This Side of (Manufactured) Paradise

When I die, I hope I come back as a dog. Specifically, the white Pomeranian with a bow-tie collar cruising down the sidewalk with its owner, on a golf-cart (which has the body kit of a custom 76 Cadillac Eldorado), and taking in the cool California morning air. My Aunt Jan, who flew me out from Chicago to attend the International Film Festival, smiles into the sun and then leans back into her lawn chair by the clubhouse pool and says "This is like being on vacation on everyday."

Welcome to Palm Springs, California. Sitting in the Coachella Valley next to the San Andreas Fault, Palm Springs is bustling with retirees not just from America, but from all over the world who have come to bask in the California sun, play eighteen holes of golf on one of the infinite number of plush green courses, and just, well, retire. Palm Springs is so centered around retirement, in fact, that many of its subdivisions, like the one my aunt lives in, are exclusive to people 55 years and over. (My aunt is only 54, and had to fly my grandmother, 78, out here to sign the lease) And many of them are built around private golf courses, and have clubhouses and pools available to their residents. And I have to say, living here would be like being on vacation everyday. But there is something I noticed about Palm Springs while I was flying in: Despite the greenery everywhere, this town is sitting in the desert. Leave the city limits, and the scenery becomes sparse vegetation, lots and lots of sand and dry rugged mountain ranges. If you ask me, the name is pretty deceiving; Palm Springs. It conjures up images of green leafy foliage and crystal clear babbling brooks. But the palm trees, yep, they've been transplanted from somewhere else. And the closest thing to any kind of spring is the season just before summertime, which is supposedly quite nice. So why manufacture such an expanse of faux paradise? Because the weather is so damn beautiful, year round. 

It's 10:00 a.m. and we're standing in line for the Norwegian film "North." The morning clouds are burning off, the breeze is light, it's about 70 degrees. Perfect weather for me, I came out of the Chicago winter. But many have brought out the winter coats and fur-lined boots.
      It's my first full day in Palm Springs, and as the droves of people show up to wait in line, I look around and can't shake the feeling I'm waiting in line for goulash at the nursing home cafeteria. Everybody (and I mean everybody) is at least sixty. Many are pushing seventy, and there several couples sure to be in their eighties. For the first time in my movie-going experience, I feel completely out of my element. Tracksuits and sweatsuits seem to be a popular choice of wardrobe among the men, maybe to suggest they still have trace amounts of athleticism. Men talk about improving their handicap on the golf course, women talk about their new interior decorators, a great new cocktail lounge. The film doesn't start for an hour and a half, but seats at the Film Festival, if you're not a pass-holder, are first come, first serve and most of these people don't have anything to do. They're retired, remember? Nearly an hour before the film even starts seating, and the line stretches around the side of the theatre, down the block, and wraps around the back side of the theatre again. 

We manage to get pretty good seats (for what turned out to be a great dead-pan comedy) and as the crowd funnels out of the theatre, the older persons smell my young blood. "Oh my, a young man!" a small elderly lady says in the same way people in Chicago awe over a Navy Pier fireworks display or a meteor shower. Heads turn, whispers start and ripple out across the crowd. I feel like a spotted celebrity on Sunset Boulevard being ogled as I walk. As we weave through the mass of elderly, my aunt sees a familiar face. "Marney!" she says. "Hey! Marney!" Marney is a short woman of ample stature, cosmetically red hair, small eyes, and what I imagine has to be botox injected at the corners of her mouth and around her eyes (though I've never seen it on a real live person.) She looks strangely Native American; though in a city of millionaires, I never can tell. There seems to be a uniform desire to be anything but what you are. My aunt introduces me as a Chicago writer, to which Marney quickly responds by informing me she is a writer as well, a prolific writer, and an artist, and a blogger, and a lot of other things, which she explains to me in full detail. She is living with her mother, she says, until one of those careers pans out. At last, I think as we part ways, another squatter in Palm Springs. 


