Just Wrought

Jesus Hat

On the downtown 358.

In the city I’ll catch the light rail to Beacon Hill where I’ll sit zazen at the temple plus listen to a dharma talk. Should be out by around 8:15, latest. From there, I’ll take the light rail back in to King Street Station and walk to Central Tavern in Pioneer Square, where I’ll chat with Bama, who bounces there, and maybe mooch a beer, or pay for it if I have to.

Just witnessed the strangest interaction right in front of me. Burnout-looking white dude with one of those hipster hats of knitted wool with ear flaps, comes back and says “Excuse me, sir” to the Hispanic dude with a long goatee and a baseball cap that says “Jesus” in silver Gothic letters. The dude’s halfway into a heroin nod or maybe just really drunk.

Hipster Hat says it again, real polite, “Excuse me, sir.”

Guy with Jesus hat opens his eyes.

“I’m just wondering if you’d like this soda.” And he holds out a paper cup of fountain soda, some sort of dark cola, Coke or Dr. Pepper, near full, complete with plastic lid and straw. Hipster Hat explains that Jesus Hat looks pretty out of it and so he thought he could use a pick me up.

Jesus Hat says, “I’m fine…. Just tired, man.”

“Okay. Well, here have this soda.”

Jesus Hat takes it. “Thanks, man.”

They fist bump. Then Hipster Hat dude shakes Jesus Hat’s hand.

“Hey, you want this cigarette?” And Hipster pulls a droopy cigarette from his ear. Jesus Hat takes it between two tentative fingers.

“You just looked really sleepy to me, man.”

“Bless you,” says Jesus, and closes his eyes as he tucks the cigarette behind his own ear.

And the glassy-eyed white dude in the hipster hat sort of lurches with the turns of the bus, back to his seat right behind the driver.

So what was with all that?

I mean, here’s the thing: Jesus Hat was shitfaced. A minute or so later I watched him lift himself with considerable effort and stumble to the door to get off in Belltown.

I got up to get off when we reached downtown a couple stops later. And as I walked to the front of the bus, I saw that the hipster had a bunch of grungy plastic bags stuffed under his seat. He was homeless, and likely a bit crazy.

After I stepped off the bus, I went down into the light rail tunnel to catch my train to temple.

Mystery solved. Had to be the hat.

“I was the One at Home”: Chapter 10 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

 

I finished a solid first draft of The Starting Gate about a month ago. Then I spent another two weeks putting a polish on it, rewrote the ending on some excellent advice from a good friend, and sent it under his cover to a literary agent in New York. The reply was surprisingly prompt, but, not surprisingly, discouraging. Apparently the book’s “candor and soul, art and wit” are “admirable”, but alas, the work is too “quiet and thoughtful… insufficiently sensational” to attract a publisher. If I were famous enough, maybe; but since I am not, no dice.

Since I honestly don’t know what to do next, I am going to do what I’ve already promised myself to do: read the next chapter, as scheduled, at The St. Andrew’s Bar And Grill next Monday night. So would you please consider joining me as I read “I was the One at Home”, the tenth chapter of my book The Starting Gate? It’s about the night in the house on Sweet Air Road when it was just me, my step-dad, and his massive left hemisphere stroke.

Here’s a quickie excerpt:

.... He reaches out his hand, grasping for things on the table that aren’t there. “Do you want me to get you something write with?” I ask. He nods vigorously. I get him a ballpoint and a small pad with some advertisement on the banner. He begins scrawling, but it looks funny. I turn the pad around to read it.

“Call your mother.”

“Dad, mom’s in Towson.” Towson is 10 miles away. “I should call 911. Let me call 911.”

He shakes his head more furiously than before. He taps fiercely on that pad with his fat forefinger. (The same meaty hand that slaps our faces, heavy and fast.) So I call my mom at the real estate office, where she’s manning the phones in the hopes of picking up a loose lead. Mom needs loose leads. She’s not exactly a born sales woman. But there’s another reason she volunteers to work essentially unpaid for three or four hours nearly every evening. It gets her out of the house at the time when my Dad’s most likely to be drunk.

Mom answers the phone at the real estate office. I tell her the situation and ask her to let me call 911. “I’m pretty sure he’s having a stroke, Mom.”

“Oh Paul, how can you know that?”

“He’s not talking, Mom.”

“Well let me talk to him.”

“Mom, I can’t let you talk to him. HE CAN’T TALK.”

And here are the details:

When: Monday, December 1, at 8pm

Where: The St. Andrews Bar, 7406 Aurora Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98103

Who: Me, and you, and probably a few others you know

How: Quick and dirty, the readings rarely last longer than 25 minutes.

Why: Why not?

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"Bars: A User's Guide": Chapter 9 of THE STARTING GATE at St. Andrews

We Can All Die like This

 

Swimming in slanting light
the sky’s blue scrubbed
pale of summer’s fullness.

Don’t imagine these blazing leaves
are grieving. Don’t imagine
you will be either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only Took Me 22 Years to Get My Poetry on Buses

 

Poetry on Buses is a program currently hosted by King County Metro and curated by 4Culture. It began in 1992 as a presentation of poetry from the Seattle community on the placards found above the bus seats. Says the  website, “The poems are written by that person across the aisle, that kid in the back, or the professional poet.”

I remember being a young man and new to Seattle and seeing these poems on the buses I rode, my sole mode of transportation at the time. Back then, in the early 1990s, I was so impressed and enamored of the verse I read just above the heads of my fellow riders sitting across from me that I rushed to send in some of my own work. This I did again and again; and again and again I received polite rejection letters from the program. Here is a couple of the poems I sent in through the years: