Saturday, November 30, 2019

LA & Palm Springs

After a quick pitstop in the bay area to visit Mom (83 and unstoppable) and pick up my car, I drive south to LA at the crack of dawn....



The donut shops don't open til 6 in the burbs, so I have to stop by and pick up my apple fritter the day before (another bad habit, along with cheese puffs...apple fritters are only allowed on road trips just as cheese puffs are only allowed under the influence of cannabis...gotta cut yourself some slack somewhere...and come to think of it, the apple fritter is vegan!)


I always take the 101 to avoid the heartbreak of the 5....



Sera and Louise welcomed me back to the San Gabriel Valley...
...friends since High School...Sera has provided me cheap rent off and on - as well as true sisterhood - for going on 20 years...she is family...




A visit to Isaac - in his amazing garden: tomatoes, chiles, cannabis, squash...


 ...before I boomeranged back to LA to meet up with Christian and Kay 
Christian...who is now living in a cottage studio behind Kay's house where I incidentally used to live....he's doing well, working at the Getty and dressing to kill (and coordinating with the furniture) as always....

 I often housesit for Kay in her beautiful little home in Atwater Village while she traipses the globe to remote locales like Borneo, Madagascar and Antarctica


We three arrived at Skylight together for the reading with Tara Jepsen and Alvin Orloff....all of us readers are veterans of SF's spoken word heyday back in the '90s....
And the room began to fill....


A whole row of co-workers from my old job at LAANE, so I read about the immigrant kids...



A special treat was Manny Valenzuela and Margaret showing up.... Manny is the Western Regional Organizing Director of the Teamsters and he's a wonderful man...I've worked with him and become his friend over the years through LAANE, and I've even seen him and Margaret in Mexico City, where he used to take his 90+ year old Dad for the Raiders/49ers exhibition game each year. His Dad also passed this year. 
Sorry for the bad photo...Manny's a ray of sunshine, and maybe the camera couldn't handle all his light!


...and Italian dinner with my dear friend and ex-boss, Stella!


Another poor photo, so here's one of the two of them at a LAANE fundraising dinner



Manny once told me a great story from back in his truck-driving days....."There was this guy in this bar in Chinatown I used to frequent. The guy sat there and drank all day and played the horses and always recommended betting on what turned out to be the winners. He was an ugly guy but always seemed to have beautiful women around him....years later, I was watching TV, and there's this guy's face on the 6 o'clock news......he'd just died and was some famous writer..."

It was Charles Bukowski.....


Probably L.A.'s most famous poet, and representative of a different L.A. than the usual stereotype....and indicative of why I respect L.A. and like it in a way...it's a capital city in that everything is here; the whole culture of a people can be experienced, and it's so big and varied that nothing predominates...NYC and LA have that...Mexico City, Buenos Aires....Montreal...I'm drawn to such cities and most comfortable in them....they are crossroads.....because if you're looking for something, and you're not quite sure what it is - and I never have been (or maybe I'm just looking for everything) - you have to go to where it all is...






Argentine empanadas with Lorenzo, my friend from Guanajuato...

...and then I'm on the road to Palm Springs for the grand finale of the tour at the Camelot Theater


Courtesy of Robby Sherwin and Dave Eckert, two wonderful new friends who I met a year ago at the memorial for the magical Angus Whyte - writer, harpsichordist, dear friend, and host of the SF Scott Street Salon, and creator of Art for Healing..... he'd just moved to Palm Springs a year before his passing

...when Robby learned that Angus and I had first met through my Saratago Springs Writing Workshop, he immediately wanted to host a writing workshop here at their very cool house way up at the top of Cathedral Canyon, the site of Angus's memorial...what's more, Robby wanted to put on a reading for me as a finale to my book tour, thus the Camelot Theater gig....such generosity and good energy....


Robby and Dave



Dave kindly offered to handle the book table, and since I was to be the first of a new speaker's series, I had to bring all of my books





Next day I was Robby's sous chef (bad vegan).....he thought I looked like Robert the doll...and who is Robert the doll you may ask?
....turns out Robert's a rather dark character ....
but Henry and Robert were soon fast friends...


Henry, who is all light... I'll need to limit their interactions....opposites attract?

