October 1, 2001

• Now that I'm able to post "New Weblog Entry" again I get to play with ketchup.
  
  I am writing about Saturday night, on Sunday night, and the Xanga log will say it's Monday. :)
  
  

  Warmth, convenience, shelter from the elements. Bus shelters. Of course, if they are too closed in they become unsafe anything can happen in there so we'll have an open front glass sides with big gaps and a tiny little roof and it's still a shelter you can't possibly get more than half drowned in there. It is still an attraction to those homeless people so we'll take out the benches it is harder to drown when you're standing up and now everyone shoppers and commuters and the poor can huddle together on equally sore feet in the driving rain in our community bus shelters.

  
  Saturday night was the third benefit night in a row. Educare Press, a local Seattle independent publisher, had a benefit reading for SHARE/WHEEL. Rufus Goodwin read from his new novel Soul Street, joined by street poets Stan Burriss from SHARE and Anitra Freeman (you know her? :)) from WHEEL reading "selected works." The M.C. was Joe Martin, one of the most feisty/lovable homeless advocates in Seattle. (He's the size of a leprechaun and has the energy of a nuclear plant.) Proceeds from all book sales, not just our WHEEL chapbooks but Soul Street and other Educare books too, went to SHARE/WHEEL for the support of Tent City. It wasn't such a big event as the Real Change fundraiser, but we made $300 and every bit helps.
  
  Then afterwards my friend from WHEEL, Michele, and I went out to dinner with Rufus, Stan, Joe and the publisher folks, and talked for hours. Rufus and I and one of the other men had some interesting back-and-forth on the complexities of both being true to what you want to say and crafting it so that you communicate to your readers.
  
  Rufus was very subdued during his reading. He began by saying that September 11 had weakened poetry and music for him, that he found it hard to think about anything else. For the rest of the evening, it made me happy whenever he smiled. At one point a couple at our end of the table were talking about their trip to the Northeast (Rufus is from Boston) and mentioned going to the White Mountains "because they have the highest winds of anyplace on the planet." Rufus said, "I went to the White Mountains once, but for another reason." I asked if he wanted to tell us what that reason was, and he said, "No." Then I confessed that I have a huge curiousity bump; my sweetie once drove me wild by placing a book just out of reach when I was on the phone, positioned so that I couldn't see the title. I went wild trying to reach over and see the title. "I'm very easy to tease," I told Rufus.
  

  There will be pain.     Live anyway. There will be evil.     Love anyway. You can, and will, fall on your ass royally.     Fly anyway.

  He looked at me with the most wonderful grin on his grizzled, bearded face and a light in his eyes, lifted up his wine to touch glasses with me, and said, "I promise; I will argue with you, but I will never tease you."

  I felt the thrill of a double-entendre there.

  I wish I could afford the tech to put a spoken word performance on the page here -- for one thing, Stan's voice can make grown men cry and make women climb the walls! I've tried to give you a Virtual Reading of my stuff, anyway. I read "Sharing City Shelter", the first poem-in-a-box above right, "My Mother's Feathers" below, then "Words" (which I posted in an earlier log), and ended with "Fly Anyway", in the box which is floating somewhere on the right.
  

  Twenty years ago my mother was locked in a little room at St. Francis Cabrini Hospital, because we didn't know what else to do back then. But Mother knew. Mother knew LOTS better things to do than to be locked up in a little room in Spring. She ripped her down pillow open with her teeth. Blew handfulls of soft white feathers under the door and yelled "Fire! Fire!" An orderly actually came and threw the door open. Faster than a naked toddler Mother skinned under his arm zipped down the hall slammed through the main doors and raced down the sidewalk three-o-clock in the afternoon broad daylight 92 pounds in a flapping hospital gown long wiry black hair and feathers. Yelling "Fire!" Mother told me the story herself. I was never so proud of her. To this day I stand a little straighter when I have feathers in my hair.

  
  Sunday was Open Mic at the Real Change, then web class. Check out one of my students at his tribute page. The guestbook doesn't work yet, but I will pass on any comments. :)

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