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.

Inspired by actual events:

——

In a tangle of sweat, blankets, heat, she struggled to lull herself into a quiet sleep. She kept her limbs still, unmoving. She slowed her breathing, and tried to focus on the steady rhythmic pumping of her lungs. Inhaling, exhaling. In and out.

But her mind was wild, suspended madly between worlds. She hovered on the brink of consciousness. As she drifted through these shadowy midlands she struggled to calm her senses–to let the comforting darkness of sleep wash over her.

But she was unable. Waking dreams, unpleasant incarnations of faded television stars and crusty characters from dime novels. She counted them off as they materialized before her. Suddenly she was no longer sleeping for just one, she was sleeping for seven. Seven frantic minds to calm before she could ever rest. They smirked at her, snickered and stared. “You will never sleep,” they mocked, “you are stuck here forever.”

If you want to write—your work never ends; it creeps into every aspect of your life. Research becomes an all-absorbing pursuit—everything is research. It is living.
Your job is to notice everything, the ordinary and the unusual, and document it all. Your job is to ask questions.

At the writer’s symposium I recently attended one of the panel members recommended (as a way to get ideas and avoid writers block) to simply always allow your natural curiosity to run its course. He then recounted how once he was giving blood, and had a simple technical question for the nurse, and he ended up having to go through train of people until he ended up in the office of the chief of medicine at some university talking for a good 40 minutes.
I used to think I could just sit down and write. I thought writing came from within. Now I realize a certain amount of collecting must take place before a person can ever create. Research sounds like boring work—but I have found that it is actually most exciting. One question, one train of thought, can lead me to a whole string of possibilities.

For my short piece on “Avatiach” I started with what I thought was a powerful image, and went from there. Alyne had mentioned to me before that the day before her dad left her whole family just sat in the backyard and ate watermelon. She said her mom and dad slept in the same bed until the day he left. She said it was a startlingly “seamless” transition. This image stuck with me, and I wanted to write about it. So…I started my research. This mainly involved interviewing Alyne. She was a good subject…and excellent interviewee. The details she remembered were golden…
The way her dog chewed on the watermelon rinds. The outfit she was wearing at the airport. The way her dad always gave her the “juicy” part of the fruit and he ate the rind or the seed. Exactly how the watermelon was eaten. The layout of her backyard. I just kept asking, and she just kept supplying me with the answers I needed to write convincingly.

Then I did some additional research online. I looked up a little more about watermelon in Israel. I browsed through a few accounts (on blogs) of people who traveled to Israel and bough watermelon from the street vendors. I read about the agricultural industry of Israel and discovered that watermelon is indeed one of their most popular and abundant summer exports.

When I told Alyne I wanted to focus on the watermelon I prefaced it with “I know watermelon probably isn’t THAT big of a deal in Israel…at least not as much as I make it out to be…” and she cut me off and responded with the line I use to open the piece. She said: “NO! it is a HUGE deal in Israel. Israelis eat watermelon.”

She gave me such good raw material; I really struggled to craft it into something meaningful that reflected the wonderful, beautiful, quirky details of reality. I struggled to capture the feeling and the essence of this experience. I still don’t think I got it down…but it was a good exercise in researching thoroughly and then writing.

And so…I am starting the process all over again. I have to turn in a short creative fiction piece this coming Thursday, and I am thinking about writing using my Beulah character. I have this scene in my mind where she finds out that her elderly neighbor woman has passed away. I imagine this neighbor as being fairly old and having no close friends or relatives to take care of the funeral services, and so some sort of state official has to inventory her possessions and take charge of the burial.

The problem is—I know nothing about how this works, so I just started asking questions. I started with the people around me. I asked Alyne. I asked my family home evening group. This may seem like a sketchy or unreliable source, but you’d be surprised at the kinds of great stuff I got just by asking my peers if they knew what happened in a situation like this. One guy in my FHE group recounted the (rather gruesome and disturbing) story of an old woman in his town that lived alone. She was a cat lady, and people didn’t visit her very often. When she passed away the cats in her house were left with no one to feed them. So…(and this is the gross but also interesting part) they ended up eating her body and then starting to eat each other, before anyone even discovered she died.
Others inform me that when something like that happens state officials do come and provide a cheap burial service. They also go through the house and sell off the stuff somehow.

With this limited knowledge I began to try to research online, and it took a long while but I have finally come across some worthwhile sources.
So if you would excuse me, I am off to watch a documentary on Netflix called “A Certain Kind of Death” that explores this very subject—the death and burial process when the deceased has no “next of kin.”

Tune in Thursday for a possible snippet from my creative piece!

I know you must be getting tired of this. But tonight I took the time to finishing reworking this. It came out about 100 words longer. I am much more satisfied now, but still think this might only be reflective of a second draft. Serious writers can re-write dozens of times…I’ve heard people say writing is re-writing. It is certainly a slow, tedious process. But I rather enjoy it.

—–

Israelis eat watermelon.

During July and August—the height of the season—the streets of Israel fill up with large wooden melon carts. The carts amble slowly, unhurried, as the vendors call through crackly old megaphones in Hebrew “Avatiach! Avatiach!” — “Watermelon, Watermelon!” People leave their houses and flow into the streets, scrambling to purchase their favorite summertime fruit. Later they will serve it in a bowl, carefully cut and cubed, with nuts and tea for their guests—the perfect summertime treat.

Ami Tamir left Israel.
It was an impulsive decision. His parents were not very happy. He found love, love lived in Los Angeles, he moved and they married—all within a crazy whirlwind of a year. In LA the summer streets are filled with ice-cream trucks. Smooth and white, neat menus printed on their sides and loud tinny music springing from their speakers. At the sound, children run into the streets with pocket change to buy fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches, strawberry milkshakes—whatever they can scrape up the money for. If they are lucky they might even buy one of those colorful Popsicles shaped like The Hulk or Spiderman. But even after relocating to the sleek LA suburbs, summer, for Ami, meant watermelon.
In LA he found no wooden melon carts ambling through the streets, or colorful open-air markets with towering piles of fresh produce. The people here, he found, spent very little time deliberating over their fruit; they had a “grab and go” mentality. But Ami still chose his fruit like he did in Israel, knocking his knuckles thoughtfully on the green-striped rind, listening carefully for the best and the ripest. He always found them and brought them home proudly to his wife and daughter. Together they ate, breakfast, dinner, mid-afternoon snack. Like a ritual Ami would cut off the best parts, saving the sweetest and juiciest for his daughter Aileen.

The day before Ami Tamir returned to his native Israel he ate watermelon with his family one last time. It was a hot day in Los Angeles, a still day. They sat together in the backyard. Fuse, the family dog, sat panting under the shade of the trampoline, chewing on watermelon rinds. Ami sat with his wife on the garden swing and watched as Aileen happily fished squares of watermelon out of the big bowl on the picnic table. Silent, stoic, he threw the rinds to Fuse, and a small wistful smile played on his lips as the dog caught them in her hungry jaws and gnawed them down to the green. “Tomorrow, I go back to Israel,” he stated quietly, testing the words out loud. “Tomorrow I leave.”
The next morning the family woke up, Ami packed his bags, together they drove the 10 minutes to the Los Angeles airport, and said their goodbyes.
“You both can come with me if you want,” Ami offered one last time, his voice was thick and clumsy in English. He had never managed to hide his accent.
Aileen shook her head. She had loved all of their summer trips to Israel, but could not envision spending the rest of her life there.
“All right,” he said in a moment. “Well, then goodbye.”
A quick hug, a wave of his hand, and he left. As impulsively as he came, he left. There were no tears, no sighs, just a silent seamless acceptance. He had never belonged in Los Angeles anyways—and who had ever believed he could stay? Not in the land of shiny white ice cream trucks and metallic, manufactured tunes. No, he belonged in Israel, with the avatiach.

