Lawrence in the Rain
To: ms_allthat@hotmail.com, loveisarose11@hotmail.com, dee_offner@hotmail.com, wahine10@hotmail.com,
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Subject: Lawrence in the Rain
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 15:28:34 CDT
And to the far-flung members of the Circle...
I slept last night within my little $12 Walmart tent, one designed for children, but which is just large enough for me to spread out full-length if I go kinda catty-cornered. My sleeping bag, that deep rich wine-colored one, kept me warm, more than warm, so that I began peeling the
layers until finally I was sleeping nude. Aside from a foam mattress (which I am keeping an eye open for) I am in comfort. All is well.
I meant to get the bike registered, get the name-change document from 1972/73, but the rain has put a, um, damper on those projects. Tomorrow will do well enough.
Went to the noon AA meeting there at the Alano Club. It's such a relief to be back in a place where there are so few street people that an Alano Club makes sense; it's not overrun by the homeless seeking free coffee and a place in out of the cold. Everyone seems happy to see me,
and the new faces continue to amaze me. Like Eleanor Rigby, I wonder...where *do* they all come from?
It was such a delight to come online here at the library and find 7 letters from the Circle. Thank you to all who've written. Soon I will be working my way up the Hill (and, Gawd, when I say hill I actually mean, um, moun-tain or something) to the various buildings where there are computers galore, open all night, so soon I will be back in the Cafe now and then.
Yesterday I went back over to Norm's, where I used to live. We'd parted with some mildly harsh feelings between us regarding the computer and so forth. It was good to tell him it was all silliness, that I cared about him, and when we embraced that sense of instantaneous healing
swept over us both. A good man, Norm. I didn't ask about his relationship with the Black Widow, but, then, it's really none of my business.
The way they catch monkeys in certain places is that they'll cut a hole in a coconut just large enough for the monkey to insert his open hand, with the coconut secured to a tree. Inside the hole, something bright and shiny. Monkey reaches in, grabs the shiny thing, but cannot bring his clenched hand out. So there the monkey sits, trapped, holding onto his destiny. Her destiny. It's not only Norm, but also so often myself I see in that situation.
But it's a Monday, Lawrence has stirred back into life, and the coffee was strong and black there at Java Break. I will apply for the graveyard shift there with no expectations. Be nice, though, to serve up coffee and this and that to the college kids. We'll see.
I sat there in the smoking room, trying to write a poem for the upcoming slam but nothing was really coming. Or perhaps I should say, nothing *real* was coming, just stereotyped, numb, cliched fuzzy words. What is going on? Don't know. It will come when it comes, and I know of
no way to force it to happen
.
Perhaps it's that the tension is removed, so much of it. There is safety here, people who care, a social life of sorts, places to read the newspaper at leisure, a bicycle to carry me from place to place, and this incredible loveliness that is Lawrence.
There is such a small town feeling to this section of the city. Although Lawrence is the 6th fastest growing city in America, there is no sense of that just here, downtown. Here, oldtown is on either side of Massachusetts Street, the main drag, and the old Painted Lady victorians
are protected by the law of Historical Preservation, not to mention the love so many of us feel for this wondrous architecture. You can walk down this street or that, and be continually shown another glimpse of that marvelous sense of design the Victorians had. I simply love it.
The growth is coming on the outer rings of the city as it moves ever westward towards Topeka. Out there are the malls, the burst of plastic and design which may someday be "camp," but is now simply tacky. Way out on Iowa are the car dealers, the furniture places, the instant-loan
offices, the shiny but sordid underbelly of commerce. I don't go out there often.
But here, in the old part of the city, I am free to roam at will. And there is always something to delight the eye. There is this enormous boulder, nearly phallic in its verticalness, which has a pink cast to it and was, according to legend, an ancient Native American "prayer rock." I
am drawn to such things.
When I came in early yesterday morning, I passed it in the darkness, weary from carrying the bags those two miles, moving slowly but steadily, and I simply whispered, "Hello, Stone," as I moved past. There are benches ringed about it, and some unwise or insensitive or simply
ignorant committee long ago placed a bronze plaque ON the stone. That is sacrilege, of course. But a lovely place to hang for those who find such things sacred, as I do. A little park, a little patch of refuge. I have always loved stone, without ever really knowing *why*. Just that I do. I love the texture and will shut my eyes and let my fingers glide over the tactile surface, feeling the contours and the irregularities almost as though touching a woman for the first time. That sense of wonder, delight, exploration. Sensuous.
Tulsa, in memory, seems all of a color: gray. Yet if I focus that memory, I can recall various colors, a bit of green here, a flowering bush there, earth colors scattered hither and yon, but yet the dominant is always...gray. The industrial section was so bleak and depressing that I
thought it would soon drive me to despair, if not drink. My happy memories are of the library and of the visit from Barbara. Mickey, who disappeared and surely must have gone to jail. Of the bluegrass concert the weekend of my arrival. Ralph, holding his pants up with one hand, the forgotten cigarette in the other. Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie....
This is a lovely town to get things back together. Work is plentiful and as soon as I get the ID in shape, a job will be there. So I will work, save, write, think, dream. I am of an age where my mortality begins to press in upon me, where the quest for purpose and meaning becomes ever so much more meaningful than anything material.
Here is something I find so strange: how much I care about you, all of you, how of the entire Circle, only Barbara and I have met face-to-face, and yet how much and how deeply we are connected. Who wudda thunk it, eh? I keep waiting for my daughter to *finally* check her email
and give her old man a shout. Will let you know when she finally comes up for air. This is the one (Kathy) who's a member of an all-female rock band; also attends the University of British Columbia. The peace-maker of the family, the youngest. My beauty.
I must go buy a light for the bike. Tomorrow get the registration done so it's entirely legal. Tomorrow the name-change document from ages ago. Things to do.
There is peace now.
Thanks to all of you for showing up for my life, for allowing me to share it with you, and for you writing back, sharing yours with me. I have you all under the heading "Family." See what you mean to me?
I rode home last night in the darkness along the levee. There was a half-moon, enough light so that I could see couples, the three walking along. And Lawrence is still small and friendly enough that people say hello when passing. I like that. I passed the two tipis made from
branches and plastic tarp where the father and his two grown children live throughout the year, reading the Bible over and over again, going nowhere but here, along the banks of the Kansas River. The levee was covered with wet, fallen leaves. Soon the cottonwoods will begin to leave their greenness behind, their silvery-greenness, and they will become line drawings against the
sky. But not just yet. I call them "whispering trees," as the breeze is forever rustling those leaves so that they whisper, more so than any other tree I know.
A lone fisherman on the bank, black silhouette, and over on the rock stratum which stopped the downward cut of the river, two more.
I've just been informed my time is up. Until...later tonight?
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