Palm Springs Eternal

Palm Springs is just like you would imagine Marilyn Monroe. It is no coincidence, then, that a giant forty-foot statue of the jinxed minx towers there in downtown. This desert town loves and is unrepentant about its seductive appeal. The heat is dry; sweat dries as it surfaces, the nights balmy with a gentle breeze that whispers lascivious fantasies. The architecture, never more than one story high, combines slanting roofs, straight lines, and eye-watering lawns that beckon. The elderly strut about town, proud of their leisurely senescence. Young and old retreat during the heat of the afternoon to swimming pools with daiquiris and margaritas in hand or to air-conditioning in well-appointed homes. Just as Marilyn might be too much to handle at times, so too the city becomes sweltering; the pavement sears bare feet, the sultry heat scintillates and undulates off one-way streets that embrace the hurly-burly in the town’s center. Once the stifling afternoon ends, the denizens pour forth, ebullient and eager to leave their cool prisons. The city radiates beauty and charm, much like the 50s legend memorialized there; and its siren call dissipates ever so slowly, clinging to your memory like a vague whiff of coquettish concupiscence.