The Middling City is demi-sun today, another full day of gigs for Yours Truly.
Just had a gig for the U and had to battle my way through hundreds of Lions, the ballroom foyer awash with yellow vests, wacky hats expressing individuality to fly in the face so to speak of said vests, stalls of info about home care aids like giant-buttoned phones as well as helper dogs, and a general sense of conventioneer camaraderie and fraternity et egalité.
Sipping on coffee that the U had put out for its own attendees I decided to see what the buzz was around a certain booth that had attracted about a dozen or so Lionesses. I was immediately pounced upon by a Lion who noted I'd infiltrated, also noting that I did not fit in in my business suit. Now You can ask me any fun fact about Lions - I have them all.
Photographed E.O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize winning scientist, who has studied ants. His talk was sobering, noting how collectively We are completely ruining bio-diversity - even our own.
On that note I'd heard enough and meandered back through the outer activity, seeking out the live demo dogs.
Yesterday's ultimate gig ended quite miserably, the chef in charge of banquetly matters really sucking and enraging those in charge who could not believe that one hour after the first dinner plates hit tables some were still sans dinners. The tension in and around the kitchen tasted like white vinegar and the woman who'd hired Yours Truly worried about the status of her job after this comestible fiasco. She informed me I was finished, and could leave a bit earlier than planned because the photographic meter was running and there was no end in sight of the plating. He is an artiste, she said, the chef wants each and every plate to look like a work of art. As any artist worth their art supplies will tell You, art may be made in a timely fashion.
As YT will tell You, regarding the pending art show allegedly to happen next month.
Where is the art, I ask You.
Expediently, when the time is free and right, it will turn from idea and sketches into real bona fide, on-the-walls work.
Parting shot is that art is work. Just like real work.
The drummer and priest at the unfortunate church next door are practicing - beats and on mic. Just not what a jangled workaholic wants to hear so up go mine own decibels, white and rollicking noise.

Rollllicking, noisey Love.

Self-humoured Moment du Jour.
The premier of a slew of gigs featured a very animated translator for the hearing impaired, all big flourishes and mouth shapes, hands in concert-worthy gestures, him near half-standing for emphasis. Made some pictures of him as he was a visually-interesting part of the event. At one point, about mid-programme, I noted that the man and woman next to me were also intently watching the translator. I sort of leaned over and said He's really fun to watch, isn't he. They both just looked at me. I repeated. They watched my lips. Then they gave small, quick nods and went back to watching the translating. Oh, I says to Myself, this is not just a state-mandated service, people actually use it, too.
Amongst the varied and various stops of yesterday was one at the Nowhereseville estate of a Middling City billionaire where I saw my pianist pal, Richie. While milling about, waiting for our services to be oso needed, I learned this fun fact, proving once again that You just never ever can guess what secrets, fetishes, and fascinations lurk in the minds of others.
Turns out he's a self-proclaimed gun freak, just bought a very serious and kick-ass gun, and is going to be buying his girlie a Taser.
The high rollers came into the parlour and we snapped to our respective attentions, being fabulous yet blending as best as we could into the nouveau yet faux-haggard woodwork. Reward after: T&Ts on the richest of verandas, The Roycroft, with one of the Life Coaches, Brucey, for some good old-fashioned Rah-rah You can do it talk.
Do what, You ask.
It all.

5/5 Love - halfway to 10/10, the day YT most Perfectly emerged.
+
Happy Birthday to Dragon Boy.

So, dig this.
En route to the poesie extravaganza I saw a spectacular car fire (NB: this image is via Google Images, not moi) not too far from the bridge that bridges the Middling City and The Land of Mackintosh Toffee.
The car fire was in its beginning stages as I was approaching, that stage when it seems perhaps there's just an overly-hot cuppa Starbucks in the cup holder, or something akimbo with some trash alongside the vehicle. Then that sight of the upholstery catching, that fearful thought that something is really going to ExPlOdE. But it does not. Somehow Yours Truly has managed to see a lot of car fires and subsequently I consider myself a bit of an authority on them, having also, You see, discussed them with emergency car fire anti-abettors - i.e. firemen/killjoys.
So I am stopped in traffic but all the world around the roaring car fire had stopped. Then the firemen arrived and the show was like so over. My camera was not on hand. I have soul-searched and I am allright with this.
Memory bank offers up another car fire on an overpass of a biway of the MC and, as I approached the blaze up ahead and above, I reached for my camera and shot away madly through the windshield. Very dramatic - both the shooting and the fire.
That's far down south and down and over in the southwest.
Urban Epiphany, like the fire/far, was a raging success, although running behind. I read and read and read some more. Actually cutting down to about one-third of what I had penned & planned as the hour was laterific. I felt solid reading, really digging the words. And enjoying most of the words of the others. I needed to leave and upon leaving was followed by one of the readers who asked me to be a featured writer/reader at a series that he produces.
Now another memory.
The Writers' Cramp Series that YT ran for years with partner Paul T. Hogan. This series freakin' rocked: two free reading per month, and always featuring one newbie, one established, one superstar of sorts. I moved the WCS from the somewhat obscure Bethune Gallery (sigh) to Central Park Grill. Thursdays. MCd alternatingly with Paul and I gave readers souvenir WCS tshirts I hand silkscreened. Ahh, the 80s.
So somewhere sometime YT will be a featured person.
Arose at the asscrack of dawn to wend my way to a golf course to make poetry in the form of digital images for a book to be published internationally about the History of the U.S. Open. Part of such took place aeons ago on the green greens of Grover Cleveland GC.
Had a sherpa, Paul, who took me out on the cart and who guided me about so all's I had to do was focus, look, think, compose, think, focus, chat, laugh, focus, repeat.
Let Us just put it this succinct way. With my imPerfect sense of direction and maply impatience, I might still be out there looking for freakin' 18.

Hole 19 Love.

Minding my own business, of course, I said Yes to the annual pome marathon. And, lest You not know (or knot now) pomes is the old-farty word for poems.
In a matter of moments I'll be facing a (hopefully unhostile) bunch of amassed listeners, reading, amongst other things, my new and sketchy Element Song.
Element Song is meant as a sketch of sorts for the pending photo images for the show.
Secret: this is what Yours Truly does, makes lit for visual shows. If there's not a good bit of poesie for the work then there is trouble abrew. So there is Element Song and all is swell.
Think I'm most happy with Fire. Then Earth. Then Water. Then Air.
But Air is how I'll be ending this Urban Epiphany reading as it has some hale advice for how to read the air, how to groove on what surrounds us. That, Everyone, is always the matter at my hand regarding visuals. And what I tried to say in that grad school - put a visual on the world teeming with air/fire/water/life/rock & roll/earth/shoes.

Love's Teem.