Robby and Dave had 18 guests for Thanksgiving....here are a few.....Thom (Angus's partner), Darwin, Jack, Johnsie, Dave (Henry is there - see him? - speaking with Johnsie)


There were a lot of interesting cranberry variations - cranberry chutney, a cranberry salsa dip, the actual berries,. and of course the traditional canned version, which people fetishize for its tacky look

Below is one of the two tables....I actually ironed this table cloth...I have not ironed in probably a decade...

Ralph, Mike, Johnny, moi, Dave, Steve



In the blur of this busy, fun weekend, there was Mexican food with Darwin, Mike, Ralph, Robby and Dave...

And when I got up out of my seat, it turned out that I'd been held the whole time within the arms - or the fenders - of my Dad's '55 Chevy .....



 So it's all sorts of full circles...and to bring it all together, Robby and I hiked up Cathedral Canyon, which is really beautiful and a place I've been thinking of during this whole journey because of what he told me about it last time I was here..... Robby had told me about the native people here who migrated between the mountains and the desert with the seasons. They would be coming down this canyon now to winter in the oases of the desert because migration is a normal, human thing...I do it myself in fact...am doing it right now...
... Anyway, I knew I wanted to do something in honor of the immigrant native people I've been working with in Mexico, and I knew this canyon was the perfect place at the end of the tour on Thanksgiving because of the awful way the U.S. Government treated them last year, and this one, at the border 

...so I meditated on that in this canyon, in this mountain setting, which is my favorite setting of all which most of you know...



At the top of the canyon is a waterfall and the guardian palm...it's a sacred spot for the native people of this region, the Agua Caliente band of the Cahuilla people, and so it's the sought-after place to remember and send good wishes to their relations - all the Central American immigrants I've had the honor to meet....Lazaro, Christian, Abilardo, Rodrigo, Raul, Anderson, Jorge, Sofia, Isabel, Yessica, Daniela, Harlem, Victor, Sandra ... and on and on... too many names to recount... I think of all of them that I can and thank them for how they've connected me to my world and myself - their faces and smiles, scribbling madly with crayons, laughing, running around, kicking soccer balls - some in tears, others talking animatedly, asking for food, shoes, medicine, toothbrushes, soap, frightened or grinning ear to ear, the brash teenagers, razzing each other, barely masking the fear in their eyes, the fathers and mothers, the working men with their big hands and weathered skin, their baseball caps..... Such beautiful, flirtatious, hopeful, hardworking, sincere people ... I'll have a thanksgiving meal with whoever is there in January when I go back....there'll be 3 new babies, I'm sure of that :)

Above the guardian palm up in the canyon, there's a pond...it's not deep...just enough water to splash about in...and I think of all those kids...they could play here, and no one would bother them and none could drown as they sometimes do in the Rio Grande.... A little eden permitted...Often I am permitted to return to a meadow in the immortal words of Robert Duncan....here in this little moment I can feel grateful and newly energized and recharged to go back and do what I can

Hacemos lo que podemos

...and the phone pings, and it's a message from Brendan...a photo of he and Sergio, who made it to the museum film event.....and then another ping, and it's Anthony from the Lower Eastside with the news of the conviction of the anti-nuke protestors, and the hopes that they'll get a light sentence....

So much to do, so much getting done, slowly but surely.... people and work and community to be grateful for


The clouds rush overhead above the canyon.....time moves on...nothing is permanent or forever...
and I think of part of a beautiful poem by Arseny Alexandrovitch Tarkovsky 


I strapped my fate fast to my saddle
I rise up in the stirrups of the future as a boy
I am content with my immortality
With my blood coursing from century to century
I’d gladly give up my life for a safe corner of warmth
If life’s swift needle
Did not draw me on

As if I were a thread



And a song plays in my head that I sing whenever I return to the mountains....


...we head down the wash and Robby says let's go over to Whitewater Canyon tomorrow....


That night there's a snowstorm, and when we get to Whitewater, the snow and sleet begin to fall again as we walk along ... and I think how I got snowed on twice during this trip...in Minnesota and Palm Springs....



This place is a wonderful final gift of the tour, as are Robby's amazing photos of it....and driving back down the canyon, the hail pinging off the roof, we get to talking about the writing workshop...and we're gonna call it Whytewater ...because: this place, and Angus Whyte, and how we want the words to flow fast and powerful....and I'll let Jack Kerouac take it from here because I'm getting a little overwhelmed by all the good memories and connections of these past 6 weeks, 6 years, 6 eons....and it's emotional, and I like it like that, but I'm gonna get corny and maudlin if I'm not careful - take it, Jack...

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

And those children who cry are in Mexico now, waiting, and in Texas and California in detention, and in Central America and Mexico being born....and maybe I'm sitting on a rock out here in the desert, and God's not Pooh Bear - he's Henry....but the stars are the same, and the rivers and peaks, the night and the forlorn rags...and one more thing - here's to the father that I did find....:)



Thursday, November 21, 2019

Portland

Got to Portland and my friend Dax was already postering...:)
He's such a good supportive friend....
We've known each other for 25+ years and have stayed in touch even though both of us are all over the place...he's moved from SF to Virginia to Maine to Colorado to Portland...and he also went through Parkinson's with his dad....we drove together from Portland, ME to Montreal on one of my previous book tours.....now we're sharing a long weekend in Portland

I love Dax a lot, one of my best and truest friends


Corny pop song reference, but this song has popped up several times, and did again in Portland...so here goes.... it's always been special to me as it encouraged me to commit to writing a long time ago (1986) when I was in a dark place and didn't know where to go or how to proceed

The food in Portland aced out all other locales...beginning with pho right outside the airport....I had more vegan food here, more good food, more interesting food - and without even trying - than anywhere else....Portland does seem to have all of what SF once had... creativity, friendliness, good food without the affected foodie scene, that feeling that anything might happen....whereas Seattle was a lot like the new SF - corporate, moneymaking, cultural morbidity. Portland is also still relatively affordable, and I'd recommend it to young creatives


Dax and the DIY bed...we made it out of boxes of books, then pads and blankets...it turned out to be quite comfortable...sleeping on literature :)


Off to Cricket the next morning to meet Donal ... looking for this mystic man :).....
love this photo, and no, I didn't take it....vaguely knew Donal in SF days, and we have a ton of mutual friends, so we reconnected....

 ...but we missed him at Cricket .....so caught up with him later at Crush Bar for Happy Hour...wanted to scope it out before the upcoming reading....



Donal had recommended the golden goat at Cricket, but I took it to the next level and went vegan....




Next day, we went to Faerie Coffee at Triumph Coffee...hard to describe the radical faeries, but I found them soon after I came out (please read link!)...one of the healthiest queer communities going, without all the negativity and shame heaped on queers by religion, masculinity, ignorance, hate, etc. The Portland faeries have always been one of the best faerie communities, and nothing has been more positive and nurturing to my gay development than these people... a triumph indeed

vegan bagel!



Hector Hernandez from Mexico City who I met at faerie coffee...he's a muralist



This one I especially love since it features the Monarch Butterflies that migrate to Mexico and that figure majorly in two of the stories in Falling


Terry Cavanaugh, who I've known for years, was, like Dax, a tireless promoter for my visit and introduced me to the crowd at Triumph Coffee and then invited me over to his house for dinner. He's a community-builder, and his big house is something of a commune


The upstairs attic, perfect for yoga, writing workshops, etc.

Also committed to his Dad, Terry actually moved his Dad out to California from Michigan and they lived together for 18 years.
I need to do an anthology on all this, and Dax and Terry could be part of it...chapters 1 and 2






Leroy, Terry, G and Gregory

Another friend and artist I ran into at Faerie coffee was Jeffrey Bale, who some of you may remember from my Mexico City blog, when I ran into him there. He is a mosaic artist and his work is incredible.
I'd always wanted to see his house which is a work of art in itself....so off I went.
He believes in bright colors to combat the NW gloom and travels internationally every winter to warmer climes

Here's the backyard....


 note mossy, reclining Ganesha...remover of obstacles, I always carry a little one of him in my shoulder bag...



The beautifully-tiled bathroom...


