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2009-06-27 - 12:41 p.m.

Sitting in a hotel room in downtown Salt Lake City, in that time between waking up and checking out. Got here at two in the afternoon yesterday. Threw my stuff in the room and went for a walk, had seen everything I'd wanted to see in two and a half hours, but am glad I stayed here a night before going home. Loitered around the Mormon temple for a while, and feel qualified to say this: Mormons, at least the ones I saw at the temple, are some kind of Americans. Rosy cheeks, corn-silk hair, the men six-two and the women in long skirts and pleasant, teenaged boys in correct haircuts, little kids running laps around everything. In the hour that I hung around the temple, trying not to look too weird by taking photos of little blond children, I saw at least ten girls in wedding dresses. At one point, there was one newly married couple getting their pictures taken on the steps of the temple, and two more couples waiting their turn. I have to say, also, that it's a pretty strange scene there and I felt better leaving the grounds and getting back into the city proper, like what I imagine it must feel like for some people to leave the Vatican and get back into Rome's hot busyness. They have a museum there, which shows Mormon art of all kinds, from all over the world, and it was so specific to Mormons and of such dubious quality that, of all the museums I've been to, this was the first in which I remember having the strong, strong feeling to leave. It's a strange thing, all the office-types walking on city streets with their long skirts and proper ties and their professional-grade name tags above their hearts. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has an official font. You see this font on all their stuff, like Coca-Cola or AT&T or any of those. And the church administration building: it's brutal and all right angles and tall and tan concrete and 1950s modernist or post-modernist or whatever it is but it holds a lot of people and gives you the feeling of relentless, cold efficiency.

But, enough of the end of my trip. Got to throw my clothes and magazines back into my bags so that I can get a cab, but Park City is 8,500 feet above sea level, crisp, and full of people with a lot of money. Had a week jammed full with writing stuff: workshops, readings, red wine in little plastic cups, heartfelt and late-night discussions about revising and points-of-view. A particular agent doesn't care for my stuff but some other people did and the agent got to me for about two hours but I'd like to think I'm too smart to allow that kind of thing to get me down for too long. Did a reading and didn't faint. Rode a ski lift and if it weren't for the squeaking of the cables overhead, it would've been some of the quietest minutes in recent memory.

So, some push-ups to get awake and then a shower. A quick cab ride to the airport and then a wait. A flight to Chicago, another wait, and then a short flight back home. We can do such amazing bigness with our trips nowadays: distance, people, wide-open city blocks, thousands of happy smiles around a six-tiered temple in the desert.

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