This just in, from the What the Hell Desk.
Well, the poetry reading in sooth is not at all happening tomorrow. It's next week.
And this means more time to hover over pages.
You know, Yours Truly has a lot on her plate at this moment with the usuals plus readying for the next solo show and such.
Bought a lith print intro kit for consideration for the above and have not yet poked about into its chem possibilities. From what YT saw lith prints resemble infra-red but in more golden tones.
This also just in, from the Metro Closures Department.
Harold informs me that the other good and small contiguous suburban diner near the best of the MC area's Olmsted Parks (that would be South Park with its delightful ring road that is actually bucolic and beautiful and not sidling alongside the Bad Karma Expressway like one Delaware Park) has closed. Went there once with Kennedy and did not make it back for their odd diner menu featuring real live French fare. He tells me it's now going to be a hotdog stand. And, sadly, this site was The Coffee Pot which had 8x10 glossies covering every square greasy inch of the joint. This all makes me think I should visit soon the other super-secret diner location in what YT lovingly refers to as Little Appalachia - the Grant Street area.
On that geographical note YT signs off and rushes out into Freelance World.

My ongoing, erstwhile, earnest, and dinerific Love.

After a break in the morning's throttled work schedule slipped off the grid for a respite to the SW, at one of the contiguous Middling City suburbs, at one of the favoured secret diners. Then slipped into the Botanicus Gardenus for a little sniffing business and the orchid room was unforgettably sticky. I had to rush out of their when a gaggle of aged loudspeakers straggled in with inane observations. And then went back, looked at petals for flame-like characteristics. Brushed my hands over everything and felt the softest pre-bloomed flower of a Lollipop plant. Not its namus Latinus.
Time for more more more work before a gap in work and then more work and then less work and then tomorrow a full day of working.
Poetry reading on Sunday. Details to follow, like on Monday.

Follower of Love.

In lieu of Neil the Y - not the D - Velour of yore is on the hi-fi, emanating that fin de siècle songcraft that I was so imbued in so then. So much so that I was invited to their dress rehearsal to give notes on The Impressions. I recall a bandshoot I did with them near the grain elevators, they were all into their hair, not wanting to get dirty. Boys, rock, noise, hai-karate kicks.
And You know what. I will tell You. They still completely rock the loud-decibeled stratosphere.
I sold myself to a blue-eyed devil, she'll never get the best of me.
That, my Perfect epinw readers, is what rock is all about - the operatic moments of life and love, presented in a somewhat vulnerable manner with teeth, so to speak.
So when your sun begins to fall, was it worth your weight in gold.
Here is another primo example of what makes the rock the rock. The above sounds great as a rock lyric, sung. But, in retrospect, upon close(r) inspection, what in blazes does this mean.
This leads me to the real matter at hand, the Neil Young movie.
It's not exactly that I feel that there are 1.5 hours I can never regain, that is too strong a sentiment and such, but really. The shots of Ryman tip me off to what I did not see down there in Nashville when TunaTwin and I traversed this fair land for the first time together, wending our way up and down the main drag, dragging ourselves into and out of famed joints.
Actually, we became the Tuna Twins down there when a very old man spoke to the two of us and, noting our similar faces, and YT ends that snippet here.
So, back to Neil.
The first demi of the movie is, assumedly, the first night of two, is all new material and that material had me nearly in nap mode. I looked at Brucey and said So he had an aneurism, must we all suffer. That bad. Smarm. Smarm. Smarm.
Second half is the second night, the old shit You love.
Here, a trib:
High school nights of spring when the self begins to crocus out into the world and Neil was on the jukebox of one Checker's. He became part of the soundtrack for our wobbly, young lives of borrowed cars, borrowed apartments, raging intellects, hitched-up uniform box-pleated skirts, and hitching-to-school thumbs up. Loomis's rooms with Neil warbling out of what today would be an iPod was then a boombox.
So long ago and so far away.
Neil Y's Unplugged is an item you must have in the NY collection - if for only what is usually on most discs the cherished track, #6. You Are Like a Hurricane. This version is one of three songs that ever stopped me dead in tracks, gave the goosebump. This is all Life molecules, all Art gestures, All Green, in one fell swoop.
Said tonight to a friend Of course you are your age, think of all the things you have done, all the wondrous things you have seen.
YT rests her wondrous case. Once again.
I am the dreamer, You are the dream. Dig.

