Anyone wishing to be deleted from the Circle....
To: ms_allthat@hotmail.com, loveisarose11@hotmail.com, dee_offner@hotmail.com, mystree_1@hotmail.com,
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Subject: Anyone wishing to be deleted from the Circle....
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 10:36:12 CDT
Aloha to all of you....
Anyone wishing to be deleted from the Circle, please feel free to let me know. I realize not all of you may be enthralled with my ravings, so don't be shy. There's an evolution of the Circle going on, and it pleases me so many of you are receptive.
Up early this morning, 7ish, and out the door, three layers of trousers on, wearing the padded
orange vinyl rain jacket, gloves. Lovely time of day, so different from later on. Joggers and
bicyclists on the levee, all saying, "Good morning." This is that wonderful spirit Lawrence so
often has, especially in the morning. To meet someone on the levee that early is to meet, somehow, a kindred spirit.
Mindy on duty at JavaBreak. She said, I was just thinking of you a minute ago.
Proceeded to tell me of a troubling dream she'd had last night. There is a softness, almost a blurriness to her features, nothing sharp nor strongly standing out, but an attractive young woman. I listened politely, gave some Jungian hints as to a possible interpretation, then took
my coffee into the smoking room and began that process of waking up.
Two women and a little girl were in one of the booths. The child starting singing, If you're happy and you know it clap your hands.
And then she would clap. Cute. 4 years old.
So I began playing....I'd pat the top of my head and she'd look at me and shake her head.
She sang, If you're happy and you know it stamp your feet. I clapped my hands. No, no, no, she said. Stamp your FEEEEEEEEEEET.
Then, If you're happy and you know it say hoooowayyyyyy. I stamped my feet, and watched her put hands on hips and mock-glare at me.
They were in the process of leaving. She put her coat on backwards and Mom took five minutes to explain to her how her back would get cold and how it was blahblah better to do it THIS way. Kid agreed, finally.
Mama said, And you can eat THIS if you don't complain about having to go to school. A sweet roll.
Bribery, I said.
Motivation, Mother replied. There's a fine line.
And as they left I said, Thanks for making my day. She's a cutie.
That little girl was my poetry for the morning. An encounter, one I'll probably soon forget, and one she's no doubt already forgotten. But precious, precious.
I am happy today, so perhaps I should shout hooooowaaaay, stamp my feet, and clap my hands. Ah, but I did that already, remember? Just out of sequence.
Last night Homeless Paul came to my table and sat down. The conversation fell into the usual trajectory when Paul's around: the end of the world and how long's it gonna take? He has all kinds of facts and figures he's gleaned from the Internet to support his various stances. He's
in the process of determining whether it will be by nuclear holocaust, anthrax, a meteorite or overpopulation.
I suggest a mutant killer virus and he ponders that a moment, makes a notation. I fully expect him to have a ream of material about killer viruses next time we meet. Smile. I am attracted to the eccentric, or perhaps it's that they are attracted to me. Whatever. We seem to come
together.
He is monomaniacal about the topic and I'm open to listening, contributing my two cents' worth now and then. Because I nod my head so often, he seems to think I'm very intelligent, well-read, and allthat. I do not disabuse him of that notion.
After a 26 year absence, Lawrence feels much the same. There are cell phones, beepers, and computers, of course, and lots of rings through noses, earrings, chains, and allthat, but yet the prevailing sense is that the kids are still getting drunk on Mom and Dad's money.
Paul said, No, these kids today have no values whatsoever. You think they'd ever fight to defend this country? He shakes his head adamantly. A handsome young man, early 30s, resembling
Flakey Foont in the old R. Crumb "Mr Natural" comix. Perfect fit, although I do not tell him so. He looks like a young Republican.
Well, my generation wasn't all that hot about going over to Viet Nam and making the world safe for MacDonald's, either, but I remain silent, nodding my head. He launches into a description of this generation out in the street, playing drunken "chicken" with the passing traffic. I get
the sense he wishes one of them would get run over. Or that a meteorite would strike them, a small one that wouldn't wipe him out, too. Perhaps a killer virus which targets only those with rings thru their noses?
Eventually he drifts out the door, headed vaguely for work, and I pack it up and hit the road, traveling the back alleys, across 6th and left at City Hall to the bridge across the Kansas River.
Going home of a night is lovely, once the bridge is attained, for it's nearly all downhill. Get over the little bitty hump and it's smooth coasting from there, the sandbars on the right growing daily on my own private Moon River. When I was here before the Muskogee/Ft. Smith/Tulsa
adventure, there were all these men working on the bridge, ripping the heck out of it, looking very, very busy. Dust aflying everywhere. A pork-barrel nuisance.
15 men on jackhammers, ratatattatting. There may have been seven maids a milking or even a partridge in yonder pine tree but, if so, I didn't notice.
Now there's silence, the job has been completed, and the bridge is safe for another decade or so.
The levee path was still there, just where it was supposed to be, and I turned right onto it, maneuvering the bike hither and yon to miss the rough places. I nearly know them by heart now, even in darkness. The path narrows a couple hundred yards along, and it is a white, pale thing
finely covered with gravel. Just past the half mile marker I turn the bike left, head down the slope at 45 degrees, both brakes on, in my lower gears. I quickly pedal past the RV where Monte stays, then a leaning of machine against the garage.
There has been no poetry today, aside from the little girl, although there was poetry last night in my dreams which, again, I could not remember upon awakening. It comes, it emerges with such loveliness during slumber, but then is gone when the sleepy eyes finally open.
I bought a pen and notebook yesterday, hoping I'd awaken to write them down. Nada. I will keep trying.
Lawrence is such a magic place. It's just where I'm supposed to be right now. All is being taken care of. I am in a kind of Divine Flow, a current from which I cannot nor do I wish to escape from. Kismet, Destiny, the Tao.
Dharma Bum indeed. LOL.
Yesterday I went over to Mary's house and scraped away at the flaking paint for a couple of hours until my hands and arms began protesting. I didn't want to force the issue. Monte tried that a couple of weeks ago and ended up with a sprained knee. So I knocked off before I did too
much damage.
The paint is coming off fairly easily, but it's....well...a job.
As I was sitting on the wobbly wooden steps (which I am to replace) an old man across the street kept staring at me, perhaps wondering who the heck I was and what I was doing sitting on those steps.
Painting the house, I shouted at him.
He raised his hand in recognition. It's a job, he shouted back, meaning a lot of work. He was carrying a fly-swatter, killing flies outside.
Yes, that's what it is. A job. A lot of scraping, but it will look lovely when I'm done.
I went back to scraping and thought of old men, of Grandpa, and how he would do handyman work for the "widow-women." I'd come along to help.
And I remembered a job he'd done for Jewel Scott. I must have been 14 at the time and I remember him being disappointed that he'd gotten the shingles uneven. A waviness to them, he said, but she'll probably never notice.
This past April I passed through that little town for the first time in 20 years or so, and I made a point of stopping at that little garage. It was still there, the shingles still the same. I looked carefully.
I'm a pretty decent handyman. And I could not see the waviness.
I touched the shingles which once he had touched. I thought of Jewel Scott, dead these many years. A kind of anguish welled up in me and I felt my own mortality.
Good job, Grandpa, I whispered.
It took me 40 years to say that.
~~~~~~~~~~
