Words

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If I'd listened to my handler, I'd be in New York right now, and that would have been wonderful, but heavy-heartedness creates its own kind of lethargy, and I just couldn't muster up the gusto. A trip like that would have required more imagination and planning than I'd possessed at the time it was suggested, and now it's too late, and here I am, very much not in New York.

But it's not so bad, being Out West in this particular here. The weather has gotten...well, not exactly cool, but more moderate and pleasant, and when inspiration fails, there's always some satisfying puttering to be done.

Besides, obsolescence has its benefits: anonymity and autonomy. No one has been calling, and each day unspools like a parchment scroll ready to be written on. Sometimes I leave it blank.

And yesterday I went with my friend Robin to a celebration of poetry at Allan Hancock College in memory of our good friend Bob Isaacson.  There were many fine moments, including a reading by Bob's wife Sally of one of his poems, "Just Two Boys", and featured poet Deborah Tobola, reading some of her own powerful work.

One young girl with short hair, tattoos, and piercings stepped to the front, introduced herself as Beka and said she was feeling pretty good about things, and she said it in a way that let you know this was a hard-won place to be.

Then she read this poem called "Identity" by Julio Noboa Polanco:

Let them be as flowers, always watered, fed, guarded, admired, but harnessed to a pot of dirt. I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed, clinging on cliffs, like an eagle wind - wavering above high, jagged rocks.To have broken through the surface of stone, to live, to feel exposed to the madness of the vast, eternal sky.To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea, carrying my soul, my seed, beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of the bizarre. I'd rather be unseen, and if then shunned by everyone, than to be a pleasant-smelling flower, growing in clusters in the fertile valley, where they're praised, handled, and plucked by greedy, human hands. I'd rather smell of musty, green stench than of sweet, fragrant lilac. If I could stand alone, strong and free, I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.

She walked away looking confident, having broken through the surface of stone, ready to live as a weed, exposed and unharnessed.

On the way home, Robin had to stop at a farm supply store in Buellton for chicken feed, and I wandered around looking at ropes, cowboy hats, and other Country Western themed merchandise. New York felt further away than ever, but it was fun to poke around in there for a few minutes, pondering sage honey in glass bottles, a blue enamel camping kettle, nutritious biscuits for horses. Nothing at all that I needed.