Ancestral.

Today, I took a drive down south with my friend Ann C., whom I have known since I was about 20 years old. We went to Provo, where she spent most of her growing up years. I, too, grew up a fair amount there--I went to college at BYU, married, had children, and lived there for some fairly significant years.

She wanted to show me, and I wanted to see it--honestly, I can't remember whose idea it was. We talked about everything, and there is still so much more. Such a gift, to see it all again with her, to reflect on what's changed (so much!) and to remember. To hear her memories, and the way they ignited my own. A very sweet day to me.  Here are some of the things I saw.

Center Street

small flowers at the cemetery

toward the foothills

beverage of choice

school

our ride--sweet!

grove

foothills

foothills

the notch

right there.

we blessed our son here.

up the hill to the cemetery

same hill

water

vista, smoky sky

yellow grass

Meditations.

The historian went home today, so it has been nothing but me and my own brain, a situation that is ripe for contemplation.

1. working on poems uses a different part of my brain than working on movies.
2. I love to see the sky, and the sky here is wonderful--mercurial, moody, huge.
3. when there is a shortage of foods from the salty/crunchy food group--as there is, indeed, now such a shortage at my lodgings--it leads me, ineluctably, to the conclusion that we need more salty/crunchy foods close at hand. Soon if not immediately.
4. If I could be a kind of weather, I would be rainy.
5. leftover noodles? delicious.
6. no matter how well you think you know a place--a place you've been coming since your infancy--there is more to learn and more to see. More to know.
7. riding with the wind is excellent. Riding into the wind reminds me of things I would rather not consider about my physical condition and age.
8. with no one here but myself I can think more steadily about these poems.

But I already miss the historian.

Here are some things we saw yesterday: