Three persons from the island of Serendip set out to find some lunch. One saw a shiny thing moving in the grass and wandered off. One fell off a cliff and into the sea. The third fell in love. None of them ever did get lunch.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING  ::  Dropped the ball in the fall on this Home Page splage. After my whirlwind tour of the East Coast in October and half of November, I got home and lay down on the floor for several months gibbering. I love gibbering! I was also trying to get my shinola a little more together since I’m badly, trepidatiously in need of work. Since the AI has yai-yaied my status as a freelance namer and writer (and soooo many others, btw), and I’m in my sixties with no safety net, I need to get some income coming in, preferably by doing things I enjoy. I know, a delusional idealist to the final dollar, to the final breath. But I’ve got a few things in the works. Up first, a couple of creative writing workshops for the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. I’ll be teaching one for five Saturday afternoons in February and March at the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts, on the western edge of Duboce Park in San Francisco. That one is called “Get Started Writing Poetry” and is for both beginners and seasoned writers who want to jumpstart their poetry work after a break or a lull. You can click on the workshop title to go to the info and signup page. Have any friends who might be interested? Please let them know! Here’s the flyer with a QR code that’ll take you there as well.

In April and May, for six consecutive Saturday’s, I’ll lead one called “Precision Editing: Taking Your Poetry to the Next Level”. That one doesn’t have a web page yet on the SFCWI site but will right soon! Haven’t taught in quite a while but as some of you know I did teach college level writing for nine years around NYC. Excited to be leading folks again into words!

These gigs are just the beginning. Out of necessity but also out of joy, I plan to be reLorangering myself all year long. Keep watch for surprises!

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Serendipity and Synchronicity took a stroll in the woods, walking hand in hand until no one could tell them apart. Then one day a small mammal came along and bit Serendipity on the toe. At the moment that mammal struck, Synchronicity stubbed their very same toe on a stubborn root. “Oww!” they both cried in unison, and hobbled on, even more indistinguishable than before.

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I have always welcomed serendipity and synchronicity into my life, even when they knock things askew. It seems that when I’m yang, which is nowhere near as frequent as it once was, they seem to come more readily. For instance last spring when I started turning my health around, physically and mentally, or they started turning themselves around, synchronicity and serendipity were dancing all over the place. Same on my trip last fall. Periods like that give me reason to go on, sometimes, as then, quite needed.

For some reason 1985 was a banner year for serendipitous happenings. I was a bicycle messenger in San Francisco at that time and really in the mix of things, and I wonder if all that energy had something to do with it. Here’s an excerpt from one of my recent short memoir pieces about messenging that tells of one such day, and like the final sentence says, it really did happen (whether you believe it or not). Note that I might have to take this down if I have the collection up for publication at some point.

On February 5, 1985, a Tuesday, I got into Aero Delivery early to learn that our paychecks from the previous week still weren’t in but would definitely be there by end of day. My pockets were empty but at least I’d had breakfast so I went about my morning diligently. Lunch would be another matter though. I had $5 in a Wells Fargo account so I went to my branch downtown to get it. The teller, a nice, middle-aged lady, was very concerned that if I closed my account it could mess up my credit. My credit! I explained to her that I was hungry and I needed the $5 to eat so I could get through my work day. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and left me standing at her window. I thought she was getting the manager, but instead she came back and slipped me a five-dollar bill that she’d taken from her purse in the break room. “Don’t tell anyone I did this,” she said. “You don’t have to pay me back, but you should do this for someone else someday.” I was floored – and I have. (I also closed the account the following week to buy nail polish.) I went for my very first time to the Chinatown McDonald’s on Grant and California, partly because it was cheap and partly because I was fascinated by the plastic replicas of the McFood on display in the window. As I was locking up my bike I saw by my feet an ornate dagger with a six-inch steel blade and a pewter hilt in the shape of a raptor’s talon. There was no one anywhere near so I put it in my basket underneath my hat and ran inside. When I came out with my aromatic bag-o-food I was met by a highly agitated street person darting and jerking about who got right in my face red-eyed and freaked and said, “Have you seen my knife? Have you seen my knife?” Maybe I was just being a kid but that guy scared the shit out of me and I absolutely did not want to hand him a six-inch dagger in that condition. “No, man!” I said, and tore off down the block. (I did feel bad and carried it with me for a week or two but never did spot him again.) My last run of the day had me flying down the steep, long, timed-light Gough Street hill, one of our fave descents, when I passed a dead man on the street. At least I guessed he was since he was face down in a pool of blood surrounded by cops with an ambulance pulling slowly away. I ran into the office a little freaked myself to turn in my radio and grab that paycheck, only to be confronted by a film crew who wanted to talk to me (and a few others). They asked if I wanted to be in an indie film about a messenger with a magical bike. (I’d be a villain, not the magic messenger.) I said sure as long as I got to Harvey’s Market to cash my paycheck before they closed. I did get in the (very) indie movie and I did cash my check with moments to spare. Oh, and it was a full moon. You can check. And yes, all that happened on the same day.

