[Cheers to wrapping up last
weekend about a week behind schedule!]
Sunday
Sunday morning started with birds singing and J1’s bicycle
spokes clicking their way across the lawn. The weather was perfect for outdoor
sleeping; all wispy clouds, light breezes and brief sun breaks. Piled high with
blankets and pillows, the deck futon was entirely too comfortable. J1 came up
the stairs and collapsed into our warm body puppy pile to tell us all about her
Saturday night (at least the pieces she could remember). Eventually J2
surfaced with coffee and quiche. A gray cat cleaned her ears and napped in the
tall grass. The half-naked folks on the other side of the fence drank liquor
like it was apple juice and begged for cigarettes. J3 offered us
mushroom caps, “just enough to make the world kind of shiny”, somebody passed
around a pipe. I closed my eyes and let music pulse in my throat. I smoked
cigarettes and drank coffee until my hands trembled. I blinked and it was 4 o’
clock.
C decided for her last day in town she would introduce me to Dots,
ostensibly to see their velvet painting collection and meet a fella named Ruby.
You guys, if you ever get a chance to visit Dots, take a close look at the 3D
Spaniel painting. That one was totes my favorite. What I drew from this
experience: C knows some strange and wonderful people, some seriously loveable
weirdos. We passed the early evening playing pool, drinking whiskey and eating
hummus. J1 flashed children. There was face painting, clothes swapping and spontaneous tree climbing.
Somewhere in the middle of everything my mouth lost the ability to form
sensible words, so I just smiled, just took it all in. I let myself ride out
the tides of other people’s conversations.
Eventually we wrangled everybody up, piled into C’s car and headed back
to the Craft House to drop off J1 before the poetry slam. I don’t
know how many of you have attended a poetry slam, but I recommend you all look
into attending one as soon as humanly possible. Some heavy contenders competed
in this particular slam, including the man who basically created the Portland
slam scene. For those of you who don’t know: a slam is a spoken-word
competition. Contestants each recite a poem (these tend to have a lot of internal
rhyme scheme) about whatever the funk they wanna, and the audience uses their
magical powers of standing to determine the winner. Last beast standing wins a
pretty princess crown, some sort of prize (for instance: a used Lite-Brite) and
heaps of street cred. Ok, maybe not the street cred. But apparently there’s
some sort of complicated internal point system and the winner will actually get
to go to some big competition somewhere eventually. Unfortunately, they got robbed…
If you wanna give ‘em your money, they’ll take it.
This is my newest aspiration: to grow up and be a slam poet. I know, I
know. Maybe not the most feasible plan and I may be donating plasma the rest of
my life. But the feelings in that room every Sunday night, the degree of
passion pouring out of those poets is fucking inspiration at its purest. They
make me want to start writing and never stop. The poems I am currently working
on address alcoholism, childhood abuse and Burmese pythons. Don’t even trip, I
promise they will all be moderately bearable.
After having our minds metaphorically blown, our only logical last stop
was Stripparaoke. By this point I was definitely calculating the hours of sleep
accrued over a four day span and coming up ridiculously short considering the
work week was set to begin in t-minus 6 hours.
My basic survival instincts found me standing on my front porch soaking
wet, saying goodbye at 1 am. Thank you for walking me home. I’m sorry I didn’t
get to hear you sing. I’m sorry I didn’t have the time you needed me to give,
the words you needed me to say or the tears you needed me to cry. You’re going
to be great, just let yourself be ok. Ok?
I love you all. Angels on your body.
-b
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