Hello, how are you doing? Ming and I were so happy at this river rest stop in Idaho. We were in Idaho for a lot longer than I thought we would be! I asked Ming to take my picture to help us remember it: Lenore rest stop.
There’s a 16 hour limit, so I thought it might work well to hang out there sometime. We would have to sleep in our car, but it was just so lovely there. Like the best park, for free.
It makes me dream again of becoming a van dweller. Yes, I dreamed of that so hard, before. Our gas mileage would be way worse. But how nice that would be, to sleep in our van blissfully. Gas would be more, but we would save money skipping some airbnbs. We could sleep at lovely rest stops like Lenore and truck stops maybe for free.
My mom vetoed that, years ago. She thought it wasn’t safe. We don’t have to worry about worrying, her anymore.
poems
I can’t see the name Lenore without thinking of Edgar Allen Poe and his famous poem The Raven. It has a Lenore in it–do you remember? My best friend when I was young–we memorized that poem together. We were geeks like that, poetry geeks.
But I also liked another Poe poem Annabel Lee–do you know that one? Annabel Lee is not Lenore, I guess, but I see them the same: sickly, skinny white ladies who die young. Something about the sepulchre by the sea really gets me. I still like that part.
Lovecraft
The friend we stayed with in Montana has the best bumper sticker I’ve ever seen: What Would Walt Whitman Do? I see Whitman as important and great. He would sing himself–he would celebrate himself. I can relate to that!
Poe seems like a creepy one-hit wonder. But he has way more than one hit. I’m relegating him to genre fiction. He’s a one trick pony of spookiness. Like he wanted to be HP Lovecraft, but didn’t make it.
I never read any Lovecraft, but Ming likes it. He liked the art inspired by it when he was a kid, but then as an adult he read some on the internet.
“It’s very trilobite-ish,” he said. “The creatures are very old, squiddy. Bugginess. Not like mammals–not relatable like mammals.”
Hmm, thank you for the insight, dear.
