road trip

So I actually took a paper journal to Las Vegas with me. I didn't write much, and only on the road (verified: hands still bad at gripping writing instruments) - and it's been years since I wrote anything meaningful by hand. That said, I've decided to post the bits anyway. I'm not backdating, but I'll put the dates in the subjects.

May 29th, circa 3:30 pm

Sitting listening to "Lucretia McEvil", watching the door for my familiar bald head and hawaiian shirt. Ah. He is here. It commences.

May 29, 5:52 pm

Had dinner at Cy's Drive In, home of the famous Alaska Burger. Mmmm, chocolate malted. Cute waitress, 1950's by nature as well as by decor. Surprised me by giving the speech about my 'admirable' haircut where I least expected to hear it. I do love my fuzzy head.
I really like the book in which I've been immersed: _Reading Lolita in Tehran_, by Azir Nafisi. The author is romantic about literature, pragmatic about history/politics, and passionately idealistic about, well, everything. The story of an underground book club / English Lit class she held in her house for 2 years is the warp to the twin wefts ['pologies to xiadyn, who is probably wincing at this metaphor] of her own political disillusionment / coming of age, and some of the best lit crit I've read since Harold Bloom (and I'm a big geek for lit crit).
We're finally really and truly on the road. We may make Grand Junction tonight, or we may go the random roadside motel route - it's been good to us in the past.

May 30, 9:23 am

Last night, in brief: mountains mountains mountains, runoff waterfalls and rivulets and large areas where the snow hadn't yet melted. Deserted ski resorts with ghost runs. Cryptic shadows looming in the night, reminding one that one is at the bottom of a valley even when the cloud-dark is almost complete. It's 40 dollars a night for two to stay at the El Palomino hotel, and every room has a touch tone telephone. Grand Junction reminded me of a small place called Summerside; the Village Inn contained about equal proportions of townies, farmers, and city folk, and the waitress couldn't finish a sentence without "honey" or "dear".

May 30, 11:51 am

I'm a few miles outside Green River, Utah. Last night's beauty was of the magnification-leads-to-awe variety. Today's is, for me, alien, like the beauty of Mars. Only the sky is familiar, in this particular stretch. The land is yellow and purple and a strange purply-yellow red I've never seen before. The green, even now at the tail end of the rainy season, is dusty and stubborn, like the raw beginnings of a terraforming project. Are there those for whom this landscape is as comfortable and well worn as my own riparian forest/meadows are to me? I suppose, but I find it hard to imagine. The flat-bottomed salt bowls and suddenly towering squared-off bluffs seem to demand a choice: visions or despair. Hard to imagine anyone could be used to them.

50 miles later, and I'm back into magnification territory, still alien though greener. Heart-stopping awe. Jay says it's as though the tops of the cliffs are trying to fly away....

hunh

I thought I wrote on the way back. I must have dreamed it. Perhaps another night I'll try to write about the destination itself, or the return journey.