Saturday, November 10, 2018

Poem for Saturday, Goodbye Paramount Ranch

Walking the Dunes
By Brenda Hillman

In movies when the hero is about to die,
He scatters a few phrases in a place like this,
Hoping the words will come up again
Immortal, or the grasses will reach out for him
As now they do for us.

Someone has planted a row of little trees
To stop the wind. Instead they’ve learned
To bend like the elect
In one direction only; they know
The sea will shatter them.

Isn’t it always like this?
Something uncontrollable becomes the hero,
Taking off its dress, the ice plants
Sunburn from the center out
So we can see that their deaths

Of splendid rust and yellow are not ours,
We are allowed again the glare
Of the sand, the druid hills,
The grasses brushing the legs, though
Just to have felt it once would have been enough.

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My Friday was not exciting compared to my Thursday -- I went out in the rain to do some chores, I did some work on the computer, we had dinner with my parents and are now all caught up on The Gifted. But mostly I watched the news because I was worried about people I know and places I love in California, and the news was not good.

It sounds like the fire in Griffith Park by the zoo was isolated and the relatives on my side of the family are out of range of the big fires, but Paul's brother David's family was evacuated from Thousand Oaks and my nephew is living what is sometimes every kid's dream in that his school has burned down, at least partially.

I know it's just buildings and not even homes, but I was very sad to hear that Paramount Ranch has burned down. Most people know it now as Westworld's Western town, but Westworld hadn't aired when we visited in 2016; we knew it from many older TV shows and movies. These aren't the photos I intended to post today, but I'm sorry it's gone:

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