Salt Lake City. Our second road trip in as many months! We picked Bret up at 08:00 and hit the road, Jack. A smooth and easy drive, each of us taking a turn at the wheel. It is downright chilly here in SLC. The snaggle-toothed mountains closest to town have a fresh dusting of snow!
As we drove north into Wyoming, across the Big Sky State and down into the Beehive State, I was struck by the beauty of all the various terrains. Again, I’m aware of the Old Voices that had me convinced that these vistas are ugly. The standard phrase was: “Such windswept, God-forsaken country!” Today the sweeps of geography felt like the Ocean. Vast, undulating expanses. Subtle gradations of color. The massive sweeps open to he eye. Space for me to fly, to soar.
The horror of those verdant-trope-centric Voices, condemning out of hand all geographies that are different. As always, it seems, difference blindly pathologized. Not just Zaiga, but all the American stereotypes, too.
We are staying at the Embassy Suites in downtown. We ate dinner at a Nepali restaurant. It was one of few eateries open of this Sunday, and the food was superb. The cute Nepali waiter with bleached hair, outgoing and perhaps flirtatious, informed us that he had lived in Colorado, managing a Nepalese restaurant in Vail. The waitress, he reported, worked in the Nepali eatery on Denver’s 16th Street Mall. He arrived in the U.S. ten years ago from Kathmandu, and has no interest in returning.
Last night F and I were in Boulder, guests at a dinner party hosted by Dora. The dinner was to have been in honor of her mother, visiting from SF, but Ma was bedridden with severe arm pain from gardening, so we didn’t get to meet her.
Jazzist Al L. was there, with his (as he explained) third wife, A. Al again caught my attention with his child-like openness. In talking about how confident he was in his 20’s and 30’s re music and teaching: “I’m not good at a lot of things. I AM good at music, teaching and sports. When I am good at something, then I have no problems in selling myself.”
Friday nite we attended a Collectors’ Night at Plus Gallery. It was a first-rate duo show, Rhonda and a fellow last-named. He had large, broad-stroked face-only portraits. Rhonda had 4 potatoes, 2 lychee nuts and an orange. The sprouting spuds are breathtaking in the radiance emanating from the sprouts, luminescence against a rich blackness. Lychees like the glans with the foreskin pulled back.
D & I recorded radio show #5 yesterday, “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Midge seems to be truly very enthused about what D & I are doing. She talked about D & I doing seminars on campus, perhaps for academic credit. It was pleasantly surprising to have her bring this up, something D & I have talked about, but not for a while.