swank

so many little moments of inspiration today.

& so many little sad and happy moments.

first: the mountains.

the mountains.

i fell out of bed and went up to sundance with c. this morning to wait in line for ninety minutes for the best of fest tickets, free to locals, for the sundance film festival. the line was long and cooooold. i couldn't feel my toes. but the company was good. we waited in line with a dozen friends (locals) who are stalwarts about attending the festival (a half-dozen of these friends were siblings in one of those dynastic mormon families--cool, smart, liberal, interesting, artsy and large in number all with the same wide nordic eyes and cheek-bones. it thrills me that as adults they still like to hang out and attend sundance together).

then a short jaunt for a 44 oz. diet coke/dr. pepper cocktail at chevron with eva and friends before c. took her to the airport, manhattan bound again.

i will miss my beautiful girl more than i can say.

i imagined new york, and missed it, and wondered for the thousandth time what calls me back to the mountains always, though i see myself as one more at home in the gleaming temple of civilization rather than wandering the back-country of timpanogas.

then a glorious, swank afternoon with ingrid and lula, eating seven-layer bean dip with fritos in my bed and watching 9 to 5. o dolly! and lily! and jane! and their early eighties office attire.

that morning, on the drive down from sundance, i read in byu's student review a quote from political science professor valerie hudson, on her way to a swank endowed chair or something at texas a & m, saying that she didn't feel lds women were allowed their full equality: "despite the lds church's revolutionary doctrine concerning women, lds culture, lds traditions, and lds chapel practice often do not live up to the doctrinal vision we have been given by our prophetic leadership. . . . we as a people must stop living beneath our privileges on this score."

hudson has some interesting views on feminism, politics, and gender, many of which i disagree with, but i thought she was spot-on with that assessment. and she has done some of the most important work i know of in establishing the truth that gender parity is one of the most essential factors to the success of the human race with her woman stats project. she has provided sound empirical data that national security and welfare are dependent on the degree to which the women in a nation are a) alive and present, b) educated, and c) have access to freedom in public life.

for that reason, she's one of my heroines.

and the idea that we must "stop living beneath our privileges" rang out to me today with many implications. it goes back to the recent themes i've been harping on about living without regret, noticing the things that are free and good and appreciating them, and also perhaps a bit of re-framing for myself.

for instance: i don't need to pine for the skyscrapers of manhattan when i've got the skyscrapers of the wasatch mountains so close by that i can touch them. can i see them as temples of culture, the rock formations as sculpture in the MOMA, a hike as an artistic act?

so, anyway, though, back to dolly & co.: when they haplessly end up kidnapping their sexist boss who had been endlessly harassing all of the women in the office, dolly, his secretary, realizes that she can "sign his name better than he can." dolly, lily, and jane immediately set out to implement such progressive policies for the office as on-site daycare, job sharing, colorful decor, and, most importantly, equal pay for equal work by writing a plethora of memos signed by dolly.

the gals know they've been living beneath their privilege, and they take that privelege back for themselves, creating better conditions for all of the workers in the office, male and female.

mmmm-hmmm.

then ingrid requested a little american in paris for her last hour at home. i spent an hour wishing that gene kelley was fred astaire, and that someone else had written the script. still fun, though. and "paris" was real swank.

then ingrid left for bryn mawr. wah. not before, however, making me laugh so hard i cried whilst she kept saying hilarious things in german about her wandernkostum.

you probably had to be there.

i feel a little sad and empty with her gone.

then cecily learned to make rice, and, with almost every crumb of food in our house eaten up, we ate beans and rice and a winter salad with the few vegetables left in the drawer.

but i just read this, from alex kapranos' fantastic little book sound bites:

mme. taroudant brings me a tagine d'agneau. The clay is black with splashes hardened by the unforgiving fire, the ghosts of a thousand meals. Prunes fall from the stone. l'agneau falls from the y-shaped bone. i can't tell what kind of bone. i try to summon some knowledge of agneau anatomy, but give up. i don't care. it's magnificent.

i don't know if kapranos has some sort of ghostwriter or what. he's a damned good writer and sound bites is one of my favorite food books.

now lula and i will finish sons of perdition, a surprisingly beautiful documentary about kids who leave the fundamentalist polygamist community of colorado city. i haven't finished it yet, but so far i recommend it.

free things: re-reading and re-watching books and movies around the house, using up all the food in the house, sitting at the table with the kids, laughing with ingrid, thinking a lot.

inspiring things: don't live beneath your privilege.

legwear: dammit. same jeans four days in a row. finally threw them into the laundry. finally a shower and change at 6.30 pm. in an hour i'll put on a decent outfit and go to a party. it will include either black or grey tights.