on one

christian says i'm on one tonight.  he might be right. my mind is rushing, and i went through about 15 rants during our date night, even in our relaxing patio dinner at tarahumara in midway, watching the sky darken and the mountains turn into silhouettes.  even though we had driven through a stunning red-leafed provo canyon on the way to dinner.  even though i had gotten a goodly amount of work done today and should have been relaxed.

two things i can't wait to rant about at length and in great detail are this utterly horrid looking anti-public school movie,

and malick's portrayal of women in tree of life, which i saw again, in real film on a big screen two weeks ago.

oh, wait, i guess that should be "woman" since there is only one.

and since she has no name, and can't talk to another woman (since there is no other woman, and therefore the other non-woman can't have a name either).

(this means tree of life fails the bechdel test.) (most movies do.)

(ingrid interviewed allison bechdel yesterday for the bryn mawr college news & wrote this rad article for them on coming out as mormon in the shadow of romney.)

don't know why i've been feeling so rant-y lately.  so look forward to some more rants here in the coming week or two.

the rubble of our feast

hoagies, potato salad, crudite, chocolate chip cookies

trying to get every last drop of summer.

one more day until school starts for me and the two small children.

tree climbing at huber grove.

looking at this list, i have yet to:  1) hike timp, 2) take a road trip to southern utah, 3) buy a new pioneer bonnet, and 4) serve a fancy italian backyard dinner with candles.

today we had a picnic.  i wanted to go to southfork, but christian suggested huber grove in midway, and i'm so glad we went.  we haven't been this summer, and i had forgotten how cool it is.

the creamery.  snake creek ran through the cellar, keeping the dairy cool.  it's built of pot rock, volcanic rock prevalent in midway.

huber grove is a homestead from the 1800's built by mormon swiss immigrants.  the homestead is filled with fruit trees, aspen trees, a cottage and a pot rock creamery, and snake creek runs through the property.

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best of all, the homestead is covered in little plaques with excerpts from huber's journals and poems he wrote.  and quotes like this, that casually suggest a dramatic and amazing lifetime: "when huber was in vienna, he spent evenings at the vienna opera, when he was not imprisoned for his faith."

or this:

bees!

moses and i walked the little trail near the creek, dense with horsetail, and read up on the flora and fauna of the homestead, courtesy of the wasatch state park.  moses asked me afterwards if i had enjoyed our "naturous" walk.  ingrid wrote down quotes from the plaques in her journal and read snippets of the poems in german to us.

moses' ninja pose on "naturous" walk.

lula climbed a tree.

we ate.  we showed anna from cambridge a beloved place of ours.  since my mom grew up in midway, it has a special pull for me, and for the kids, who've spent many summers and vacations there.

anna from cambridge.

every time we have a picnic, i think of c. thomas asplund's beautiful poem, seasonings.  christian's father was such an amazing poet, and he didn't have time to write nearly enough poems in his foreshortened life.

II

The smallness of it all makes one wonder;

the sitting on a smooth bank

in the river smell and sun

and ants and grass

tickling up the sleeve.

The dry kiss

and the moist kiss.

The baby reeling through the grass on reckless legs

and you

stretching, head back amid the rubble of our feast,

reaching beyond me for the tiny sun

blink

                        you are gone with the flick of an eye

                                    blink

            gone are the empty cartons of a summer day

                        blink

            gone is the shameless sun.

            Suddenly my child stands before the tiny sun

            a giant shadow before the tiny sun

            and I can see that in his reeling quest for age

                                    he has stolen my years

                                    and shatters in the prism of  my tears

                                    and with the tiny river I am young no more.

circles

new round glasses, new round pearl ring, old earrings with circle cut-outs, beautiful round onion rings (is there a tastier food?)

certain motifs keep reappearing this week: visual, thematic, sounds, etc.  maybe i've been paying closer attention?

1.  circles.  i love the look of circles.  my new round sunglasses, chosen for me at target by ingrid, these beautiful onion rings we ate tonight on our date at timp freeze in midway, new round pearl (not real for heaven's sake) ring,  earrings with the cut out circle in the middle, and this tiny adorable cake from cakes de fleur we picked up at the store in midway after dinner.  we'll eat it later tonight when the ice cream i made in the new ice cream maker hardens (i think i successfully recreated snelgroves' burnt almond fudge.)

six-inch buttermilk cake from cakes de fleur.  adorable.  no preservatives.  whole ingredients.  it's hard to buy a good cake in utah.

and, finally, "o" for "om."

whereas we used to each eat an entire order like this, we now share.  we both feel reborn after too many years of not feeling good.

2. transitions.  tonight lula went to her first dance.  sob! which means. . . i can't even think about what it means, so i'll focus on the practical implications: we need a new date night babysitter.  we are all on the cusp of the new school year, and eva is transitioning into her new life in salt lake.  it's exciting, and a little terrifying, too.

since i can't think about lula liking boys, i'll think about finding a new date-night sitter.  hey.  timp freeze in midway's a great hangout spot.

3. transformations.  i've been longing for some major change or breakthrough, the moment where i feel, yes!  this is what i was after. this week i felt a little discouraged about how many years i've felt stuck (maybe eight?).  tonight i had a little boost of encouragement while we were eating dinner.  c. and i were looking at our order, which we were splitting, and talking about how bad our health was a few years ago, before we both lost a significant amount of weight.  we were laughing (and crying a little, too) about how, in the old days, we each would have eaten one of these meals, plus a couple of shakes, no problem.  we've both changed a lot over the past few years.  i remembered tonight, looking at my greasy box of onion rings, that i can change, and have changed, but it sometimes takes a while.

so patience and more patience is in order.

sadhguru of isha yoga is my meditation teacher's guru.  she claims meditation totally transformed her.  i met someone in nyc in may who told me the same thing.  can't hurt to try it.  i promise i'll never quote deepak chopra.