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UPCOMING EVENTS  ::  Just one reading coming up which will pretty much be the final book party for Mammal. This one will be in Los Angeles, city of lost angels, on Sunday, February 25 at All Power Books. I’ve been graciously invited to read there by the fabulous Richard Modiano, who has a spot in my personal hagiography. Joining me in celebrating the book and reading their own powerful work will be K.R. Morrison (mystic power woman poet and drummer for two all-female fronted rock bands Harriot and Unicröne), and Yan Sham-Shackleton [沈欣] (formidable multi-genre writer and activist from Hong Kong and longtime denizen of LA). I am thrilled that they both have generously agreed to partake. Can you hear me beaming from there? The event starts at NOON (note this has been changed from 2pm). You can find deets as always on the Events page, and look for more to come soon on Facebook and Instagram.

SPEAKING OF MAMMAL  ::  The book is steadfastly loping its way around America and we’ve been getting a ton of great comments. Personally I think it’s my strongest collection of poetry and flash prose to date and I’m proud to present it. It even made its way onto the SPD Recommends page for a week or two in October! Hoping to have a review or two soon as well. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, you can click here to read more about it on the Roof Books page, and here to see the Small Press Distribution page, where you can click on Look Inside for a four-piece sample and, yes, purchase a copy for yourself. (It is not available on Amazon at this point, I’m happy to say.) I’ve also included three teaser poems from the book on this month’s Fresh Words page. I know, boy am I selling the heck outta this animal, but hey, it’s friendly and fun to pet, so why not.

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I think that sometimes (maybe constantly) coincidences happen without us knowing, under the surface and unobserved. I suspect they’re part of what keeps things rolling. What things? All things! I recently stumbled across a curious synchron that involved me way back in the summer of 1994, of which I’d never before been aware. Let’s see if you agree that it’s a note of interest.

The first part regards an incident with Allen Ginsberg that I recently heard recounted by poet Milo Martin at an event at City Lights Books. On June 1 of that year, Ginsberg appeared at Candlestick Park to throw the traditional first pitch of the game for the SF Giants. Sound like an unusual situation? It very much was. At the time, San Francisco was sponsoring a program to call attention to poetry called City of Poets, and this was to be a regular event with Ginsberg being the first. He was asked to recite a poem from the pitcher’s mound, then throw the pitch. For his selection he chose to read “Hum Bom!”, a four-minute anti-war sound poem/chant, the first verse of which is:

Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb’d them!