It’s like peanut butter; I may take a break from it every once-in-a-while, but I always go back. And when I do, it’s as amazing as the first time. It’s not like a Twix bar, with which I had a love affair about a year back and, after over-dosing one day, would forever associate with nausea and the smell of smoke. No, even after a serious over-dose, its appeal remains.

I refer to the pulsating force that caused my body to explode into dance last night without asking my brain or lungs for permission; a five minute, five second delicacy-of-a-rock-song called “My Coco” by the very 80sish band Stellastarr.

I was first introduced to it over three years ago by my friend Dave who hates everything that has to do with the 80s except for this ballad to a prostitute named Coco.

I never really paid attention to the plot or the words of the song. The very first time I heard it in the back of Dave’s blue Toyota, something about the combination of the singer’s nerdy voice, which fluctuates ever-so-delectably, the angelic backup singer, and the echoing guitar riffs freed something within me on a very visceral level. Their combination incited a chemical rebellion in my brain, with epileptic results.

Luckily, Dave and my relationship was one to foster such seizure/dances as that which occurred in the car that fall morning. Dave’s dance of choice: banging things – in this instance, the steering wheel. My dance of choice: a combination of head-banging and limb-lashing. When it was over we lay exhausted breathing heavily. The opaque breath that escaped us caught the sunlight and stained my memory.

Since that first encounter, “My Coco” and I have enjoyed many such flings. Last night’s episode was no less intense. Better, actually, because I’ve acquired some new dance moves.

So, I am currently in the middle of re-working this. My biggest problem right now is tense. I sort of switch in and out of different tenses pretty randomly and I am trying to find a way to standardize it all, or at least make it flow. I haven’t finished re-working it, but I will post what I have done so far.
One of my professors biggest comments was that I needed to focus the story a little better. He was like: “Who’s story is this???”
So I decided to make it Ami’s. Tell me what you think…it’s significantly longer.

—

Israelis eat watermelon.
During July and August—the height of the season—the streets of Israel fill up with large wooden melon carts. The carts amble slowly, unhurried, as the vendors call through crackly old megaphones in Hebrew “Avatiach! Avatiach!” — “Watermelon, Watermelon!” People exit their houses and flow into the streets, scrambling to purchase their favorite summertime fruit. Later they will serve it in a bowl, carefully cut and cubed, with nuts and tea for their guests—the perfect summertime treat. Sweet and refreshing.
Ami Tamir left Israel.
It was an impulsive decision, sudden and startling. His parents were not very happy. He found love, love lived in Los Angeles, he moved and they married—all within a crazy whirlwind of a year. In LA the summer streets are filled with ice-cream trucks. Smooth and white, neat menus printed on their sides and loud tinny music springing from their speakers. At the sound, children run into the streets with pocket change to buy fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches, strawberry milkshakes—whatever they can scrape up the money for. If they are lucky they might even buy one of those colorful Popsicles shaped like The Hulk or Spiderman. But even after relocating to the sleek LA suburbs—summer, for Ami, meant watermelon.
In LA there are no wooden melon carts ambling through the streets, or colorful open-air markets with piles of fresh produce. The people here spend little time deliberating over their fruit—they simply grab and go. But Ami still chooses his fruit like he did in Israel; knocking his knuckles thoughtfully on the green-striped rind, listening carefully for the sweetest and the juiciest. He always finds them, and brings them home proudly to his wife and daughter.

—

Okay, so obviously I have to finish the last part. but that’s all I’ve got so far. However! I also wanted to share some fascinating watermelon trivia I have learned over the course of my writing/research.  There is this cool and rare type of watermelon nicknamed “moon and star” watermelon for its unusually colored rind:

I sat in my comfortable chair, pivoting back and forth, waiting for the site in Murray to call and set up the video-conferencing I was to facilitate.  It was my first time shooting a class conference-style; with students looking on via the internet from several other sites.  But I wasn’t nervous.  The cameras were already set up and everything else functioned automatically.  My desk faced the students.  My task was to observe.

