L'aura del Campo

Storms are comin ... dere dey went

SPRING: 10 Bahá (30 March)

Weather where I am: 67 and a tornado watch.

Weather in Noel, Missouri where Ryan is from: 68.

Weather in Tulsa, Oklahoma where Allison is from: 72.

I saw Ryan Carroll today at T @ 3. Saw Allison too. I talked with both about having seen Brokeback Mountain. Most young folk haven't. Good conversation. They really got the movie.

Asked Allison to critique my poem "Letter to Gary, written while I walked". Her first response was 'how Japanese'. The mention of cherry blossoms (Sakura) hit her as did the style and use of negative space. Reminds her of many poems she's had to read for class. This pleased me, although I just wrote it without those thoughts in mind. I posted it as a reviewable item today: "Letter to Gary, written while I walked" 

Of course, once I put that prose-poem on paper this morning and saw it in print, I took out my red pen and started to edit! It's not a week old, so it could use some tweaking and trimming. Pruning, we call it.

                   

A friend approached me last night with the offer to replace my stolen phone. I said fine and figure I'll be back on the telephone lines by next week. I hope so.

Storm came in this afternoon. Edited and revised from what I wrote in my journal (page 925): "The storm is coming in in a flash and rumble, rolling across the plains, a plaintive note from the other side of the hill. I sit in the Oread Bookstore, aware of its power, watching it rain at a slant. It's fun to watch others scurry and scatter, when I'm sitting here dry by myself. I've been out there before when Nature reasserted her right, been spanked by her might."

Had a nice talk about genetics with a student of Human Biology / Psychology from Salina who will graduate this May. I'll have to make a special entry about sexuality and how it ain't just XX versus XY. Life is never that simple!

I met two puppets. One was very laconic. Charlie the drunk was an old hairy grouch, though. He said, "Nineteen o'leven" in reference to the tornado of 1911. Needless to say that led to some writing! Taking a thought that Cindy Porttorff provided earlier about earthquakes in reference to getting rid of two UGLY buildings we despise and adding the excitement of the storm and Quantrill's historic raid on Lawrence and the phrase "Burning Kansas" ..... I came up with this sketch this afternoon:

"Quaking Kansas"

In Nineteen O'Leven the town drunk was levened
and Seventh Street blew up and Mass Street was leveled.
The devil dared come here to twist and to turn,
to bring to a ruin what Quantrill once burned
and failed to fling flint rock, was spurned.

But each prairie acre burns once in awhile
and wily old Charlie predicts it's time for a trial
to bring back Old Quantrill and burn the trees down,
to bring on the Devil, give K. U. a churn
to bury the bullshit, put manure in the ground.

In Nineteen O'Leven, the townfolk did fry,
said Charlie-the-drunk, who was just only five,
So I feel it now coming in a tumble of clouds
I feel it bone-deep in the quaking of ground.
As flint rock comes tumbling, tumbling down. [163.23]

The puppets servants are doing a show on Sunday, 5 pm at the Jackpot in downtown Lawrence, Kansas.

Since yesterday's entry was a movie review, I share these notes I wrote yesterday:

SENSED

Hard floor; catmint; yellow ribbon blocking off a dangerous area; purple johnny-jump-ups; pear trees in full white bloom; carpet of blue vinca; a single red barberry clinging to a bush, red new leaves; a man picking a dandelion and smelling it; bitterness of fresh crushed rue; a clump of 2" tall larkspur; shepard's purse in a crack between a brick building and concrete sidewalk; a crosswalk light flashing the seconds left to cross; scarlet quince; cardinal eating insects in the pink plum tree.