downhill from god's golden shore

Phoenix, AZ

My mom and I make a detour to Phoenix’s Musical Instrument Museum before she sends me off at the airport. We get there not long before closing, and never make it out of the Africa section. Which is absolutely enough for me.

Mom comes out of MIM saying she feels like she’s been to another planet. Like there’s all these people in the world, and they all have their own jokes, their own religions, she says.

We have dinner at the Cornish Pasty Co., recommended to me by a hacker I know who used to live in the Phoenix area, last name Huerta, like the civil rights activist. The pasties are tremendous and bonkers. They’ve branched out to give you any possible filling combination—vegan Cubano, Cajun, vindaloo, Greek, Mexican, the Royale With Cheese—as well as sides of classic English pub fare like sticky toffee pudding and mushy peas. I have the Pilgrim, the turkey and cranberry option, and it is outstanding.

Do you have music? I ask mom on the drive to the hotel. It was strangely quiet in the car between her and me on the way down. So often we’ve gone on road trips singing harmonies all the way.

It’s not anything you like, she says.

Jackson Browne sings

Downhill from God's golden shore
Downhill from the grocery store
Downhill from the Senate Floor
K Street, and the never-ending war

Downhill from everywhere
Downhill from all you see
The ocean is the last stop for gravity
Downhill from here
Downhill from everywhere
All mankind's ambition and vanity

Do you think of the ocean as yours?
Because you need the ocean to breathe
Every second breath you take
Is coming from the sea
We don't really know
Because we don't really see
Do you think of the ocean as yours?
Do you think about it at all?

The sun is setting over the landlocked desert hills around Prescott as the lap steel guitar comes on. Mom breathes a sigh about how talented Browne is. I’d thought lap steel was as African as so many other elements of American music. But it’s not. I looked it up. It’s from across the Pacific—it’s Hawaiian.