downwinder

This place we're staying, cute little cabin, is very comfortable.  It's close to the freeway but feels nourishingly nature-y.  I like the wild bunnies and cows that roam.  I like the huge trees and birds singing.  The air feels clean.  I love this little patio with picnic table and grape arbor.  Haven't seen a mosquito.

Yesterday we went to St George for lunch.  Then Ming remembered a friend he has there.  So he called her, but she was at work, so we waited till almost 5 to visit with her.  I wasn't planning to spend much of the day in town.  I thought we were going to the city for only a couple hours.

The talk was about death.  The friend is a downwinder.  Several of her relatives have died of cancer as a result of nuclear testing fallout, including her little child.  The talk wasn't negative in a bitter or pointless way, but it was negative.  I had been extremely happy and got very sad real quick.

We returned to the cabin and I was crying.  I'm trying to talk about things.  I have an old habit of mulling things over myself and it can get a bit hamster wheelish.  I like to talk about things to open a window and let some fresh air and light into my mind, in a way.  It can be good to get feedback also.

I told Ming, it seems like for the first half of our lives we're given things, and during the second half of our lives, everything is taken away.

I'd like to return to this place, but it's going to get really hot soon.  Maybe in the fall.

My friend is going away for a ten month trip related to work, going to Iowa.  I wish the friend would return to Las Vegas afterward, but I know things happen, and things change.  Maybe the friend will decide Iowa is great, or find love, or another job.  I was thinking of the famous Robert Frost poem that says "way leads on to way."

I remember once Ming and I went to a small zine fest in Orange County.  We stayed at a Motel 6 and went to the beach in a place, I can't even remember the name.  I realized we didn't have a reason to return there and told Ming, we'll probably never come here again.

It was sad for me, not sure why.  Why couldn't I love a place and let it go?  A favorite quote of mine is "everything I've ever let go of had claw marks on it."

Ming is out hiking, and I'm at the picnic table enjoying morning.  I have a depressed penpal, and I try to measure how sad she is by how many stickers she puts on her letters.  The more stickers, the harder she's trying to cheer herself up.  Sometimes there are about 30 small stickers.

I can judge my mood by how much sugar I consume.  During the Sacred Peace Walk, I stock up on chocolate.

The Road Not Taken--Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.