I came into town day before yesterday, within the belly of the grey bitch, loping across the rolling hills of Oklahoma. I saw Tulsa in the distance and I told myself I would not fear, that I would not let my stomach begin doing its little dance of anxiety. All will be well, I told myself. All that you need will surely come.
And what came was a bright and sunny day, with the Salvation Army (the Sally) easily found, a not-so-terribly-good meal wolfed down in the midst of a crowd of people civilization had somehow passed by. I sat there looking like a yuppie, in my designer shorts, polo shirt, panama hat. Well, sleepahs, as we called them in Hawaii. Shower shoes, flip-flops. I got caught in the rain back in Ft. Smith and my dress shoes began to fall apart, the sole flopping about so that I had to drag my right foot to make things work. A fine state of affairs, eh? I abandoned them in the bushes where I'd stashed my bag.
And so I came into Tulsa with a red nylon bag filled with damp clothing which was beginning to mildew. I could smell them, and even a liberal dosing of Brut splashed on and within the bag didn't really disguise it all that much. After eating at the Sally, I went to a nearby mowed field and spread them out in the sun to dry. Blue jeans, shorts, two pair of socks, two tank tops, a wool red-checkered tablecloth (my blanket), a dress shirt, a red "power" tie, my maroon warm-up pants. Traveling light, you may say.
I watched as obese black women walked by hand in hand with trailer trash white men, and watched as obese trailer trash women walked by hand in hand with angry-eyed young black men. I watched as drunken indians drank from brown paper sacks on the corner, with the cops going by and paying complained
about something. Couldn't catch the words.
Two black women came by and one shouted, "Y'all best git outta that field. At's private propatee and you gone git yo ass in jail." I waved. She was pulling my leg.
Two groups stopped by, one semi-official riding some kind of wheeled vehicle. The Man said, Just wanted to see what you were doing. Two drunks came by; they were curious, also.
In a couple of hours all was dry.
The Sally requires a T.B. test to stay there; it's easy enough to get, but I didn't do that. Sally wants to lock you in around 4:30. They'll give you a bed, but you must be IN that bed by 9 P.M. All in all, the street seemed a better option.
And yesterday I was in the library when it began to rain. It was one of those incredible storms, the kind Mark Twain wrote about in "Huckleberry Finn." With trees waving about frantically and the rain coming down with such interior dynamics as to make me feel almost that I was airborne, moving through a cloud of magic. The buildings became ghostly, and a lone pigeon struggled through it to an overhanging ledge across the street.
The security cop came out on the balcony and said, "Man, this is sholly one helluva rain, eh?" And I agreed. And later one of the ladies stuck her head out the door and her mouth was literally open in a cariacature of awe. A lovely rain, mist coming in on my face.
And then I was chilly. The day before, feeling the call of nature, I had seen some bushes and gone in there to add my bit of moisture to the earth. There I found...running shoes. Might they fit? I pulled them on. If my right foot were an eighth of an inch longer, there would have been problems, but as it turned out, they work just fine. No shoelaces, but there was a single other shoe there with a shoelace which I cut in half. Shoes laced, functional. There was also a quilted shirt which I hung up to dry. It was this shirt I put on when I became chilly, with the rain misting in on me, as I sat there smoking a handrolled cigarette.
So that's how it was. And downtown, they have been having a Bluegrass/Chili festival, the 20th annual affair, and they are having it on a little stretch of...what would you call it? A kind of mall, where back in 1981 I got disastrously drunk with a few rowdies before catching a city bus out to the highway where I hitched to Austin. I recognized it immediately, although I could not remember how I got there. I am sober this time, although there was money enough to tie on a hellacious drunk. I am sober this time.
So what am I doing here? Yesterday, sitting out there watching the storm, I suddenly had the sense that I am here to...learn something. Later, at the Mission listening to the black preacher talk about the joys of praising God (and allthat), I felt that I was on some kind of Quest...a kind of VisionQuest, for lack of a better term. That here I am in late middle-age with perhaps the very best years of my life directly ahead of me, and that I need to be humbled, that I need somehow to get back to the very basic of the basics. That I need to find out who I am, why I am here on this planet, and how I can best serve the Will of my Higher Power with what time I have left.
I don't want to offend any of you with my Belief System, so do give me some slack. Give me a bit of rope and let us see whether I hang myself with it or tie up some medicine bundle to take with me down this path of the Quest.
In Ft. Smith...a sense of miracle. Beneath the bridge, a local ministry run by a recovering heroin addict who looked so much like the fire chief of Altus, AR that I found it uncanny. There he was, talking about...Purpose, a word which has been knocking at the door of my soul for quite some time now. Purpose. And what he said about Purpose was something I was in complete agreement with: that the very best way one could spend one's final years would be to SERVE the will of God. Higher Power. And for those of you who know me well, you know that my Higher Power is an entity I call "The Dancer."
There was a woman in his congregation who looked exactly like my freshman English Professor, who was not only my instructor but became my lover, took me into her home, gave me a place to stay when I was but 19. She's dead now (as I learned just this past April), but...THERE SHE WAS!!! And a sense of magic stole over me...I was surrounded by people from my past, magically reincarnated, cloned, there to let me know (hint, hint) that all was and is and will ever be...well.
And later, I went to the A.A. club and there I saw a man who seemed so incredibly familiar. I looked again and ....OMG, it was my sponsor, Angus Graham, who also just recently died. And it was Angus as he would have looked like 25 years ago. This man even held his head the same way, had the same gestures, was struggling with the same demons. And I wondered, what is going on here?
For there are surely two ways of experiencing the Universe (at least). There is the purely Newtonian, mechanical model which is cold and rationalistic. And there is the Spiritual Model, which admits of no coincidence, which interprets the tea leaves of clones appearing, and from that interpretation draws strength, courage. I hang out in the Spiritual Model, for the other leaves me weak, totally enervated, unable to function.
