and black. There was no sky. The air buzzed with the incessant rumble of motors. The vision intensified: This was a window into the future. I closed my eyes trying to regain reality. I could tell we had exited the terminal as the echoing motors subsided. I opened my eyes but the sky looked dark and muddy like the terminal’s ceiling. Everything was orange and black, the dust and smog was overwhelming. A homeless man lay on fake grass outside of the airport. Anthem and this? Is this the future? Orange and black?