This was a first for Allen as well in that he’d never read at a sports event, having purportedly only been in a stadium once before (to see the Rolling Stones), as much as it was a first for a great number of the 28,000 fans in the bleachers who had no idea what was going on, and who this old man was making strange and threatening noises over the sound system. They immediately began to boo and litter the field with debris and only increased their protest as the recitation went on – yet another first for Ginsberg. He finished the poem and proudly stalked off the mound, only to be reminded that he had to go back and make the pitch. Which he did, and by all accounts in style, shooting a fastball right over the plate as if he’d been doing it his entire life and with such ferocity that he caught air himself, his force lifting him bodily off the ground. The crowd roared in approval. That cheer notwithstanding, San Francisco’s powers-that-be decided that it might not be the best idea to have poets performing for the Giants’ fans, no matter who they were, and canned the rest of the First Pitch Poetry Program. Milo’s telling was as far as I recall the first time I’d ever heard of this – I’m pretty sure I’d remember it if I had. I’ve never had any interest in organized sports, and at the time I was housesitting for my aunt in Bodega Bay, doing not much more than reading, renting vhs movies, and getting ready to go on a major excursion. You can find a more detailed account of Ginsberg’s big pitch in this 2018 article in BOMB Magazine.

Thirty-six days later, on July 7, 1994, I found myself on the main stage of the Lollapalooza music tour at the Silver Bowl in Las Vegas. I’d been recruited by old friend and writing colleague Liz Belile, who’d somehow become involved in organizing the first poetry stage for the fourth year of the tour. I rode on a dedicated tour bus with five other poets for the first twelve shows of the tour. (That was the first leg of three, and they switched out several touring poets with each leg. I have a  bunch of great stories from this tour, but you’re only getting this one right now.) We would organize local poets and spoken word peops on the third stage at each show, and read ourselves a few times each day as well. Overall it was a blast if you enjoy yelling your life’s work in 100 degree heat at drunken teenagers. (Lol.) The first show was in Las Vegas, and was the grand opening of the Silver Bowl, their very first big performance arena, so you can imagine how excited the local crowds were. It was 117° that afternoon and, unbeknownst to us poets, the A/C was supposed to be running all day in our bus for an escape from the heat, but had broken down. So instead we all got mild heat stroke, working all day with nowhere to cool off. Do I claim that as an excuse for what happened next? I’m not sure. Sometime in the mid-afternoon one of the organizers asked me to appear on the main stage right after A Tribe Called Quest and say something radical for five minutes. I would be the first poet on the main stage ever and would be reading for an audience of about 17,000. I said yes and was almost a little nervous, but having emceed a few big punk shows, I felt ready. The one thing I didn’t think of at the time, heat stroke or not, was that my idea of “radical” was vastly removed from MTV’s idea of the same. At that time, radical for them was actually talking about safe sex. I chose a short monolog which I had written as a chapbook to sell on the tour and had memorized, called “A Modest Proposal” (after Jonathan Swift). It’s a dark humor take on radical politics, supposedly written by a founding member of the Nihilist Anarchists of America (NAA) which “proclaims the unfortunate ideal of nature without man, and demand all bombs be launched…[decreeing] our species plague to the planet, as well as ourselves, seeking immediate extinction of homo sapiens for the betterment of all.” It goes on to envision “imposing crowds yelling and chanting ‘War Now! War Now!”‘ and ‘Drop the Bomb! Drop the Bomb!’ and ‘We’re not worth it! We won’t lie! Human race eat shit and die!'”

Guess what – the imposing crowd, having just spent forty-five minutes peacing out to Quest, didn’t get the joke. Within a minute they began booing and throwing things at the stage. Thankfully the venue had forbidden any glass bottles, but that was a lot of plastic, even coming just from the mosh pit area. I don’t know if all 17,000 were booing, or if no one there got the joke, but it sure felt like it. I did finish up the monolog then hid in the oven-like tour bus for an hour hoping the crowds would forget my face. The stage was trashed and The Breeders had to go on late, placing me securely not in their favor for the rest of the tour. And the organizers took it as a cue to keep the poets away from the Main Stage for the rest of the tour, so like Ginsberg, I was not the first of many to perform for the boozing hordes, but the first and last. Admittedly I remain rather proud of this disruption.

I’m not in any way comparing myself or my work to Allen Ginsberg, and if you think I am you don’t know me. But I do think it’s a really interesting co-incidence in the annals of poetry performance, or at least a fading footnote. All that aside, since I heard Milo’s story and put this together in my head, I can’t help but wonder one thing:  was there anyone who was at both events? If you were, please let me know.