Unlike the Chemical Engineering class I shot the day before, this course looked to be quite interesting.  At least its perspective.  On my work-order it read simply SPE ED which I was told stood for Special Ed.

The first student arrived ten minutes early.  He was at least one hundred pounds overweight and wore a green-striped shirt that looked good with his brown cap.  I wondered if there are any “special” college students who dress like gangsters or goths.

“Excuse me.  Is there an outlet around here I can plug my laptop into?”

I jumped out of my seat, scanned all the walls and in my most polite voice informed him that there were, but they probably wouldn’t reach his laptop.  I took special care not to talk to him like a child.  He frowned in frustration and sat down.  I wondered if his mom dropped him off.  Nah…  He could probably have a drivers licence… right?

As the class got closer to beginning the other students trickled in.  I was immediately impressed by the relative attractiveness of the bunch, as well as their sense of fashion. 

The professor showed up thirty seconds before the class was to start.  When the two students in Murray indicated they were ready the class began:

“Okay first, are there any questions on the brail for complex fractions?  I know the Benville System is tricky but when you work with these students you will have to be consistent.” 

Israelis eat watermelon.
During July and August—the height of the season—the streets of Israel fill up with large wooden melon carts. The carts amble slowly, unhurried and the vendors calling through crackly old megaphones yell in Hebrew “Avatiach! Avatiach!” — “Watermelon, Watermelon!” as people scramble to purchase their favorite summertime fruit. Later they will serve it in a bowl, carefully cut and cubed, with nuts and tea for their guests—the perfect summertime treat. Sweet and refreshing.

In America, the summer streets are filled with ice-cream trucks. Sleek and white, neat menus printed on their sides and loud tinny music springing from their speakers. Children run to the streets with pocket change to buy fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches, strawberry milkshakes—whatever they can scrape up the money for. If they are lucky they might even buy one of those colorful Popsicles shaped like The Hulk or Spiderman.
But not Aileen Tamir. She never ate Popsicles shaped like the Hulk or like Spiderman or like any of the other cheesy Marvel superheroes. Summer in the Tamir household meant watermelon, and never mind that Los Angeles was about as far away from Israel as a person could get. It was a tradition.

The day before Ami Tamir returned to his native Israel he ate watermelon with his family one last time. It was a hot day in Los Angeles, a peaceful day. They sat together in the backyard. Nothing about the scene suggested that in just a few hours the already small family of three would be reduced to two. Fuse, the family dog, sat panting under the shade of the trampoline, chewing on watermelon rinds. Ami sat with his wife on the garden swing. He was a large man, strongly built and well over 6 feet tall. Silent, stoic, he threw the rinds to Fuse, and a small wistful smile played on his lips as the dog caught them in her hungry jaws and gnawed them down to the green.

The next morning the family woke up, Ami packed his bags, they drove the 20 minutes to the Los Angeles airport and said goodbye, forever.
“You both can come with me if you want,” Ami said one last time, his voice was thick and clumsy in English. He had never managed to hide his accent.
Aileen shook her head. She had loved all of their summer trips to Israel, but could not envision spending the rest of her life there.
“All right,” he said in a moment. “Well, then goodbye.”
A quick hug a wave of his hand, and he left. There were no tears, no sighs—just a silent, seamless acceptance. He had never belonged in Los Angeles anyways. Not in the land of shiny white ice cream trucks and metallic, manufactured tunes. He belonged in Israel, with the watermelon.

A few nights ago, sickened by my own lack of initiative, I scribbled down on a post-it note a schedule for the next day’s activities.

