Overheard at Booth 4: Old Couple Over There

Samantha:  See that old couple over there?  Just coming in?

Rafael:  Yeah?

Samantha: They are soo sweet.  Look at that, the way they hold hands.   We should be like that.

Rafael:  Yeah, we should be like that.   You know I see couples like that and I wonder if people our age will ever get there.

Samantha:  Get there?  What do you mean, get there?

Rafael:  Get to that hand-holding stage.   We all want to get there, but we've got no clue what they had to do to get there, them holding each other's hand is for all the times they survived the down times, the screaming fights, the miserable silences, all the times his drinking got so bad he couldn't hold a job, the times she had affairs with co-workers or when her pill-popping got so bad she had to be hospitalized.   They survived the times when they fought about whether or not to bail their kid out of jail, or all the parties where he embarrassed her so bad she wound up in the bathroom crying all night long, all the times they wondered how they were going to pay their mortgage.   We don't have a clue what goes into getting to that stage, all we know is we want it, but I don't think we have the stamina to get there.

Samantha:  What makes you say that?   Why don't you think we have what it takes?

Rafael:  Because you're thinking about breaking up with me just because I won't go vegan!!

Overread at Booth 2: 2013-1126 slight fragment of a poem of the day

2013-1126

Whispers down the hall, you're
talking to photographs that decorate the wall,
dragging your fingertips along the wallpaper, you're

looking for your muse.

Overheard at Table 4: Reading Out Loud from "Notes from Underground Revisited"

14.2

The dumb fly superfly on the by and by and the heartfelt belief that something is made out of something else, you fools, oh you fools, don't you realise that everything that is made is made of itself and the symbolism escapes you.

The hands that create the pot do not create the pot.   The pot is created from the clay and the glaze.   The hands merely shape the plot.   I mean the pot.   No, I mean the plot.   The story.   The story is the pot, the story is itself.   It has always been there.

By there I mean the somethere, the somewhere, the over the rainbow.   The writer does not create a damn thing, the writer merely snatches the words from somethere over the rainbow, brings it down to the page or the computer screen or the breath of the words spewed from the writer's mouth.

It is the mouth of the stream.   That stream is called "unconscionable."

Overheard at Table 4: Exam Question

Yeah, I just finished my final, and there was this question on there that went like:

You manage a department of four employees. You have identified that Jerry has a high need for achievement. Martha has a high need for power, and Tom has a high need for affiliation. Susan scored high on the need for power and low on the need for affiliation.

Which of these employees is best suited suitable for handling your responsibilities when you are on vacation?


And I just blanked, I couldn't think of what the answer was from any of the stuff we'd learned, so I just put down:


None of them.  They’re all assholes.

November: 17

17.

 

Undulating waves of damage flow across these shores

and songs sing of imagined lovers we will never see no more,

radio show speaks of the mad queer poets who claim

the word “the” is the enemy of poetry.

Colorado propositions to secession, five counties

angry over restrictions to their rights to bear arms;

my arms are bare, no tattoos here,  nor any muscles, or hair,

my chesticles begin to sag with middle age donut flabs,

half a population, sick and dyring,  wanders aimlessly through dirt roads
among scattered cement stones of what used to be their homes,

we pride ourselves on our mutilation, by either needle or the pen,
the bile that flows out of us is that which we inhale again,

there is no consistency in literature, and no security in jazz,
both reveal the shattered glass mirror of these frail, lonely humans,

yet,

who are told,

... you are precious in my eyes ... and I love you.

(Isaiah 43:4)