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where I am now (or follow the tangents if you dare...) ~ January 16, 1996 - 8:31 a.m. The date on this entry is January 16, 1996. that's the date that diaryland read off the machine I'm using. interesting... I think January 16th is dr. martin luther king, jr.'s birthday, the holiday. I remember when I was a kid, there was a big debate over whether or not to make it an official holiday, with everyone off from work and school. some parents took their kids out of school for king's birthday, anyway. most of the teachers I knew came from the point of view that king was fighting for education, and would have wanted kids to be in school on his day. I won an essay contest that tim, my fourth and fifth grade teacher, held in our montessorri class. I think I was in fifth grade. I began the essay with a lot of sweeping statements from king's "I have a dream" speech-- which were probably paraphrased, because I hadn't bothered to look up the text of the speech. I tended to think that paraphrasing was good enough, as long as it sounded good. I hadn't yet learned the finer points of copywrite law, which I still tend to flout on a regular basis. okay, i just had a moment of doubt about the word "flout". one that totally froze me up for a second. maybe writer people can feel me on this one. because suddenly flout looked positively nonsensical to me, and I kept thinking, is that a word? and I just couldn't get past it. I wanted to think of another word to replace it to just dodge the whole thing, but nothing seemed to fit as well. and I kept thinking flout? or is it flaunt? can you flout a law? can you flaunt a law? finally, I opened another window on my browser and typed in dictionary.com, and punched in flout. this is what it said: flout Pronunciation Key (flout) v. flout�ed, flout�ing, flouts v. tr. To show contempt for; scorn: flout a law; behavior that flouted convention. See Usage Note at flaunt. Usage Note: Flaunt as a transitive verb means �to exhibit ostentatiously�: She flaunted her wealth. To flout is �to show contempt for�: She flouted the proprieties. For some time now flaunt has been used in the sense �to show contempt for,� even by educated users of English. This usage is still widely seen as erroneous and is best avoided. I'm now more or less impressed that my brain knew the word flout, knew that it was related to flaunt, and that flout was the right choice for what I meant. so anyway, I play fast and loose with copywrite law on a semi-regular basis. I credit, though. so anyway, I won the black history month essay contest for dr. king's birthday, whose name is still hard for me to shorten, because we learned to say it the long way-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and not just luther king, but junior, because dad was martin luther king, too, and notable in his own right. montesorri schools are cool. I was blessed to go to a public montesorri school until 6th grade. and I won the contest, but I tied with emily lafave, who was a friend of mine, and who last I heard was married to a senator's son, or something of that nature. which I found out, strangely, from my old boss at the aclu of wisconsin, who gave her a ride in his car one day. so anyway, first prize was that tim, our teacher, would take the winner out to lunch. since emily and I tied, he took us both out to george webb, of two-clocks fame. it's a wisconsin thang, you wouldn't understand. I could tell fish-fry-and-beer stories aplenty. there's still milwaukee blood in my veins somewhere, even now that I'm a california refugee, washed up on the shore in thailand. so that essay contest was the first time my writing won me a prize. it felt amazing. it's worth noting that my mom was at that "I have a dream" speech, and almost lost her government summer job for going. mom grew up across the river from DC, and worked summers for places like the FCC, which she said was weird, guys crawling around in the bushes and stuff. it may have been there she was working when she risked her job to skip out and hear that speech. she got dreamy-eyed telling me about what an incredible speaker he was. I was inspired. that montessori class was amazing. tim told us about the properties of molecules while stirring his coffee to cool it. looking back, I'm really glad I got to do that. I'm invited, tomorrow, to check out a montesorri class here in thailand. I'm kind of psyched to see it. revisit that world in a new way. so I'm trying to remember where I was on January 16th, 1996. I graduated from Antioch in 1996. but not yet in january. I was 23. january means I was in boston, unless I was in milwaukee, getting ready to head to boston for my last co-op quarter, an "ownplans" self-arranged gig with an HIV service agency called victory programs, which served HIV-infected people who were also in recovery from addiction. it's funny (or not) how much prejudice I encountered from the advisor who talked to me about that job. hard enough to have HIV without being an addict. then no one wants to touch you. the people there inspired me, because even though they knew they were dying, they were working like hell to stay clean and get their lives together. I ran a poetry workshops for a bunch of folks in our wellness group. every week they got a workshop in some kind of healing or self-care type thing, to introduce them to alternative they might not access otherwise. kundalini yoga. acupuncture. it was a great series, and I got to run a poetry workshop. most of them rhymed compulsively, but once they got into the swing of it, just about everyone