Sometimes it takes a crazy weekend to wake yourself up out of a long log-jam and ask yourself what the fuck you’re doing with your life and how you want to change it for the better or maybe you just want to leave it alone and accept your shortcomings for the moment until that change just jumps out in front of you like a naked lady out of a cake.Friday late afternoon; out of work at the usual time for the week, a weekend of potential fun and adventure planned with my good pal Mitch.
Tonight, we’re headed into Rolling Meadows for the first stop. One round of open mic reading at a Caribou Coffee shop with the Arlington Poetry Project, a group of which I’ve been a member of since 1995, although the last two years is anybody’s guess…
The group is headed up by none other than Mr. Ed “Babyshoes” Layer himself. (For further references on “Babyshoes,” see 2006 blog entries March 10, May 25 & May 26) I arrive with Mitch to find Ed sitting at another table with the eldest member of the group. Ed sits there for the longest time, talking to her, as I rig my tape recorder up to document tonight’s performance.
Finally, Ed gets up from the table walks over and acknowledges me. “Hi,” he says. I say hi back. We exchange a few looks and he asks me what I’ve been up to. I tell him about my latest co-editing anthology project and not much else.
He seems unfazed as he goes into his usual spiel of trying to impress me with his great world achievements and then moves onto other stuff.
Inadvertently, he says something that now for the life of me I cannot recall, but it makes me grin at him and he says; “So what?” several times until he decides I’m unimportant and sits back down to talk with all the middle-aged ladies that have arrived by now.
More members come and the show which was to start at 7 p.m. finally begins at 8 p.m. Ed recites the rules and as he does, both Mitch and I laugh to ourselves, for Mitch knows what I performed here two years ago at this very spot; the Ronald Wilson Reagan Memorial Game AKA Pin The Quote In Reagan’s Mouth, the game that launched my performance artist career and left me at odds with Ed for the longest time that and telling him that my poem "Babyshoes," written about him was being published.
When it’s my turn to read, I choose to read a relatively new poem entitled “Humanitarian.” After I finish reading it, I hear a handful of clapping, but this time it seems more heartfelt than usual. I sit back down, as another APP member John O’Brien asks to look at it.
Mitch looks bored and asks “Does it gets any better than this?” I tell him, “Not really.” As we leave, Ed pats me on my left shoulder as I pass him by. Is this a love-tap?
Doubtful.
1 comment:
don't know how the reading went , reading at a coffee shop at a mall in rolling meadows just doesn't make it for me ...
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