dry

No rain today. The skies are cloudy, and the air quite cool, but it easy to walk around downtown Salt Lake in these conditions.

I bought W.G. Sebold's Rings of Saturn this morning. It is a long meditative essay, filled with meanderings, asides, personal and historical. The primary urge for such writing is to try to see and hear and then hold on, I think, to words that rush in and out like the tide. I read a few pages over lunch and look forward to further reading in it.

Last night I read the first story in David Sedaris' edited anthology Children playing before a statue of Hercules. (Sedaris picked his favorite stories; proceeds supports an after school reading program in New York). It was a short story by Richard Yates. I read Yates' novels when I was a young man. He is a powerful writer, but also quite sad in tone, and perhaps it is that tone that has kept his works from being more appreciated. The story was about a young man in New York City during the Depression. His parents are divorced and his mother has a scheme to made a sculpture of the newly elected president, Franklin Roosevelt. Nutty mothers, an oversensitive boy, the harshness of life barely tolerating them -- these elements are often found in Yates writing.

I've not taken in the Temple Square sights yet. Partner and I will do that together when he gets some free time. I did read a bit on the history of the Mormons. And I've been reflecting on closed systems.