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REFLECTION ON MONTHS OF ECSTATIC EVENTS, OR IGNORE THIS IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE A HOMERIC LIST  ::  Despite being gone from this space and claiming bouts of gibbering, I’ve had a lot of remarkable experiences reading and sharing work and moments with tons of folk across the continent since my Mammal tour back East in October. So here’s a bit of a Homeric list if you’ve got the zest for it. Started off with a few loving days visiting old friend Deborah Perry, who was kind enough to share her space in Roxbury and, of course, her fantastic energy. Got to hang with the wonderful Jane Ormerod and Pete Darrell at their welcoming homestead in Hudson, NY. Read at Shiv Mirabito‘s Shivastan Poetry Ashram in Woodstock, where I got to hang with Shiv and pick up some of his work and his recent and gorgeous hand-printed edition by Diane DiPrima, Buddhist Ruminations. Also had a good long and satisfying tete-a-tete with poet and literary maven Matthew Hupert after the read. Also caught Phillip X. Levine‘s Woodstock Poetry Society read where I ran into Janet Kaplan and Ethan Sirotko and met Buzz Spector, who writes poems and makes amazing art out of books. Spent a couple days visiting with Chris Funkhouser and Amy Hufnagel in their log cabin in the woods outside of Staatsburg, they always lift my heart, and recorded the entirety of my unpublished chapbook Every Day: Ecstatic Odes for the masterful Funk. Lovely night with dear friend Kristin Wolf and have coffee with old pal Michael Porter in Kingston.  Then a few more days with Jane and Pete before Amtraking it down to NYC, where I spent a week with the levitational Jay Laubscher in Brooklyn. Got to have some realtime at Jay’s with Mike Smith of Chicago’s Environmental Encroachment. Oh yeah. Bounced around New York for a week, managing to catch what would be one of the final stretch of the long-running great weather for MEDIA readings at the Parkside Lounge in the Lower East Side. Wandered with Lonely Christopher to Torn Page, where I caught Lee Ann Brown, Tony Torn, and Brenda Coultas for the first time in ages and also met Katy Bohinc, Violet, and Sophie (the latter two now staying at Woolsey Heights in Oakland). Got to participate in the ¡DADA! DO Maintenant 17 Party at Jefferson Market Library, where I reconnected with tons of folks including David Lawton, Joel Allegretti, Amy Barone, Thomas Fucaloro, Karen Hildebrand, Linda Lerner, John J. Trause, Peter Carlaftes, and Kat Georges (I see Peter and Kat out here as well), and had the pleasure of meeting Wes Rickert, Austin Alexis, and Ron Kolm. Met up with another old pal Peter Hale to dive into the Harry Smith retrospective at the Whitney (ecstatic). Had a fantastic book release party for Mammal at Segue Reading Series at Artists Space off Canal Street, co-hosted by Nightboat Books (thanks again for having me), where I read with the marvelous r erica doyle and received an overwhelmingly loving intro from Roof Books‘ (and my friend) Lonely Christopher. There was a sizeable audience including some Nightboaters, some Rooflings, summa the folks mentioned above, and yay more peops I hadn’t seen and with whom I got to chat, hug, and/or hang, in partacular Mae Saslaw, EJ Antonio, typewriter poet Bill Keys, and Patrick Olson (who won the Most Unexpected Award, having not seen him in nigh forty years), and had the pleasure of meeting the marvelous Don Yorty, who had me to his abode the next day to video a bunch of poems that can be seen here. Thanks to all and your good nrg’s for making me feel like a real boy for a minute. Though a peak moment there, I kept moving as planned, spending a wonderful five days out Lancaster County-way in Pennsylvania with cousins Rich and Elsa Shermer, their kids Ryan and Emily, and cousin Bob who lives just down the road. Family! Had planned to split that time with other cousins in Maryland but they got all covidy, so I had some unforeseen and much-needed country respite with these fine folks, whom I hadn’t seen in years as well, who left me grateful and full of joy. Then a quick stop in Philly to shower folks at Brickbat Books with mammalian verse, reading with Alina Pleskova and Ted Rees (who also organized and hosted – thank you again, Ted!), and a long brunch and conversation with Chip Delany before heading to my final stop in South Jersey. Spent about twelve days there visiting my mom and brother Geoff, and helping take care of him for a week so Mom could take a vacation in Merida at my sister Leigh’s new house. She’s still asking me when she can take another.

