Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

A few words about friends: (1) I am extremely loyal. Absurdly so, even when friends don't return my calls, alienate my other friends, treat me like a therapist, kick me in the ribs, etc. (2) As I get older, it occurs to me that I should be spending less of my effort in Oaksian "hanging out" and more time focusing on one "special friend" than desiring a circle of people around me. (Do I find this the ideal because I have a large family of siblings that I enjoy?) (3) I need to learn how to make friends, not just acquaintances. I give precedent to those "old friends" without ever keeping up with the people I met in last year's ward, for example. (4) Breaking-up with friends is hard. You can't just break up--one side just peters away from the other side. Would a "state of the relationship" or DTR-type speech make it easier to just peel away a friend who is damaging and/or time-draining? How do you break up with someone that you don't ...

My forward...one would suspect... taken in part from my inscape interview, but probably forward for my book. There have always been poets. There is something about the human language that lends itself to bursts of short, tight, aesthetically-evocative works of literature. Sometimes these expressions take the form of songs, sometimes prayers, but in whatever form they take, since there has been language there have been poets. A wonderful thing happened and poetry became popular. Then a terrible thing happened and poetry became unpopular. And yet, I think that there are no fewer poets than before. It’s a funny thing, using that word poet. Most of the people I know who write poetry, even those who have been long-published and professional, shy away from calling themselves a poet. There’s something of a sigma to it, like suddenly you’re this self-absorbed pseudo-intellectual lurching about like Meyerburg from Cold Comfort Farm. It’s easier to admit that you go to Star Trek conventions t...

Rilke remarked about Rome, there is beauty here because there is beauty everywhere. I wish I were still in Europe. How can that be? Why do I wish I was there? Provo is beautiful, the remarkable green on the mountains from the wet spring, sunny every day, windful and full of sweet scents on the air for those of us blessed with no allergies and a fondness for sandbar willow and globe fallow. Do I think that if I were in Europe, my grandma wouldn't have died? She was 96 years old, and after nearly a century, death is not unexpected. In fact, since my birthday 3 years ago, when she fell and broke her hip, we knew this was coming. She had told us who was and who certainly was not to play the organ at her funeral, divided up all the major peices of furature and the silver, commented on how she was just waiting to die. And still, when she died it was not beautiful. She was alternatively unconscious--they make these little doses of morphine now--or hysterical, throwing tandrums, raving tha...

I´m in Stockholm. It´s corny, but yeah, this feels like home, kind of. The trees, the water, the buildings... We went to Hedengrens book shop and when I told the lady working there that my name was Hedengren, she made sure I had plenty of free bookmarks and bags. Nice people. But why have this attachment to Sweden when: ä) my kinsfolk are actually Swedes from Vaasa Finland, not Stockholm at all and b) I´m not entirely Swedish, but I have no deep drive to go to Denmark or Wales. Huh. And yet this is very much like how, I suspect, Jews feel coming to Jerusalem. Everyone here looks like me. The historical recreationist apocraphary in the old town had my same blue-grey eyes, hair like my sister. Everyone goes around so nice and easy. It´s beautiful.