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The taproot of my psyche is embedded to the mantle at fifty-ten-west-Sweetwater-Drive-Tucson-Arizona-eight-five-seven-four-five.  My sense is dominated by place--not community, belonging, security, but by the geography of my formation.

My senses are overwhelmed by this sense.

Sounds: a 7am Gila woodpecker banging on the ducts, "The Barn," "Kingstaff," "The Museum," violent monsoons, amorous Harris' hawks, The Wash after a microburst, the strange acoustic properties of brutal heat, "Arroyo Lane," The Katiebonniepeter Saguaros exploding and plastering our outside walls with green spiky goo, coyote packs yapping in the yard, C-130, A-10, F-16, cicadas, "one-four-oh-oh-oh-off," the ringing of the old cowbell heralding dinnertime, "good morning to you, good morning to you, it's time to get up now, it's time to go poo," an impossible cacophony of mysterious noises throughout the night, Past Masters II through headphones over the roar of the Electrolux Pig every Saturday morning in The L, Tyrone interfacing with the ancient Soviet-personnel-carrier-ish microwave, KUAT 90.5 FM in the morning in The Addition, "I'm just going to show Bonnie that she didn't throw this rag away," and--most of all--the seasonal serenades of white-winged and mourning doves and Gambel's quail: kuh kuh kuh kuuuuu-uh u-uh kuuuu-uh u-uh kuuuu-uh uh... kuh kuh-kuh kuuuuuuuuuh; oooooaaah poo poo poo; huh hwaaa ha huh hwaaa ha huh hwaaa ha, respectively.

Tastes: bitter pulp of unripe pomegranates, grotesquely sweet ocotillo blossoms after summer rains, chlorinated overripe apricots, the local oral anesthesia of raw jojoba, prickly-pear jelly, Fry's bagels--by the crate--with copious butter and cream cheese and dipped in orange juice, feral New Zealand spinach, a half vanilla/half flour swirl cake, homemade bagels with dry milk for flour, Dongy's fried eggs with La Victoria chile verde salsa on Roman Meal, eggplant and swiss chard.

Smells: monsooned creosote, burnt dust signaling the end of the heater's annual 11-month siesta, a necklace of dessicating chiles, "flower"ing palos verdes, heat so oppressive it reeks, goat manure, the complex and powerful smell of paraffin and stale placemats pouring from the buffet, freshly-broken ground, the well-ripened trailer interior after 10 months of disuse, The Barn with goats, The Barn with chickens, The Barn with packrats, Pixie, anything cooking on the cast iron, a daddy javelina, the desert's anxious chemical anticipation of an approaching storm cell, Cabby's wet-mixed-with-dry dogfood in the aluminum bread pan.
  
Sights: literally hair-raising lightning, a bobcat under my window on a lazy Saturday morning, acres of frosty cacti glowing backlit in sunrise-light, the omnipresent raptor, gopher snake with the blip-blip-blip of digesting packrats, javelinas in the carport; Gila monster under the car, Granddaddy's shells lined up under Smithsonian cutouts of leopards and orcas, the bushy overwatered elephant acacia near The Tramp, surreptitious TGIF with Katie every datenight, rattlesnake on floor at the foot of the bed during construction, diaper art, Bonnie curled up in a midden with a decovered and well-bathed Gone With the Wind, Van building a wall from desert rocks, a single vulture feather helicoptering down, Dongy stepping on--and breaking--the greatest dragon of all, a dozen tan cottonballs leaking horizontally behind quail parents, ubiquitous funnels of black widow spider nests, "Monsoons to Wash in Toxic Toad," Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp framed by saguaros, Dongy jigsawing a brontosaurus in the porch outside the master bedroom, two admired brothers jumping in the living room until their heads brushed the ceiling popcorn, ubermanly Brother Hously cutting his pinkie with a circle saw while building The Addition, a new land discovered in Civilization, iridescent cicadas, burnt circles on the underside of bookcase shelves, old sliding church belt buckle found by the rabbit cages, maggoted dove carcasses on The Porch, the daily drowned kangaroo mouse in the pool, old bullet hole in a prickly-pear paddle every day on the trail back from the bus stop, the potato plug--from a potato gun war with Bonnie--stuck to a thin branch over the pool wall for years and years.

Touch"es": a scorpion's zing, daily cholla spines in feet, smushy wash sand, binary solar radiation, bristly tarantulas, barefoot basketball on scorching gravel, thousands of prickly-pear microspines embedded in flesh, a tarantula hawk-shaped forehead welt, floating at night in a dark warm pool while bats swoop in for sips, the soft wood-on-wood friction of Dongy's goat-head-holder, the tactile dwink of the racquetball dwinked off an aluminum softball bat from the diving board out deep into the desert, getting blocked over and over and over again by Chris at The Hoop, the glossy rubberiness of the fiberglass-reinforced tape wrapped around the fracture in the Louisville Slugger, the impenetrability of caliche when attacked with a digging bar, the sandy and satisfying yield of poking holes in a sweet potato before baking it, Tyrone on my chest on Saturday morning to remind me of seminary, heavily-counterbalanced fancy silverware, insubstantial squirmy Colorado river toad tadpoles, pounding nail after nail into the unfinished doorjamb between the master bedroom and the porch, helpless but efficient swimming down the flashflooded Wash, scraping candle wax off the diningroom table with a butter knife, the heft of the squat square-tipped goat manure shovel, unique textures in a shovelful of packrat nest, peeing in the breeze, the crunchy lace of Mongy's nori and the satisfying monaxial rollability of the sushi roller, tapping each support beam in The L--only after working up from the metal bracket on the side of the fridge and the two inter-hall arches, wedging above the floor in doorways with hands and toes, the velvet-on-wood report from closing a drawer on The Buffet.

A cataract of memories pours from every remembered sensation.  My roots grow to absorb every memory.  I will never be uprooted from fifty-ten-west-Sweetwater-Drive-Tucson-Arizona-eight-five-seven-four-five but I can never go back.  Even if I could go back, it would just be 5010 W. Sweetwater Dr., Tucson, AZ 85745, without the infinite magic.