So after an early film the next day, my aunt (whom I should probably mention is a dental hygienist with a rather affluent cliental) takes me to her good friend Ray's home. Ray is an Italian-American from Boston who lives alone since his wife passed last year. He opens the door dressed in a dark blue sweatsuit, a slouched posture, he's only about 5 foot 7. Stereotypical Italian features; round face, big nose, freshly shaved beard grown a little since this morning. The first thing I notice when we walk into his foyer is that his walls are covered in paintings, all very good but still obviously amateur, and there is a serious surplus of space. Just empty space. White tile, beige carpet, no furniture other than a couch and coffee table. No nicknacks, no decor. It evokes an indescribable sense of loneliness and abandonment. But Ray is as happy as ever to see company at his door. He pulls us some espresso from a machine that surely goes for at least ten thousand and takes a seat with me in his living room while my aunt goes looking for his cats. Ray tells me about the paintings; many he's painted since he's picked up the hobby when his wife passed last year of cancer, and even more he bought from others who have done the same, for the same reason; loss. He says it's the best form of therapy for people out here. "Avatar!" he exclaims, randomly. "Have you seen Avatar? What a movie that was! I tell you, Kody," he says shaking his head disbelievingly. He sips his espresso and looks around at his paintings. "Your generation is completely transforming movies. I mean, just, taking them to whole new levels." 
     I ask Ray what inspires him to paint. The paintings done by him are almost always focused around a woman. He looks at me and gives me an answer I guess I always saw coming. "My wife," he says. "She was a great woman."

My time in Palm Springs was about halfway through when I started to ask myself a serious question. I was trekking with my aunt through a zoo built into the natural landscape, about the only thing I’d seen that was natural (apart from the organic food stores) in Palm Springs, and I thought, “What is this place? Who the hell are these people living here?” My ideas about retirement began to run through my head, what I’d always imagined it to be. You know how women, from the time they’re just little girls, start to imagine their wedding? Well, that’s how I am, only with retirement. I imagine, in my intensely naïve and inexperienced mind, that retirement will be a time to do some of the things I never got a chance to do. To indulge in some of life’s smaller pleasures. Maybe to go deep-sea fishing, ride in a hot air balloon, take some culinary classes, learn another language and apply with a trip to a country that speaks said language. I don’t know what my list will be in forty years, but I’m sure it will contain something interesting, something small but gratifying. But when I see retirees moving in droves to exclusive subdivisions that tune out all the varieties of distractions and pleasures that gave life its spice, I feel like I’m overlooking an important element of retirement. Does living life for too long just make you want to disappear? And if it does, would you go to, say, a faux paradise?

            What part of moving to a place like this is not giving up and throwing in the towel? I understand (No, I don’t, really. But I can imagine) that life is exhausting, and after you’ve put in your sixty plus years you just want to relax and retire. Play golf, join a wine club, pick up knitting, or painting, or baking. But doing something as bold as moving into a dubbed “retirement community” is simply starting that countdown timer. You’ve tipped your hat to death, stepped forth, and asked for a few more good years. And you’re going to hope and pray he obliges. Am I the only one that doesn’t want to slowly be lowered into his coffin, arms crossed on his chest, but would rather come sliding in at the last minute right after my last check just bounced? Republicans everywhere would probably think I’m crazy. But you know how us twenty-somethings can be. I am made of blue sky and hard rock, and I will live this way forever!*

The week is over, the films were great. Really great. So was the weather.

            My ride to the airport is a woman named Dori, a seventy-something former world-traveler (who never really grasped the essence of traveling; she detested the countries that were culturally different than America AKA all of them). She has since stopped traveling since she came to Palm Springs. She drops me off, and I grab the latest copy of the New Yorker and board my plane in good time. The inbound flight to Palm Springs was overbooked, and this flight is relatively empty. I guess most people don’t leave Palm Springs. As the plane takes off, I stare into the vast expanse of desert that surrounds the city. And then, as the plane banks to the North, I stare down the wing at one last glimpse of paradise. 

*lyrics by Pavement