Not to imply that I'm doing all that great within the Spiritual Model, although I think I am.
I begin to think I just might, might, might possibly be a poet. Loveisarose and Msallthat have been the two primary forces of persuasion. For those of you who are interested, you can read the one poem of mine Msallthat has published in her e-zine, "the Hold." I'll try and get the addy for you at some later date.
But poetry. And what is on my mind just now is whether or not I can write poetry sober. I know this letter is not turning out the way I'd hoped. There is nothing of poetry in it. Just sort of a telling...a mundane telling of things. And if I can't write any better than this sober, then I am in trouble. But we shall see.
So. Here I am on the streets of Tulsa. Last night I went to the Bluegrass Festival (and I do love bluegrass so much!) and the very best group came at the end, just as the rain was beginning in earnest, so that they only got to do about four songs before they began to be concerned about being electrocuted up there and so cut the set short. I stood there in the gentle rain, listening, feeling so much emotion as they played those old bluegrass songs of loss, despair, Jesus, jail and drunkeness. My childhood came rushing back, overwhelming me with feeling.
Walking away, I found a trash bag, cut a hole for my head, and walked off down the street mainly protected from the rain, finding at last my stashed bag (still dry), and slowly walked up that long and lonesome hill to the abandoned car I'd found earlier.
I slept there, safe, dry, grateful. There was still one cigarette paper for one last cigarette before sleeping. There was everything needed to keep me warm. I was off the street, there protected by trees and shadow, and the seat was soft and clean. All that I needed that particular night was there for me. The very basics of the basics. And the angel Rebecca said, "All that you need will surely come."
And when this morning came, I left the bag there in the car, and wandered down to the church where sandwiches were waiting, two bananas, and all the coffee I could drink. A cigarette paper materialized, and I sat there beneath the overhang of the church drinking coffee and smoking the best cigarette of the day, as this fella named John told me about spending his $500 check in just a few days. Crack, marijuana, and booze. He told me how he'd needed shoes and was gonna get them, but somehow got sidetracked. Next month.
I understood. I saw a man next to me rolling a cigarette as he muttered about world population. Asking if he had an extra paper, he handed me one. It was that thin paper torn from a Bible. I put my glasses on and read the verses. On one side was Jesus being betrayed and on the other his prayer of intercession. Ahhh, I thought, the Gospel of John. I put it inside my little plastic pocket and saved it, not that I had some kind of hesitation or aversion to using it as a paper (altho in a sense I did), but more because...it was a souvenier, a little torn thing of significance. Perhaps someday I will laminate it and carry it with me as...what?
A magical thing. A reminder of when Dickens was down on the street on his VisionQuest, broke but not broken, seeing holiness within the faces of the tramps and bums, the worndown ones, those missing teeth, with thin, worn spots in their souls.
Yesterday, a woman near the library yelling at people as they walked by. An indian woman. I went out of my way to walk by her, wondering how she would react to me. "Helllllooooooo, there," she said. Honey in her voice, flirtatious. Turned out she was on a drunk and I could have joined her. She was missing three upper teeth and was contemptuous of the cops. "Hell," she said. "I used to be a cop myself." The lying is everywhere on the street, so much so that you can never tell who is telling the truth and who is not. "I was a cop," she said. "The cops know better than to fuck with me." Her name was Verna, and she was drinking a beer, and she
reached out her hand and took mine in hers. "So nice to meet you, Dickens," she said. Then added, "Shall I call you Dick or Dickey?" I told her most people just called me Dickens. Then I walked on. I could have stayed with her, gotten drunk, and who knows what. But I really didn't want to.
And later, in the mall, a woman walking up to sit beside me. Street or not? I really couldn't tell, so she was doing well. Friendly. When she learned my age she said, "Your place or mine?" Street. In a minute, her current came along and he had papers, half a dozen or so. I'd spoken with him briefly at the Sally the day before. Connections. Connections get made, nurtured, and then are suddenly gone as people are jailed or move on.
I don't know why I'm here. I say that I am on a kind of VisionQuest, and there is a certain kind of satisfaction to that, though for all I know it may be just smokescreen, mirrors. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Pay no attention to what seems to be. There is a reality behind that which is the only reality worth attending to.
This is how it is for me this morning, thus far. I have 3 sandwiches in my bag, two bananas. I will skip lunch at the Sally. And when evening comes, I will walk up that weary hill to the Mission and hear what the preacher has to say. I much prefered the recovering heroin addict preacher. He spoke to me. These two black preachers have not touched my heart. The one day before yesterday, oily, smooth, great black fingers splaying over the keys, his message seeming rote, taken from "Preaching For Dummies" or something. Nothing to touch. And that is where I long to be: in that wasteland where all is longing for touch, to be touched, to be held by the Spirit, to be led, to be prodded, to be consumed, ravished, forgiven, inspired.
Well, here I izzzz, waiting for all of that. I've written a long one this time, and I do
apologize that there is no poetry here. I cannot force it to happen, but it comes as it wills,
as it wishes, and so often there must be a tension there, some kind of compression. It will come.
Each of you has in one way or another touched me. Each of you I consider to be a friend. In my grouping of your names, I call the group "family." I want something lovely to come out of this experience. I doubt I'll ever do this thing again, so I want to experience whatever holiness, whatever thing of sacredness I might find here. I want to watch, look, see beyond the surface of things to that which dances, sings, whispers. I want to see the magic which is beyond the weary world. And when I see that, if I see that, I will see for you. I will share what I see with you.
Write me.
I love you all.
Me ke aloha,
Dickens3x