4.  meditation.  i went to a workshop today and got an overview of some basic meditation practices.  i decided for the next forty days to try a morning meditation of ten sun saluations, a few hip openers, and 21 oms.  this seems simple enough that i actually might do it. i'll let you know how it feels, and if i can stick with it.

my inspiration for listening was this book, another meditative text that changed my life.

5.  listening.  every morning this week i've gone on the back patio to write my morning pages and eat breakfast.  i've been spending  a few minutes each morning listening to the city start to waken.  there's a whipporwill who lives in our back yard, a neighbor who gets up early to work on his backyard pizza oven every day, and construction a few blocks over.   there's also a really beautiful sounding train, clear on the west side of our valley, that passes in the morning.  because of the high mountains, these sounds are soft but audible, echoing off the tall rocky walls that stand sentinel next to our house.

listening has brought a lot of peace to my morning.  i don't know why.  give it a try, if you want.

first the third then the fourth

me & my beautiful mommy at guru's birthday brunch

provo is the most festive fourth of july city i know of.  people go nuts here.  our neighborhood is be-flagged.  every home has an american flag planted in the front yard by the local boy scouts, put up in the early morning and taken down in the evening.  hot air balloons are launched in early morning, we have a big parade that closes down many neighborhoods and streets, and the evening brings stadium of fire--a massive affair with musical acts and fireworks.  tonight's act is the beach boys.

many families hold their reunions around the fourth as out-of-towners like to come for the festivities.  our reunion is always held on the 3rd in Midway, so my birthday is always a holiday of sorts.  (i may have an overblown sense of importance since my mom told me how my birth was accompanied by fireworks.)

yesterday, my mom, sisters and daughters had birthday brunch at guru's.

ingrid is the baked good queen at exoskeleton.  birthday watercolor by moses.

ingrid stayed up all night baking--birthday shortbread with fresh apricot puree and toasted pecans, cakes and mini-cupcakes for my sister hilary's wedding reception tomorrow night, and birthday peanut butter m&m cookies in a hand-decoupaged tin for my birthday present.

is eva becoming a farmer?

eva and anna came to midway for the reunion bearing this breathtaking basket of produce, honeycomb, chicken and duck eggs from the urban homestead they're living in right now in salt lake city.

uncle tom's teepee, fire in alpine.

uncle tom's, where the reunion is always held, is an amazing place.  he has gardens, animals, and, the kids' favorite, a golf-cart they can drive around the property. here's the tee-pee against the backdrop of a huge blaze in alpine, utah that started yesterday.  this whole state is on fire.

annual whitaker family reunion cakewalk.  c. playing harmonium in the background.

every year aunt bonnie makes cakes and flower crowns & c. brings his harmonium for a cake walk.  this year moses won.  he ran up to me with his cake, "isn't this the coolest looking cake you've ever seen?  aren't you so proud of me for winning?"  i was.

sample one: sasha and eve

here's a small sampling of (a few of) my nieces, visiting from out of town.

sample two:  ruby and baby lara

my nieces and nephews are extra adorable and brilliant, as you can see.

slopping the pigs

before leaving the reunion, we slopped the pigs and visited the (on-site) cowboy museum.  uncle tom has an intense relationship with cowboy culture, having started the heber cowboy poetry festival which has now become a major national event.

trying to get evie to give me a little birthday kiss

the day ended with a baskin & robbins ice cream cake from c., who knows what i love (i'll be spending my williams sonoma gift card from him today), fries and onion rings from stan's with katie, and working up my duet with kristin (a michael jackson song. . . .)

this fourth of july poem by gregory djanikian will give you a small sense of how i feel in provo in the hardcore patriot season here.  i sometimes feel like an immigrant here--somewhat baffled by the weeping and waving, but also intrigued and amused.

and, because this poem is in what i would call the billy collins school, more narrative & expository than poetic, i almost don't wanna put it up.  but it's apropos, so i will.  it will be fleetingly expressive of a momentary emotion.

Immigrant Picnic

BY GREGORY DJANIKIAN

It's the Fourth of July, the flags

are painting the town,

the plastic forks and knives

are laid out like a parade.

And I'm grilling, I've got my apron,

I've got potato salad, macaroni, relish,

I've got a hat shaped   

like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what's his pleasure

and he says, "Hot dog, medium rare,"

and then, "Hamburger, sure,   

what's the big difference,"   

as if he's really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs,   

slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,

uncap the condiments. The paper napkins   

are fluttering away like lost messages.

"You're running around," my mother says,   

"like a chicken with its head loose."

"Ma," I say, "you mean cut off,

loose and cut off   being as far apart   

as, say, son and daughter."

She gives me a quizzical look as though   

I've been caught in some impropriety.

"I love you and your sister just the same," she says,

"Sure," my grandmother pipes in,

"you're both our children, so why worry?"

That's not the point I begin telling them,

and I'm comparing words to fish now,   

like the ones in the sea at Port Said,   

or like birds among the date palms by the Nile,

unrepentantly elusive, wild.   

"Sonia," my father says to my mother,

"what the hell is he talking about?"

"He's on a ball," my mother says.

                                                      

"That's roll!" I say, throwing up my hands,

"as in hot dog, hamburger, dinner roll...."

"And what about roll out the barrels?" my mother asks,

and my father claps his hands, "Why sure," he says,

"let's have some fun," and launches   

into a polka, twirling my mother   

around and around like the happiest top,   

and my uncle is shaking his head, saying

"You could grow nuts listening to us,"   

and I'm thinking of pistachios in the Sinai

burgeoning without end,   

pecans in the South, the jumbled

flavor of them suddenly in my mouth,

wordless, confusing,

crowding out everything else.