Okay, okay, the kind lady with the soft voice just informed me that I have less than half an hour left, so it's one of those rush-deals this morning. Bear wid me.
Spent my first night over at Hearthstone last night. Heck of a deal. Nice guys, decent food, and all that, but there's this 2 week restriction which severely limits my evening hours @ JavaBreak. So for those of you who wanna interact with the sage-caste scholar, please be informed I'm @ 745 Ohio and am generally available for consultation. Phone number will be provided tomorrow...hehee. Probably in the book under Hearthstone, but not sure about that.
A frantic day thus far. A quickie coffee at the Break with Mindy and Nicoletta looking for Wiz of Oz graphics for me. Want one with a minimum of Dorothy and Toto so I can do some kind of variation of "Doesn't look like we're in Kans--the 20th Century--anymore, Toto." I can't remember the exact quotation, so if any of you DO, please lemme know.
$ crunch. Not only do I have to come up with $75 per week for my board and room, I also have to deal with buying a screen, getting it coated and burnt-in, getting a squeegee and ink, shirts, building a machine. And all of this needs to be done yesterday. Am thinking to ask those here in Lawrence to front me the cash so I can get the basics and a couple doz shirts. Think that will work well.
I am convinced they will sell, and that a good graphic will make them all the more appealing. Everyone seems to love the Oz twist. Probably leave off the reference to Lawrence, so they'll be appropriate anywhere USA.
Sorry for the compressed, shorthand-like prose, but there's a rush on, as mentioned.
And of course they will continue to sell for some time after the New Year. Then, too, I am having TONS of ideas. Most of you know I rarely watch tv, but last night, being something of a captive audience, I did glance at the screen now and then. Some kind of wine with an interesting, very colorful label caught my eye, and I began thinking how I might use very bright, bold colors in some kind of KU (Kansas University) shirt. Lawrence is still selling the same old tired designs they sold back when I was a student (We're talking '60s here, folks, although I don't look a day over 50, hee hee.).
What's most exciting is that I am finally *doing* again after such a long time somnambulent. I want to do a Clean and Sober Millineum shirt, also, to exploit the notion of not having had a drink or drug in this millineum. Ohwell.
Gotta build the machine, so have feelers out for plywood. Probably use ordinary little hinges and just hobble along until I can afford to do it right. They'll work.
A poem keeps nudging me from waaaaay back in the recesses of whatever mind I have left. Something to the effect of the lifting of a brow/ Ravishing the here and now. Yeah, yeah, brillyunt, I know. Lemme let it work its way out. Heh.
So....dah-links. I misses you all, luvs you meeces to peeces, and allthat. Ms, will try to get you a poem ASAP, so hold on, Dear Heart.
Shannon, still planning the treatment thing? I hope you go for it, girl.
Rebecca, why such silence?
Lore, how did the trip go? I promise a *long* letter soon. I'm on restriction; that's my story and I'm sticking to it, heh. Tell me more about the projected field-trip?
Diva, how goes yr life in Kansas? Come up for air, Dear Heart, and tell all.
A big welcome of Amber and Alfie to the Circle, a couple of regs at JavaBreak who simply make my day (or night) when they show up. Alfie is the most interesting teenager I've met in many a decade. Amber is ever so charismatic and lovely. Charismatic-caste Wunderful.
I have 10 minutes yet.
Will go upstairs and see what graphics this library has. Then over to a store called *The Palace* and do likewise. Then over to JB to see if Mindy has found anything. Then to the noon meeting, Link, then Computer Center. In the late afternoon, back across the river to move another load of STUFF on the bike.
The day will dance by, as it always does.
Cloudy, bit of a wind, but mild temperatures. I hear fragments of conversations with the weather frequently being commented upon. We're not having much of a winter kinda thing.
It'll come, perhaps.
It was a bit sad, riding across the bridge yesterday, knowing that that particular chapter is closed. I ride over there from now on either to work or to pick up things. Another tipi was added to the Homeless Village a week or so ago, but I've not yet seen who's staying there. At night my little handlebar flasher blinks on and off, throwing a feeble light onto the path ahead. Just enough to keep me going.
Perhaps that's where I am now in my life. A feeble light, a path, and legs a-pumping. A fragment of a poem comes to mind: "...though all being blind/The way to go shall glimmer in the mind." That's what it so much feels like. That all is blind and there is just that tiny flickering thing of a light flashing.
I dreamed last night of adzes and axes, sharpening stones, and huge wood carvings. Adzes put me into heavy breathing, and I was there, on the outskirts of a group of carvers. They were welcoming me.
Kahuna Kalai, the priests of woodworking in Hawaii. I've always felt that if there was and is such a thing as reincarnation, that surely I was there in some distant century, felling and carving, working with stone and wood in a kind of holiness. Perhaps that's simply some wishful conceit, yet it's there.
It wasn't so very long ago that I felt so utterly lost, abandoned, with no direction at all. Some of you were there with me when I was doing Tulsa. Or Tulsa was doing me. We walked through that together. And now it's Lawrence, the place of rebirth, of new beginnings. It feels like the perfect place for me to find myself at this very late time in my life.
I remember attending a free-food cum preaching deal there in Ft. Smith back in early September. The preacher noted he'd be 51 in a couple of days and asked, rhetorically, how he could best use the few years he had left, best-case scenario. He looked like a clone of a guy I used to get high with, the fire chief of Altus, Arkansas. Answering his own question, he said that simply following the will of God was the best use of his time.
It was nearly precisely what I'd been thinking for ages, and it was lovely to hear this near-twin of someone I knew stand up and say it. The Will is all that is worth hanging out with. Everything else is simply delusional for me. I am so far removed from materialism that I fear I'll ever be remotely attractive to anyone I'm remotely attracted to. It will come. Build it, Do It, and it will all come. All that you need will surely come.
So. Here I am in Lawrence, back in Lawrence after an absence of 26 years. Some of you were not even born when I rode away back in '73. And here I am, back again, seeking meaning and purpose.
There are times when I so long to hold and be held that it's almost painful. I think of the Circle throughout the day, and wish that I might see each of you, embrace each of you, touch your heart as well.
So the day lies ahead, and the time is a-ticking away. There are miles to go before I sleep, as Frost wrote. Lots of things to do. Seek and ye shall find? Knock, and it shall be opened unto you?
I go to seek, to knock.
Questions?
Comments?
Complaints?
Input?
Go in Beauty,
Dickens
