Counter Dictionary

Growing up in southern Arizona was interesting when you take into account that it was practically in the middle of the Sonoran desert. While described as "The Sonoran desert is the hottest and most arid of the four north American deserts", I lived in the "Arizona Upland Deserts (also called the Saguaro Desert)" (Mares 1999) which is known for its wide variety of flora and fauna. As such, my experiences of 'desert' were of a place that was more akin to a jungle, with so much foliage and plant life that the concept of walking through it brought up immediately painful thoughts of legs full of thorns.

For me, the desert was always a place full of life. vivid cactus flowers would bloom every spring and practically everywhere you looked there was either a bird, lizard or snake coming darting to cover. Many early childhood memories come from hiking Pusch Ridge (seen below from our driveway after rain), climbing through forests so thick with trees and cactus that you had to stick to the trail. It made me wonder how those early pioneers ever crossed such a vast and unforgiving expanse, and why they chose to settle in this hot, dry yet somehow inexplicably overgrown landscape.

It was not until much later in life that I learned the dictionary definition of 'desert', "a dry,  barren area of land, esp. one covered with sand, that is characteristically desolate, waterless, and without vegetation." This was completely counter-intuitive to what I thought a desert should be! It was not what my deserts were. My view was further shaken by the realization that according to that definition, Antarctica was the world's largest desert being devoid of rainfall and vegetation. How two things could be described with the same word astounded and confused me, and still does to this day.

In the spirit of Bataille's counter-dictionary, I place myself in relation to this thing, desert, in such a way that "the properties or attributes that transform the thing into an image or figure of an invisible, inner condition or state of mind" (particularly one of interpellation). For Bataille, the factory chimney became "an image of his own inner experience of living in an industrialized civilization" (41). For me, the image of the Sonoran desert around my home constitutes my own inner experience of living in a land where, despite the scarcity of water, life continues to thrive. My experiences wondering how humans could have settled here echoes this sentiment; we (humanity) were strangers in that place, living in a counter-intuitive desert that seems to run contrary to the rest of the world.

In this sense my counter-dictionary entry would be desert, not as a barren wasteland but as a thriving desert-jungle that is still less-than-hospitable to human life. My own experiences living in a desert have attuned me to that word differently than the dictionary definition, seeing the desert as a place full of life yet also somehow inhospitable.

Mares, Michael A., and Okla.) Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (Norman. Encyclopedia of Deserts. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999