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November 16, 2007Sleep, my desolate angelLie quiet ’til you wake in the silent forest of my dreamsDID SOMETHING THE OTHER NIGHTI’ve never done before, never thought I’d do, never wanted to do, don’t know if I’ll do again. I read a poem of mine at a poetry reading. It’s all Diamond Dave Whitaker’s fault. Normally, I write something and that’s it; I have no impulse to take it a step further. But I saw San FranSASSY! poet/icon Diamond Dave boarding my 6 Parnassus bus and waved him over. The last time I’d seen Dave was at the On the Road tribute at the Jewish Community Center. He’d started to tell me how he met Jack Kerouac at the old Beat bar The Place on Grant St., where apparently Jack thought he was the bartender, but we were interrupted. “He was a quiet guy,” he told me. Gerald Nicosia mentioned in his Kerouac biography Memory Babe that Dave “remembers someone bursting into The Place, arms flailing, to ‘get Kerouac.’ Pushed beyond the limits of pacifism, Jack kayoed the guy with one punch.” That’s our Jack! But that night Dave, and all of us, found out from Nicosia that Kerouac had hailed Diamond Dave as a new poet in town, “an incunabular William Burroughs,” in a letter to Allen Ginsberg. Dave had never heard that in 50 years. So when I saw Dave on the bus I picked his brain for more Kerouac details, like I’m mining him for info about someone I want to date. What’s his favorite color? Ice cream flavor? Can he pay my mortgage? (I’m convinced I’m going to meet Jack one day.) I mentioned that, by the way, I had won an Honorable Mention from The Beat Museum’s September Poet of the Month contest, for a poem about Jack, and he told me, why not come to his monthly Poetry Open Mic at the Park Branch Library up the hill from my house, and read the poem? Though I don’t often go to readings, I decided to make this one because it was also Diamond Dave’s 70th birthday and Rumi’s 800th. History in the making. Photo © and courtesy of Darice Murray SAN FRANCISCAN CITIZEN ARTIST ALEXANDRA JONES WINSHONORABLE MENTIONIN THE SEPTEMBER BEAT MUSEUM’S “POET OF THE MONTH” CONTEST,which, though not the $100-winning Poet of the Month prize that would have been the first money she had ever earned as a 52-year-old born writer who has accumulated millions of words while stumbling through life having nervous breakdowns, she’s still pretty stoked about for whatever notoriety it may provide among the North Beach literati/cognoscenti she feels left out of because she doesn’t have the big mouth to promote herself as the sassiest unknown writer in San FranSASSY! READ ALL ABOUT ITSomehow, h brown scooped me on that one. A reader in Sacramento alerted him to my win and he mentioned it in his column. “Hey guy—thanks for the plug,” I wrote him, “but what’s with changing my ‘Honorable Mention’ to an also-ran ‘runner up’ award?! My only consolation is that you will soon be receiving the same award!” (h brown has so far captured .64% of the mayoral vote, at 874 votes, beating out nudist-activist George Davis @ .45% and sex impresario Michael Powers at .36%. LET’S HEAR IT FOR h brown! Congratulations, h—or sorry?—for breaking your streak of coming in last in every election you’ve run in. Gavin Newsom garnered only 73.58% of the vote, collecting just 103,202 votes. Yeah well better luck next time, Hair Boy!) The reading went well enough; my pulse rate didn’t even go up. I managed to sail through by not looking directly at the audience, but it might have been more effective had I not, after sharing the story of how the poem came about and pausing to begin it, made it sound like the first line was, “Damn, I need my reading glasses!” which I’d left at my seat. A few of the crowd complimented me later, and there is no greater high for this writer than being unexpectedly lauded by strangers who know me only as a writer. I REGULARLY FALL IN LOVEwith Jack Kerouac, and I wrote “A Prayer for Jack” after visiting his grave in Lowell, Massachusetts last June. As a tribute to Jack for the 50th anniversary of On the Road I submitted it to The Beat Museum’s monthly contest. It’s one three-part poem but I submitted it as three poems because as one it was longer than their max page limit, and the Museum published the second part alone, “The Picture,” as one poem. The poems can stand alone but together they form a story arc. See (below) for yourself. ’TWAS A WONDERFUL EVENINGin the basement of the cozy Park Branch Library, filled with 20+-year friends of Dave singing songs (”Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham”), reading tributes (“Happy Birthday Diamond Dave, for your birthday we will not behave”), bearing gifts (The Illustrated Rumi). The cast of characters, including Waterfall, Rainbow, Jorge and Maztazin, assembled into a smart, lively crowd of several dozen, creating a festive holiday air with great energy, good poems, potato salad and birthday cake, and (bonus) I didn’t even have a heart attack when I got behind the podium. I never speak in public if I can possibly help it, and I almost hadn’t come because I felt crappy from a good hour-long “I’m screwed” cry earlier that day, after that notice from the California Franchise Tax Board (fuck them). But it got worked out and I made myself come here because of my general policy, “When in doubt, leave the house.” And I had just given myself my seasonal Preferential Shape Test, from the Angeles Arrien book Signs of Life. I take the test every few months to see what’s going on with myself. You