wanted to share what they wrote. a lot of them churned out some pretty generic "let go and let god" type stuff, but I remember one guy, an older, whitehaired guy, reading this piece of his about how he used to always walk in nature, and found peace in that, and shared it with his kids, but how addiction had taken it all away, and now it's been a long time that he's been alone. but spring is coming, and for the first time in years he's aware of it again, and finding time to walk in the woods, and now his kids are back with him again. it was a little choppy poetically, but he was just laying his heart out there, and it was beautiful. so, boston. very snowy, that winter, deep snowdrifts and tiny little sidewalks covered with black ice. I was probably still staying at the quaker community where my friend alexis worked. I stayed in the spare room there for the first couple of weeks I was in boston, and it was a sweet place. a gigantic building in one of those old brick rowhouse buildings in one of the "historic" parts of town, beacon hill, a very posh little neighborhood, lots of little dogs. the people in the community were lovely, and I had many fabulous vegetarian dinners there, usually cooked by alexis with a couple of helpers. people took turns with serving and cleanup on a rotating schedule. it was all quite civilized. I took my turns, too. people there were sweet, and I had a bit of a crush on gentle alexis, who was smart and sweet and genuine, but I had a sense that we were only meant to be friends. but we were great friends in boston, who'd known each other only glancingly at antioch. we shared a lovely group of friends, including leslie, my first girlfriend, who I was still madly in love with at the time. she was spending the winter traveling in an old dodge bus with the boy she'd been in love with since she was 16. I knew she'd never be my lover again. she married him later, and I remember that I was hurt not to be invited to the wedding. and maybe that's why I lost touch with her. I want to find her again, she's an amazing person, and I still love her. sweetlovelypermaculture mama. leslie taught me to sprout, to grow wheatgrass in my dorm room on borrowed cafeteria trays. we used to cut off hunks of it with scissors and chew it all day long, like cud. after we broke up, she and I and zoe, hippie mama divine, would all go running through the glen, the thousand-acre nature preserve behind antioch, at sunrise. we could always run further than we thought we could. we stopped for breath and water at the yellow spring, which the town was named for. the rocks are bright orange with iron oxide, and the legend is that if you drink the water, you'll always come back. I always do, sooner or later. last time I was there, it was with psycho boy. I took him for a walk in the glen, and we tried to find the pine forest, but couldn't. I'm not surprised. the pine forest is a very sacred place, and I don't think his energy was welcome there. I had my first vision-- at least the first non-drug-induced vision of my adult life-- in the pine forest the quarter I came to antioch, with a sweet long-haired environmental boy named richard. so anyway. on january 16th, 1996, I like to think I was with alexis, with snow falling on a magical boston night. like the night we went to see georgia, with jennifer jason leigh, and we both thought it was fantastic. it was snowing big fat flakes in the moonlight, everything hushed and lovely as it is in a thick snow without much wind. car tires crunching softly as people inch through the powder. everything is soft and covered with magic. alexis and I wrap up in our scarves and coats, and laugh and walk under old-fashioned streetlights, feeling like hundred years ago. we talk excitedly about all the symbolism in georgia, taking it deeper and deeper, having an utterly ecstatic conversation, so that finally we both laugh, and hug each other, and try to catch snowflakes on our tongues. surely one or both of us make angels. it's that kind of night. and I wanted him to kiss me, and knew he wouldn't, and I knew it was alright. we hugged a lot. we laughed a lot. we had fantastic conversations. we walked and talked all the way back to beacon hill, not even feeling the cold. back at the community, we warmed up with cups of tea and headed to the music room. alexis played guitar and we sang together, song after song. I remember, especially, enjoying the harmonies on "you've got to hide your love away", and I still smile when I hear it, like when jason played it at lek's place last night. lek's place is called easy house, and she's the mama of a little expat family I was easily taken into, being that I met a woman in chiang mai named becky, and any friend of becky's is a friend of lek's. there's a certain amount of water-brotherhood feeling there. (I just finished a periodic re-read of stranger in a strange land.) so I am in lek's little expat family, and I knew I'd arrived when this morning she told me to get my own coffee and asked me to carry a plate to the dining room. becky is here, too, doing her monthly visa run across the border. jason is from california. daniel is from sweden. lek is from thailand. boston: winter 1996. soon I'd meet clare, who still had a girlfriend then, who she'd later leave, and fly halfway across the country to move in with me. that three-year relationship ended three years ago. clare has a baby now, and we are finally friends again. by my calendar, it's november 3rd, 2002. I'm twenty-nine years old. I'm in thailand, in a town near the golden triangle. chiang rai is like a dream.
(((rings))) |