Diva Marisa in the Sonoran Desert

 

For a moment, I opened the door to our home in Phoenix, and time folded in on itself. I did not see the woman with tired eyes from too many miles alone on the highways in many states. I saw the beautiful creature gliding down Market Street in her modified, ominous black sedan that shot fire during the San Francisco Pride Parade, like some urban hero straight from Thunderdome, her tattoo catching the sun while tourists stopped and stared. I saw her in the Earth Room at the Gregangelo Museum, draped in moss and grapes, transformed into a living feast as I tucked stray leaves into place and tried not to prick my fingers on hidden pins. I saw the night she became the spirit of spring itself, layered in green silk and yellow blossoms, every inch of her promise that winter never wins for long.

She stepped into our home, into my now, as if crossing a small border between lives. We hugged so hard my ribs complained, and then there were sighs and an embrace of folding into each other, our warm cheeks touching, and the same old familiar smell of care, the scent of oils, and a little bit of stage dust, even after all these years.

I  made dinner, simple and grounding.  We settled around the table like we’d done it every week instead of every decade, the conversation picking up mid‑sentence, mid‑life, introducing Marisa to Greg, Greg to Marisa, two people who had never met, both of whom I love deeply. We talked about the years since I left San Francisco—the performance work, the wild experiments, the operas, the costumes, me as her dresser, and the curtain calls —and then how, somehow, everything alchemized into magic. I shared my own patchwork: desert walks and memoir, writing, puppets, Indigenous pathways, the way I’ve tried to braid art, land, and community into something that emanates life.

We wandered through everything: old heartbreaks, new loves, parents, bodies changing, bodies not changing, how the world feels stranger and more fragile than it did when we were twenty and thirty-something artists in San Francisco, playing with the circus, stapling rhinestones to our dreams. We talked about technology and how fast it's all moving, about how human attention feels like a currency now, something to spend carefully and on purpose. And we laughed—oh, we laughed—about the nights, the shows, the people, the characters, the heart.

Later, when the desert had gone quiet and the dishes were stacked in the sink, we sat in the soft light on the back porch. The three of us formed a small constellation, passing stories back and forth like offerings. I watched Marisa’s hands as she spoke, still conductor’s hands, still capable of sculpting silence into music. Every now and then, I would see, layered over her present face, the younger one I knew so well—the one painted in gold, crowned in feathers, or hidden under impossible headdresses that made turning her head an act of faith.

Beneath all the costumes and years, the essential Marisa had not changed; she had rather bloomed into what only life and experience could seed. Richer, wiser, moving through the world like a channel for something larger: music, mischief, tenderness. The same woman who once hovered above us on a trapeze, voice spilling like water down onto the crowd, now performing in waters of Mexico, that haunting voice singing across borders and state lines, into the mysteries that only her spirit and sound can carry forward. 

 We also sat in our home in Phoenix, talking about grief and resilience and the fierce, quiet work of staying alive, staying authentic, and as an artist in a world that keeps trying to flatten everything into content.

At one point, she looked around our house, at Greg and me, and she smiled that slow, knowing smile. “You did it,” she said. “You built your beautiful life again. It is peaceful. You're in your true power, and it is beautiful to see.”

I wanted to tell her that she helped me believe such kingdoms were possible—that back in those cavernous San Francisco spaces, watching her sing in impossible costumes while we stitched ourselves into audiences and community, I learned that we could make worlds from scratch. That we didn’t have to wait for permission to be big, to be tender, to be utterly, gloriously weird. Instead, I just squeezed her hand and said, “So did you.”

Before bed, we stepped outside. The night air was warm and soft, carrying the faint scent of Sonoran Desert dust. Above us, the sky was crowded with stars that one could never see amidst the city lights, but I knew they were there. They told me so. We stood there shoulder to shoulder, two souls who have shapeshifted through so many versions of ourselves, listening to the quiet hum of the neighborhood and the distant whoosh of the freeway. Chika milking the sweetness of Marisa’s lap.

“I miss you,” she said.

“I never stopped carrying you,” I answered, and realized as I said that it was true. She lives in the part of me that still believes in transformation, in the backstage chaos that somehow becomes opening night, in the way friendship can stretch across years and miles and come back intact, like a costume pulled from a trunk that still fits.

In the morning, we drank coffee slowly, as if we could delay the sun’s climb just by refusing to rush. Then it was time for her to go. There was the familiar farewell choreography: the extra hug, the “text me this, text me that.” She drove away with the same bravery she had always had, chasing the next show, the next song, the next shimmering doorway.

After she left, I felt more alive, the past mixing with the present in an almost melancholy way as if her visit had shaken loose a layer of dust I hadn’t noticed settling over my memories. All that day, tiny moments kept resurfacing: the swish of pink and white feathers on some long‑ago stage, the way grapes rolled off the table at that decadent photoshoot, the sound of her voice echoing from a minimalist stage, where all that was needed was her beautiful, haunting operatic voice.

Reconnecting with Marisa reminds me that the people we love are not confined to the years we shared a city, a job, or a costume rack. They live in the choices we make afterward, in the tenderness we keep extending—to ourselves, to each other, to the world. Our friendship is stitched inside like a hidden seam, holding together parts of my life that might otherwise fray.

This evening, alone again in my kitchen, I lit a candle and whispered a small blessing for her road ahead: May the stages be kind, the audiences brave, the costumes comfortable enough to breathe in. May she always find her way to the people who see her whole, both onstage and off. And may our paths keep circling back, like circus wagons returning to town, reminding us that home is not one single place after all. Home is where we show up for each other, again and again, saying, “I remember you in all your incarnations, and I am so grateful you are still here.”