But that’s not all. Back in the Bay things just kept rolling, first with a book party for Keith Gaboury‘s new The Cosmos Is Alive (because it is), reading with Keith, Sara Biel, Natasha Dennerstein, and Paul Corman-Roberts at the really cool Clio’s Bookstore in its own underground grotto. Had a brief break before my first Oakland book party at the Starting Points readings series, with the fabulous (and I cannot overstate that) Natasha Dennerstein as co-feature. That same day I rushed into SF to participate in the West Coast Maintenant 17 Party ¡DADA! DO with a slew, a mess, a stew of writers and artists including Mahnaz Badihian, Carol Dorf, Dale Jensen, Tom Stolmar, Maw Shein Win, Rich Stone, Christian Georgescu (as the Priest of Capitalism), among others, and the ever-vivulous Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, who lovingly coax this anthology to life every darn year. This year they published a piece of my text art titled “Give Peace a Cheesesteak” and I did a big awkward showing of it right there in Spec’s Bar rather than do a boring old reading. If you wanna see it, though, you’ll need to purchase a copy of Maintenant 17. Thems the rules. Had a fairly quiet December hiding from Everything in the World, then sprang back like a springy thing with a series of terrific events in the “new” “year”. First was an amazing read at Medicine for Nightmares on Insurrection Day (Jan 6 of course) with the ardent Richard Modiano up from LA, Julie Rogers, K.R. Morrison, Taneesh Kaur, and Paul Corman-Roberts at the helm. Levitational. Found myself back at Medicine ten days later reading for Colossus Press and The Last Supper Party with Mary Magagna, Rooja Mohassessy, Shizue Seigel, Norma Smith, and music by Emily Zisman. Big thrilled crowd there as well. The following week had an outing with Literary Speakeasy at Martuni’s in SF with Jennifer Barone, Allison Landa, Lucian Mattison, and music by Jeff Desira, all hosted by the increasingly fabulous James Siegel. That led into my West Coast Mammal release party by Roof Books at Fabulosa Books in the Castro, co-featuring the gracious Jocelyn Saidenberg and Brian Ng, and hosted by the aforenoted Keith Gaboury. Thanks, you three, for being so generous with your time and artistry, and thanks again to Alvin Orloff of Fabulosa for continuing to support the least lucrative medium around (that’s poetry, if you couldn’t guess). Everybody reading this, y’all go in a buy some paper products! Wait, am I done? No! I had one last event in this glowing streak of literaturama at the North Beach First Fridays on Feb 2, reading with Gail Mitchell, Ingrid Keir, Michael Koch, Kimi Sugioka, and music by Elisa Rodriguez for impressaria Jessica Loos at Maacharini Creative Design on Grant Street.

I know I’ve left out some fine peops, and if one of them be you, feel free to chastise me.

Remember at the top of this page where I said I’d just spent months gibbering on the floor? Does it seem like that’s what I’ve been doing? Do you get the feeling that I’m a Dirty Little Fibber? Well I guess I am, so call me one. Say it: Dirty Little Fibber! Cause actually I’ve had  a torrent of activity for most of the last five months, and, for the moment, I’m feeling okay about life and all that. Now if I can only find that floor…

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The serendipitous synchronicities and synchronic serendipities have continued through this yangy time, with two or three popping up every single week. Why don’t you write them all down? you ask. Keep a damn journal of them, you insist. Well I’ll tell you, I’m busy enough just letting them happen, and clearly I do occasionally jot one down. And for that matter, regardless of how much light and hope they can shed on our mundane lives, there’s one quality they bear that makes all that just a titch more beautiful, which is, of course, that they are often so very ephemeral.

Sincerely,
Richard

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