PL Moments

I have my dry cleaning in my arms, and a man and child stand at the crossing of Hidden Chicken and Chow's Chinese restaurants.  Somehow(!?) we are talking and I ask the girl how old she is.  She is six, and so of course I have to recite A.A. Milne:

"Now I am six
as clever as clever.
I want to be six
forever and ever.

The man, is he her father or grandfather? One doesn't want to presume, tells me he used to live
near Robert Frost's house.  And that leads us to talking about all the poets at inaugurations, Frost at Kennedy, Maya Angelou at Clinton, and then we recite Frost together, "Whose woods these are, I think I know..."  Between us, line by line, we have it all.  At some point, of course, I have told them I am Santa Fe's Poet Laureate and I give them my card.  The little girl is looking up with awe or surprise on her face.
I walk away, all of us smiling, and think, how wonderful the invisible moments of these two years are.

I got to read at Boise High School, in the library, and then lead a Creative Writing class taught by my friend over the years, Sharon Hanson.  I ended up reading poems about death, many of them are, and one where a boy dies in a freak sledding accident.  I asked if any of them had lost peers and two hands went up, of the thirty brown bagging it for poetry. Afterwards the librarian said it was perfect that I read that poem.  They had lost a student two weeks before.  Earlier it would have been too raw, but talking about the poem as the container for grief and joy felt spot on.

Here is a poem sent to me by Merrit Salathe:

When I was born

the world curdled

and a film was skimmed off the top.

When I turned eight

my dad would make me cappuccinos

in small crackled cups.

He and I flew to New Orleans.

In the French Quarter

I wept at the loss of two perfect pearls-

hastened from shop to

shop,

only an image in my mind:

Easter, poisonous Ebony, white out

on the family tree.

He and I sat in a café

drinking café au lait

that saturated beignets

into an aphrodisiac meant for

ten years later.

We walked on ground

sick with dead water

and FEMA trailers.

Shimmering heat miraged my white tambourine

but all I wanted was to hear its negative

sung once live by my

favorite artist turned scientologist.

We drove through vacant spray painted suburbs,

the water lines

etched in like a filthy skin.

“There’s the house where I was born,” he said,

“The Catholic school where the talking

icebox man and I dropped a conch.”

I was born post-earthquake

But hurricane threats flow in my blood. 

 My third recent PL moment came after a rare Tres Chicas Books meeting.  We had been taped for a radio show to publicize our new book, Love & Death:Greatest Hits, and then met for dinner and planning.  Afterwards Renée Gregorio and I decided to hit Ross Dress for Less and check out the nighties.  We have shopped together a few times, always memorable, Pennys in Taos, The Cottonwood Mall in Burque, and now a Santa Fe jaunt.  You must realize there are about ten years between each shopping episode.  At the De Vargas Mall there was a man in Hastings Books and Music, just sitting there next to his stack of books.  He was my age, nicely dressed, and looked how I often felt at a lack-luster poetry event.  I talked to him, bought his book for good luck, and headed into Ross.  "Did you tell him you were Poet Laureate?" Renée teased?  Of course I did and that I had a reading tomorrow.  Then I engaged in some altruistic shopping where in the depressing Ross dressing rooms I gave the skirt I loved and lusted after to a woman older than myself, shopping alone who said She came in to cheer herself up and now she felt worse.  She loved the skirt, and found another the same style.  I realized that altruistic shopping is right up there with altruistic Scrabble as mentally questionable.  How will I get ahead?  Ayn Rand is turning over in her self-righteous and self-centered grave.

The guy with the books came by my reading, couldn't stay.  Turns out he lives in Mexico, passing through, and is tennis partners with our friend, and Tres Chicas author Tom Ireland.  "Nothing good is wasted" I learned from a folk tale from Gioia Timpanelli.  Michael and I err on the side of give away. When he does it I can get agitated, but when I choose to give, it seems just right.  At least with giving poetry it doesn't wreck the bank account.  Neither does altruistic shopping.

Boise, You Betcha

 So, here's my link to Amanda Turner, interviewer extraordinaire!  It captures the joy. It is long, so I recommend multi-tasking if you want to hear it.  I wouldn't want to presume anybody would be interested in a near hour of me.
http://radiowritersblock.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-writers-block-for-april-28th-joan-logghe/.


   But I want to tell you a small moment of my trip, which falls into my Tales of the Synchronistic.
   My dear husband, Michael, wanted to reach a friend of his in Boise, an acupuncturist named Peachy. He called Luna and didn't hear back from her. He looked in the phone book, asked around, and even went to the chamber of commerce and made friends with the staff. We figure it is some sort of nickname,
as we know many folks with a nom de moment, or a Burning Man Name, or a spiritual name.
    Meanwhile, my friend Diane Ronayne was encouraging me to get a massage,
and though I sort of didn't need one, I figured a little self help in the middle of a busy week would  be nice. 
   The morning before my massage, around our semi-communal breakfast table, I was busy messing up a joke I have known for a dozen years.  I said it was the only joke I could tell, and I only remembered the punch line.  I told it like this, "When a guy from the Middle east marries someone from Minnesota, or the twin cities, what do you get?''  Pause.  Confusion.  "Yassir, You betcha."  Ha ha, I laughed at myself for flubbing a joke.  I went on to say my mother was a great joke teller, she called them stories, and her key to remembering them was the punch lines. She'd write them in a notebook, and after her death I found one little flock of lines.  And here I was with a punch line in hand, and I couldn't remember the set-up.  
   Then Diane drove me for the massage, carrying my dress-up clothes for the rest of the day, two readings, one workshop in poetry and one workshop for therapists.
We pull up at the lovely but unassuming massage site, and on a plaque, as there as anything it says "SEAN PEACHEY, ACCUPUNCTURE."  Diane and I are beside ourselves, whooping with delight, and Dominique Tarif, my gal for the hour, says there are two Peachey acupuncturists.  This one has dreads.  Must be the guy I think.  We send his card back to Mike.
  While I have no need to exclaim what a wonderful massage and cranial-sacral
treatment I receive, and I did, there was one detail I want to document.  Dominique was working on my sacrum, the far end from this cranium, and to something I said she answered, "Yassir, you betcha!"  I went nuts, told her I was just telling the joke this morning, an hour earlier.  She said, "A Palestinian man marries a woman from Minnesota.  What do they name their first child?"   We conferred that we had both heard the joke on Prairie Home Companion's joke night, I don't know what year she tuned in.  I can't recall if Dominique said she laughed her ass or her head off, but laugh she did.  The entire rest of the treatment I would burst into a smile.
   Now I am home, and as I type this I think maybe my mom is at it again.  Maybe this is her punch line, that it will be okay.  My youngest is in massage school and I tell her the story, and how it showed me that a massage therapist can be the psychics and healers of our time.  My daughter nods, she already knows this.
Diane says that others have had similar experiences with Dominique. I am listening to her music this week, and can she sing and play mandolin?  You probably know the answer is, Yassir, You betcha!"  And was Peachy the right Peachy? Ditto.