Lullaby Mountain

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Her name is Alley.

It’s not short for Alexis or Alexandra.

Alley, like the space between buildings.

Where smells assemble.

To vote.

Reed

Mai neim is Koto Peitamaan. Thee abuv imej iz uv utmost importans tu mai peepl. Mai posting it on thee internet ov yor wurld iz tu inshoor its survival. It musnt bee hidin, for al pasibl haiding pleises ar shur tu bee chekt first and ar most laikly thee eezee-est tu deestroi. It iz hawever yusles withaut thee abilitee tu reed it. Altho it is nat laiklee yor maindz wil bee ceipabl ov understending auer lenguej thee danjr uv reemeining sailent iz tu greit.

Wun uv thoz hu reed this mesej wil sun bee chozen.

Hey Provo, You’re Pretty Neat Sometimes

Well, Provo we are approaching our second year together and I feel compelled to reflect upon our relationship. I’m not sure where we stand. Who are you? And more specifically—who are you to me?

A week or so ago, downtown Provo was buzzing with the Sego Arts Festival. Over one hundred artists, musicians, and filmmakers, gathered together to share their creations (for free!) with the public. Now Provo is not such a big place, “downtown” is comprised of only a few city blocks—so something like Sego can absorb the entire city (at least the part that is not absorbed by BYU football). I was on a road trip to Colorado at the time but I saw the posters, heard the band lineups, and knew many of the contributors. The slogan of the festival this year was “Own Provo,” encouraging everyone to love and ultimately “own” where they live. I found this theme fascinating and very fitting considering that many local college students I’ve met expend a ridiculous amount of energy in their efforts to DISown Provo. No one, it seems, wants to be defined by that perception of a mainstream, white, conservative, small town, close-minded, jello-guzzling, casserole-baking, baby-toting, church-going, prayer-saying, flag-waving population. They’ll do anything to tell you where they are really from. Even more discouraging is that people who actually are from Provo and nearby cities are often timid in their ownership. When asked where they are from, they say blushing, “just Utah.”

It is interesting living in a place that is often embarrassed of itself.
I don’t imagine many people say “just New York” or “just Boston” or “just Seattle.”
Provo, why are you so ashamed? Lift up your head!

It is refreshing to meet people who are trying to fight that sentiment—people who aren’t afraid to own where they live and claim an active stake in their surroundings. There is something beautiful about that, something undeniably good about taking a place for better or for worse and embracing it as your own.
I have to admit the idea of place and ownership is fascinating to me partially because I do not understand it. I don’t know what it’s like to have your identity inextricably caught up in a specific place. I’m not sure what it feels like to be from somewhere, deeply and completely. Down to your bones. I wish I did.

But Provo, I think I am starting to figure you out. Or at least I’ve moved past the juvenile stage of resentment and am beginning to soften up. We’re cool. In fact, I think you’re pretty neat sometimes.
I am willing to look past your idiosyncrasies. I am willing to admit you are deeply flawed and endlessly exasperating—but now I think that is all part of your charm. Not many people are enamored of you when they first arrive. Unlike the great cities your presence is not overwhelming, your substance harder to divine. You work in subtleties.
The way you throw so many into a state of quiet conflict and resentment and cause them to look critically at their culture, their religion, their lives—is precious. You create a certain dichotomy; have a way of highlighting the contradictory.

I have seen your new polished subdistricts, your tidy mansions. They make me feel sick and disoriented— like I am walking through a house of mirrors.
But I’ve also seen your tiny cottages nestled kindly against the mountains, quiet and unassuming. I’ve seen your old rickety houses and gardens where old women grow flowers and grapes.

Just yesterday I had a wonderfully dichotomous experience. I spent the afternoon driving up Provo canyon with a few good friends. The leaves on the trees were stunning, the scenery majestic—it made me want to whisper. We parked the car by the roadside and climbed into nature. It threw my thoughts into a frenzy: how small I am, how young. I rendered myself childlike to the beauty and immensity that surrounded me.
The experience was very affecting.

Later that night I went to my cousin’s engagement party. She is 20 years old and has dated the boy collectively for about 3 months. There was much squealing and back-thumping and diamond-flashing. Proud parents, paper plates and pizza. While still feeling sincerely happy for her, I couldn’t help but feel like this experience somehow helped to throw the earlier one into sharper relief.
Just hours earlier I stood gazing at the mountains and the trees, absorbed with the feeling that I was standing on the very fringe of my life—shocked at how little I knew and how much I wanted to learn.
Now I was crammed into an apartment room, surrounded by a frenzied crowd who all seemed to feel like at 20 years old there was nowhere else to go, the ultimate goal had been achieved.
But that is just how Provo is…a little ball of contradictions.

And I’ve only just realized, I am fine with that. I can live with it. There is beauty in opposition.

For every grocery store, a garden.
For every football game, a Sego Arts Festival.
For every hasty homemaker, a babe in the woods.

Early Show and Tell – Summerhill School

Check this out!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._S._Neill

Bob

The sixteen-year-old slouched in the back of the bob sled.  Alone.

He glanced toward the pavilion and saw coach Odbayar vehemently miming some new pushing technique. Apparently, the three boys who constituted the GOHS bob sled team were not taking full advantage of the virtues of the shoulder.

Although Abe was technically the fourth member of the team, he never considered himself as such. His value to the team lay solely in his peculiar body which, though a perfect fit in the tiny sled, weighed as much as a linebacker. All he had to do was take a few steps and jump in and they were sucked down the icy shoot like a turd down some fridged toilet.

Truthfully, they could’ve pushed with their elbows and still managed to beat every high school in the state easily considering the good 30 extra pounds they had on even the bulkiest teams. Yet there they were, on a freezing Saturday morning, watching a spunky Mongolian man demonstrate the untapped power of the shoulder.

All members of the Goldberg family had to play one sport and one instrument. Abe’s sport was sitting in a frozen turd. After years of expensive lessons with no musical fruits to speak of, his dad bought him the only instrument that he could figure out: a video camera. And he was happy.

Grandfather’s Daughter

Curled and dusty photos found her fingers. She lifted them up, they hadn’t seen light in years, and gazed at the yellowing forms.
She gasped, glanced around her. Grandma wasn’t home, but the indulgence still felt dangerous, almost traitorous—grandpa had been shut away for a reason.
She got up and locked the door.

Heavy

Abe was born a worrisome five weeks early. It didn’t take a doctor to determine why the premature evacuation took place; as soon as Melinda held her frail new creation it was evident that he was, for lack of any known medical term describing his condition, heavy.  Though Abraham Isaac Goldberg was of average size for an infant five weeks premature, he weighed an astonishing thirteen pounds. He simply fell out.

He was a smelly vomiting scientific anomaly.  His first earthly sensations were of the soft-bosomed nurses who took turns holding him with amazement – an occurrence that may or may not have played a factor in his eventual detachment from his mother.

After extensive testing confirmed his general good health, Baby Abe was taken home where he was put on display to a cavalcade of friends and relatives until his weight became more an inconvenience than a wonder.

The only relics from that period of his life were a birth certificate with the astonishing poundage highlighted, and the framed tabloid clipping of a story with the headline “GOVERNMENT TOP SECRET EUGENICS PROGRAM RESULTS IN LEAD BABY”.

Abe knew at a young age why he weighed so much: his thoughts were of unnatural density. They weren’t of above average intensity or wisdom – they simply weighed a lot. That and there was some organ within him that seemed to catch his thoughts, giving gravity more power over his skinny body. He’s pretty sure it’s his liver.