 The below pic is no joke...this was a crackhouse, and Jeffrey lived next door for many years before buying this property. It's edifying to learn how people live in such a situation...the violence, prostitution, addicts living without electricity or water, one having a baby, rats, gun battles, threats...Jeffrey had to defend himself with a shovel once and laid down the law, letting them know he'd kill them if they called him a 'faggot' again...he's a tough guy, grew up with some pretty hardcore rural Oregonians....He also took on the city when they tried to fine him during the clean-up phase, and he beat them. No small feat. He's a good example of a fighter, who perseveres with reason and heart until justice is served. An inspiration. 


The faeries turned out en masse for the Crush Bar reading that night, which was a lot of fun.....Daniel Elder was a great co-reader and his writing is excellent...a new friend and colleague!



Henry partied...


After the reading, we all retired to the Montage, a New Orleans-style restaurant and really, chill, fun place....love the locale, under the freeway bridge that heads over the river

I had veggie jumbalaya, of course...
left to right: Dax, moi, Ent, Terry, G, Q, Leroy, waiter, Jeffrey, Kirk Read! (up from SF), Michael and Eric Slade, who was also super helpful and kind and connected me to Shannon Brazil, a writer who connected me to Daniel Elder and suggested Crush, which turned out to be a great choice... Eric just completed a film on Mark Rothko, who grew up in Portland




Dax took me for delicious crepes here, where I practiced my very poor French and re-resolved to take on Montreal next year...




In other news, the National Book Awards were announced today and guess who got one...yes, my dinnermate from NYC back in October - Edmund White :)
His comments:

 

And some good news on the immigration front as we approach Thanksgiving, that holiday where we celebrate the kindness of native peoples who we are now detaining and abusing:


A couple weeks back, I posted an update (below) on facebook and my gofundme page ($300 has come in already):
In another coincidence - or is it all serendipity? - Brendan Fay, from my NYC blog, is in Mexico City now, presenting his documentary film on pioneering gay priest, John McNeill, at the Museum of Memory & Tolerance (which I visited in September), and he just toured the refugee house. So cool to see my book tour connecting to the immigration work once more :)

Brendan with Leonila (center) and one of the casa's legal aids

As we approach Thanksgiving, I'm happy to report that Victor and Sandra and her children will be receiving papers for permanent residency in Mexico thanks to your generosity, and Harlem continues with his treatments for leukemia in Chiapas. We are having an effect and every little bit has helped immensely. Last year at this time, I was with the caravan in Mexico City at the National Stadium when there was hope that the US would do the right thing (fyi: the amount of refugees apprehended at the border this year is less than half of what it was in the year 2000 [about 800k currently, 1.6 million then: https://www.pewresearch.org/…/what-we-know-about-illegal-i…/] - just sayin' since the misinformation has become so entrenched). As the caravan of native North American people arrived at the US border on Thanksgiving 2018 (a US holiday ostensibly giving thanks to the native people for helping the European immigrants survive the winter) we got this: https://www.cnn.com/…/trump-us-troops-lethal-for…/index.html
I've asked folks a lot this past year for help on this issue, and I'm amazed at the generous response, so I want to do an annual Thanksgiving ask as I think the best way to show gratefulness is by passing it along...and I just got an email from Mexico City that 3 pregnant women have arrived at the refugee house (one in need of a caesarean), and several small children have been ID-ed in Tapachula (https://www.aljazeera.com/…/rights-groups-slam-mexico-deten…) that we want to bring to Mexico City to start the asylum process for...I continue to support the refugee house's efforts to get asylum for Cen Am children and families, and those who are ill, in Mexico to avoid the U.S. border mess. Join me if you can and however you can...I'll start tomorrow night as I'm reading at a library in Minneapolis and I can donate my book sales to these people in need: https://www.gofundme.com/f/refugee-kids-need-help
Happy Thanksgiving..make it count 

Headin' home to see Mom - and then LA!

Los Angeles

Nov. 22, Fri., 7:30 pm - Reading/Q&A
Skylight Books
1814 N. Vermont Ave.
w/ Alvin Orloff & Tara Jepsen
(323) 660-1175

Palm Springs

Nov. 27, Wed., 6–8 pm – End of Tour Book Party
Palm Springs Cultural Center
2300 E Baristo Rd.
(760) 325-2582

Oakland

Dec. 5, Thurs., 7 pm - Reading/Q&A
E.M. Wolfman Bookstore
410 13th St, Oakland
w/Alvin Orloff & Brontez Purnell
(510) 679-4650