It was to be the perfect day. I would wake up at 6:30, after exactly six and a half hours of sleep, catch the shuttle down to my 7:30 math class after which I planned to go to the Institute building and sleep for another hour and a half, thus polishing off my doctor-recommended eight-hour sleep quota. The rest of the day’s scheduled activities involved exercise, scripture study, getting a card to use TRAX, taking TRAX downtown and applying for a job my friend tipped me off to, finally talking to that film department adviser whose office I had been circling for days, among other fulfilling agenda items.

I had been feeling quite daunted by this huge, man-eating city known as Salt Lake. I swore the broad streets were purposefully pedestrian proof; with arbitrarily vanishing sidewalks that point out to all passing motorists that I must not know where I’m going because the ground on which I walk is asphalt, not concrete.

True story: it took me three days of helpless wandering to find where I could buy some shampoo.

But this day was different. I had a master plan and would be relying on pure spunk to see me to the end of the day conqueror!

Well… I met my sleep quota, but that was about all that got done.

After my math class I reached in my back pocket for the “master plan” to discover it was missing.

I made it to my Institute class but was afterwards attacked by a nap-monster, and we all know how overpowering those can be.

“It’s okay, shake it off,” I told myself. “There are battles this day yet to be won!” I confidently walked up the stairs of the film department, ready to charm my way onto a production crew, when I found a glitch in the matrix. The office number 357, where the film department advisor was supposed to be located, simply did not exist. It went from room 356, right to room 358! Apparently, I thought to myself, they had adopted a Mongolian system of organization.

But alas, there were still mountains to be scaled!

It took a while for me to find the awkwardly-placed bus stop that would take me downtown. I walked on more asphalt and even had to hop a few fences but I finally made it just as the bus pulled in and opened its gaping mouth with a snort.

It didn’t take me long to notice that we were going absolutely the wrong way and instead of embarrassing the bus-driver by informing him I decided to get off and walk the block back up to campus.

I sat on a bench freezing cold and feeling thoroughly defeated. I waited for that familiar wave of depression but instead felt my blood asking politely for some caffeine.

“Gantz yum avi!”

Without thinking, the familiar words I had often used during my two-year stay in Mongolia, escaped my mouth. Translated literally it means “I’ll take just one thing.” In context, it is a term one of my closest mission buddies taught me is what alcoholics say when they need a shot of whisky.

I purchased a 20-ounce Coke and sat in front of the library. The City and I stared each other down. I took a swig of my elixir and chuckled to myself.

They live within the blessed brambles. Colorful shacks, scrapped together with old washboards, wood, bits and pieces of discarded furniture.
During the day, the doors are thrown wide, unhinged to let a small fraction of light enter their dark little hobbles. During the night, they crouch in the darkness–They lean together and sigh, like their haphazard houses.
Despite harsh conditions they hang curtains, create flower boxes, make noble attempts to beautify the chaotic mess they live in.
One shack has a ridiculous blow-up Santa Claus mounted upon the roof. The jolly red bearded man is its lone adornment. He is nearly taller than the house itself.
Children peer out of darkened doorways. They bite their lips and tug at their shirtsleeves.
Men sweat and trek through vegetable fields that have somehow magically sprung up from the desert sands.
I feel bad for treating them like a spectacle, but I watch carefully as they pluck fat red tomatoes from their vines and plunk them into wooden crates.
Papá is giving me the grand tour, keenly narrating as we hurtle down the dusty roads in our little car.
“These, are tomatoes” he says, gesturing towards the sweat-stained workers and their crates.
“Those are green beans” He gestures another direction.
I nod, and smile.
“This is a strawberry patch”
“That is a squash plant.”
Then, without warning we arrive upon the shacks.
Tossed and ugly, into the weeds.
The blow-up Santa Claus towering above.
The dirty children and their frazzled mothers.
“And that–” Papá continues, smiling sadly through his comb-like mustache, “Is poverty.”