Sentimental journeyed Love.

The person in the photo is Richie English, a portrait I made of him in situ at tonight's gig.
Remember that name, he is an en route star.

To be filed under M, formerly as in Dragon Boy, but presently for Middling City Classique.
Funny how time changes our personal alphabetical refs.
A certain pal of Yours Truly, who shall not be named (You know, as Sam wrote, God is a witness that cannot be named), has relocated to the Shiney Apple for work as the MC path had gone completely vapid for him. So there he went. So there he was this fine evening along with a few others who thrive and do this & proverbial that wherever need be. He was, I swear to You, eating a platter of chicken wings as heartily as any rubber-necker/do-gooder/erstwhile visitor hunkering down for MC good times might do.
Thoughts run to what else suchtypes might do in the MC.
Those who were but now are former but who have a surprising leaning toward the, YT searches for a suitable and diplomatic word, textbook attraction.
Yes, the textbook.

Not so sure about Textbook Love.

Ensconced in a super suburban hot spot to edit & burn images for gigs.
At noon today I shot a parade of students et al marching in an anti-sexual assaults protest which featured the requisite signs and yelling into megaphones as well as men in high-heeled shoes that were being sold on the collegiate scene by AmVets - all size 10, all hideous. I asked the AmVets workers alongside the shoe spread about the provenance of the shoes (hundreds) and was told these were all unsellable - some clearly from the 80s, near classics, unloved.
*sidebar: one of those much in the news, ultra-overweight families is nearby, everyone from grandmother to elementary sibs hauling loads of heft, devouring a starch and sugar feast.*
Yesterday went to the delightful, annual brunch at Olga and Ted's home and brought with me a few gifts - a red and white, gorgeous columbine plant, and a flourless chocolate cake probably weighing as much as one of those kids over yonder.
Upon seeing the cake Anya remarked Where's the rest of it.
As Alexi soaked my plate with Veuve Cliquot I became a bit distracted from eating and spent more time enjoying VC than victuals.
I was already saddened by the crackhead-induced death of a Middling City diner owner and the VC sped introspective matters along, culminating in me dropping my potted plant from Olga and Ted off at the shooting scene - along with a somewhat rambling note to the bandits.
I stopped by the diner this AM en route to MCU to snatch back the sign and arrived to see a table set up manned by volunteers collecting money for the late owner - George's - funeral, as well as people dropping more flowers. I felt rather odd about taking my sign just then, especially after I watched a woman reading it and then bursting into tears, so I left it but did give my last five dollar bill to the funereal fund.
One of the volunteers said the diner will prevail, reopened by George's family and renamed eponymously, and undoubtedly still serving grits. She told me that one of the bandits was arrested already, that this guy (a crackhead, shocking) was always broke and George would feed him, pro bono.
The crackhead and his buddy sat nearby after the shooting, watching the ambulances, etc. arrive.
The note penned by Yours Truly in a nutshell stated that in lieu of spending billions on a war in Iraq I wish the so-called president spent it funding schools, rehab programs, to keep more gendarmes on the scene.
While meeting with my tax femme Valerie, who also teaches GED classes, we talked a long while about the lessening of literacy in this country.
No education, no hope, no future, no control, no shortage of crack, no shortage of handguns added up to a whole lot of loss of joy along the Middling City's Main Street on Friday, when a small business owner with a good heart was shot in same by two sans any.

Love Love Love.