arrange five universal shapes—a spiral, a triangle, an equidistant cross, a circle and a square—in the order in which you respond to them or they speak to you. Without getting into it, my choices indicated that my focus right now should be not the growth and evolution of my writing or the fate of my flat, but building relationships and connecting with groups. Dave’s invitation was a God-sent opportunity to do so. Yes, that little hocus-pocus reading I gave myself swayed me to sally forth, and to have had Halloween and a night like this one within one month makes it a good year. DON’T PANIC, JUST KEEP IT ORGANICDave was named a Local Hero in the Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay this year. Dave would be “an excellent choice,” wrote SFBG writer Amanda Witherell, “were San Francisco’s long list of storied iconoclasts to nominate one person to represent it on a welcoming committee, to stand in for all that is unique, amusing, and ideal about this city.” Scroll down to the bottom and check out Dave’s eyes. I think he’s been into the autumn mushroom harvest. The next unexpected treat of the evening was an invitation to Dave’s giant commune “The 5lowershop,” for “rock ‘n’ roll spaghetti” and music. A bunch of us headed over in the “veggie bus,” a Green Tortoise-like conveyance that runs on vegetable oil. The place is full of–well, it’s full. Of art, musical instruments, mix-and-match furniture, graffiti and poetry written on any available surface, and slogans like “Your TV wants you to be unhappy” and “Fuck corporate parties,” displayed everywhere. Ten or twelve people live there at bargain basement rents, and you could probably fit two of Chicken John’s warehouse of a home in there, a place of similar eccentricity and delight. (What else would one expect from “the other white Mayor”?) In Dave’s living space is a regular stage area and the band named Shotwell had opened the show. My friend who shits Guinness was also there with his band “Filth Milk.” Philip Glass said, as I wrote in another column, we grow up with conventions of hearing that are learned and that can be unlearned. What we don’t today “hear as music” may evolve over time. Most of what I hear in clubs and at parties and DJ’ed events, I do not hear as music. I can’t make anything out of it. A long way we have come from the luscious melodies of Johannes Brahms and his 4th Symphony like autumn wood nymphs dancing amongst trees. But Hmoob put out something complex and intelligent, shaped and dense. I couldn’t tell you what “kind” of music it is (nor could the band member I asked), but it was intriguing and compelled me to listen. IF YOU’VE EVER WATCHED DIAMOND DAVEwatch a poet read, you know about his unique-to-him hand gesture, which looks like gentle waves lapping the shore in sync with the rhythm of the words. For a while a bunch of us joined in and made a little dance of the “Dave Wave” while Devine’s Jug Band, a banjo, harmonica, guitar, fiddle and washboard/jug, made merry with a country-style Happy Birthday. Meredith Axelrod on guitar, singing a song of Carolina into a megaphone, was a highlight. See them at Revolution Café on Tuesdays. I was utterly charmed and won over and Dave was radiating happiness. “This is not a Marijuana-Free Zone,” he said, “It’s a Free Marijuana Zone.” The place was alive and vibrating, exuding generosity and welcome. May everyone have such a 70th birthday. I’m a little in love with the guy. 21st CENTURY MAYAN WISDOMI spent quite a bit of time with Maztazin, a swarthy fellow with long black braid, many amulets, and wise eyes. He was the cultural consultant for the tile Mayan calendar adorning the City College Mission campus, and told me my birthdate was the Year of the Reed and the Day of the Herb, an herb called Malinalli. I’m an internal person who sees without eyes, he said, and the reed represents intelligence, observation, analysis, memory and subconscious activity. He had an “everything is perfect” idea that the moment you enter into life, you absorb the world as it is at that second, and give back to it when you die. It is my (our) responsibility to use our capabilities and that this 24 hours provides everything we need to fulfill our missions. He thought I had a propensity to heal people, but I doubt that it is through medicinal herbs as Malinalli suggests, but through my writing. We always retain the qualities we need to achieve great things, but it falls to us to activate them. For one who has trouble both starting and finishing projects, this is an important wake-up call. “WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY CITY?”There was a young poet from Boulder there, who was traveling the coast checking out poetry venues. First thing off, he met Diamond Dave on Haight St., read before San Franciscan poets at the Open Mic, and attended the sweetest, hippest li’l birthday party ever. I was busting with pride. It’s not just luck that he would happen onto a first day in Frisco like this; this city generates magic like The 5lowershop’s wood stove puts out heat. CONGRATULATIONS, DAVE,you’re still here. See you again same time, same place, next year, and on the 6 bus. And Jack, it’s you and I for Christmas in New York. Can’t wait to see you. I’ll meet you at the Public Library. What a gift!
The author captures Dave taking a call while reciting Octavio Paz ------------------------------------------------------------ “A Prayer for Jack"
(Applause, applause.) copyright Alexandra Jones 2007 |
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