Plans big & small.

Today I did a little laundry and did a few dishes and ate a burrito but also some salad, made the second pitcher of iced tea of the summer (Moroccan mint), thought a little or a lot about Morocco. Bought a pair of red shoes. Worked out, added notes to my poem-storm, admired my garden.

My friend Ann came over this morning--we had a plan to watch Pitch Perfect, which she had not seen (!), and which, in my opinion, was necessary preparation for watching Pitch Perfect 2. Which we plan to do sometimes soon. She brought doughnuts from Fresh Donut & Deli (the best!). What a pleasure, to laugh with her as we watched a movie that has given me so much pleasure. She also brought her own cold Dr. Pepper, because she is always prepared.

Later, I wrote to my oldest friend Mary, who will be coming to visit me next week. We've planned a little road trip down south and east, to Hovenweep and beyond. We're both bringing our cameras. We will see all of these things, whatever they are, for the first time with each other. It will be an adventure and a pilgrimage and the hours we will spend together--necessary, crucial, for both of us.

I've been thinking and feeling the great blessing of these friends--truly, of all my friends. How glad it makes me to see them, how restored to myself, how much richer my life feels because of them. How much more open the world seems because of them, because I unlock the hoard of time I keep by instinct, and because I spend that hoarded time at least a little more freely. I need that time, the time I keep, for quiet, for writing, for solitude; but I also recognize that this can become a kind of fetish, a dogma. Better to be heterodox. Better to both keep and spend.

Tomorrow I will continue to go through the first edits of my book (my book!). I will write the biographical statement that will actually go in my book. I'll meet with another friend for a project at work. I'll work out. I have plans to see another friend mid-June, and I need to find a time to have dinner with several other friends. This list, even writing it, can raise a small atmosphere of panic. But one thing at a time. The days have room for solitude and for friendship, for quiet and for conversation. For Pitch Perfect and for Francis Bacon, and a little iced Moroccan mint tea, just to keep things cool.

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

My book group, a five paragraph essay.

What a great idea! A book group composed of my friends and friends of friends. Let's choose wonderful books and read them! and discuss them! with friends! (thesis statement:) A reading group with friends, with wonderful books, to read and discuss--there could not be a better idea.

Sometimes we all come, sometimes we don't. (examples, details, &c. & c.)

Sometimes our ideas of what are great books look different when we read the actual books.

Sometimes we finish the books, sometimes we don't. (we are all busy people, sometimes we actually start reading the book the morning of the meeting day, and by "we" I mean "I," and possible others.)

(bonus paragraph:) Are we possibly too busy for a book group? How can that possibly be? We're educated, literate people, who read, and who like to talk. And eat--let's not forget eat, because there are always snacks, and often cake. Perhaps it is just important to commit to being a part of the group, as a way of committing to reading books? and to constructing parts of our mutual friendships around this commitment to read and discuss books, and eat cake? I think so.

In conclusion, for our book group today, we read and discussed To the Lighthouse, a book I had never read and, moreover, had put off as a part of an eventual "Read Virginia Woolf" project, for which I had always believed the appropriate time, though not precisely now, would arrive and lo, it did, in the form of an e-book, which I checked out from my library after paying my fines, because all the non-e copies of To the Lighthouse--also known as "books"--were either already with library patrons, or in transit, or at libraries scattered hither and yon about the valley but not in my neighborhood: so, and ergo, today I curled up with my laptop (making today much like every other day of my regular life, in effect, although the experience of reading a novel on the laptop was a little different than reading, say, The Huffington Post or The Sartorialist--less clicky, for one thing--), and the people, I am here to tell you that To the Lighthouse is a beautiful and lovely thing, which I'm sure you already knew, but hey, it just happened to me. In an e-book. And it was great to talk about it, with my friends.

(AND: there was cake. The end.)

TAGS: book group, e-, commitment, hither and yon, clicky

Fruits

of my labors:

Letter to Mary. from lisab on Vimeo.

[viewing note: bigger is better for this video. Enlarge.]

Dinner.

Today we went to a memorial service for a friend's husband who recently died of cancer.  After, I find myself face to face with--or more aptly catching a glimpse as it turns a corner--the flatness of the things you can say, compare to what you wish to say.  I am remembering this man, whom I did not know well--his lovely smile, his way in the kitchen, his voice--and thinking about how many things there are to miss in life, how often I avoid what is awkward or difficult, which means not being surprised by what may be beyond the awkwardness, the difficulty.    

Tonight I feel grieved by this, by what feels to me like a failure.

When we got home, I made dinner for us and two of running son's friends.  I took special pleasure in the preparations--omelets and toast; roasted potatoes, carrots, parsnips; sliced oranges and black grapes; a lemon cake.  My friend and her husband together were geniuses of hospitality, conviviality.  I want to nurture that in myself and in our home, the simple human gestures by which we help each other live, connect, thrive.