Starved for adventure

While I was working with the Writing Project we did "writing marathons," which were established by the New Orleans Writing Project. The basic idea is that you get with a group and walk, talk, write, and share your writing in interesting places. The designated parameters of our writing marathon included anything on American Fork's Main Street (since CUWP was held nearby in American Fork).

AF Main Street has several antique stores and consignment shops. On one marathon I stood with my group on a street opposite of Finders Keepers, a store whose brightly colored furniture arrangements in the windows caught my eye from a distance. I said, "We have to stop there!" while pointing in its general direction. My group just laughed at me. Then I looked at the store next to it and read the sign: Husband and Wife Lingerie. How did I miss this sign printed on a flashy red background in black and white letters?

One thing guaranteed by a writing marathon properly organized is that while you're walking along with your group, the sensory overload--sights, sounds, tastes, smells, etc.--and conversation topics that naturally arise inspire ideas for writing. For example, while one of the two male teachers in our group was passing Husband and Wife with all the women in his group, he overheard a teacher joke about the poor taste of the lacy corsets that clung to the headless mannequins like blue and red cobwebs. Another teacher said, "That's the whole idea! When you're buying lingerie you want to be cheap and tawdry!" So later the male teacher started a humorous essay on the baffling and complicated nature of girls' underwear.

Another curious thing that's bound to happen on a writing marathon, if it's done right, is that when you stop in a restaurant or a cafe, or somewhere with food (every writing marathon must have places with food) writing almost seems easier. People loosen up around food--whether it's good or bad. This is how I discovered Flour Girls and Dough Boys, a site popular with this year's CUWPies, and a bakery that made me think of China, of all places.

July 1, 2010:

We're sitting in Flour Girls and Dough Boys with its orange checkered floor and teal walls. Chandeliers, like clusters of sparkly tears suspended above the tables. Shelves hold curvy glass jars filled with gumdrops. One wall is full of an assortment of empty picture frames and clocks, each with a different time.

Glass cases with slabs of mint brownies the size of small bricks, and loaves of sourdough bread that look like blooming flowers, fresh out of the oven. Everything arranged in trays lined with perfectly cut squares of wax paper. Little hand-decorated cards, propped in front of the trays, bear names like "Tinkerbell Cupcake," "Goldilocks Cake," and "Shortbread Chocolate Chip Cookies"--this buttery, flaky, cookie studded with dark Ghirardelli chocolate morsels is a favorite of customers. The whole place smells like Christmas--including the bathroom.

This is Flour Girls and Dough Boys. It's neat, clean, and sits off the corner of Main Street in American Fork. Everything in Main Street is similar--shops inside the buildings, safe, closed to open air.

This morning Merella sent me pictures of China. She's in Bejing where her pictures captured a scene so different from where I'm sitting now. She showed me pictures of food markets outside under tent pavilions, the stalls lining entire streets with their own trays and labels. There are rows of typical fruits and vegetables labeled in English and Chinese characters: soy beans, mushrooms, lettuce, gourds, satsumas, guavas, lemons and limes. Intermingled among the fruits and vegetables are pans of beetles--longhorn and water beetles, shishkebobbed in neat lines just like the bee cocoons and silk worms. Scorpions of various sizes, deep fried or impaled on skewers spiked from the heads of cabbages. Cuts of pale pink snake meat are splayed on beds of ice next to the curling octopus legs and torpedo-shaped squids.

Back to real time:

When I saw these pictures I thought: 1) I'm glad I'm in America with my cookies and Diet Coke; 2) I have to go to China!!!

Which made me realize that I was starved for adventure. After spending most of the summer at school and work, Jesse was too. Earlier in the year we were set on going to the Philippines but those plans fell through at the last minute. So we had to think of something else, fast. We actually considered going to China to pick up Merella after her study abroad program finished in mid August. When we realized it wasn't going to work out, we thought about other options, places we'd never been before. Hawaii. Road trip to New Orleans. Mexico. Caribbean or Alaska cruise. None of the cruises we wanted fit with our schedule.

So, after about five minutes of deliberation, we settled on the exotic locale of Cedar City, Utah! We bought tickets to the Shakespeare Festival and afterward we decided to spend a few days in Zion National Park. Neither of us had been to either Utah attraction, so we decided to see what each had to offer. We left Friday, July 30th and came home on Wednesday, August 4th. Stay tuned for the accounts of our harrowing excursions and the souvenirs we brought home.