Sunday April 16th (again) - 8:28PM - Pacific Time - Phoenix Airport

so the last time i was here on my way to tucson, the woman in the burberry dress and the tall red heels, had the same layover with the same delay that we had. walked into the same bar we did but apparently couldn't carry drinks to the same extent. she teetered off the bar stool and while her ankle rolled over about 16 times on the way to the gate, staggered into a seat near the gate. she begins talking really loudly to the man seated next to her, who is very alarmed, since she is laughing and punching him in the arm about something she obviously thnks is hilarious.

all of a sudden Abba's "Dancing Queen" starts playing. she fishes into her huge Coach bag and pulls out her cellphone and starts speaking loudly into it.

next time i see her, she's fallen three times on the gangway on the way to the plane and then on the plane, she's leaning over a man, her large breasts in his face, slurring...

"dial my phone - if you hear dancing queen, that's me..."

but now my computer battery is dead, so i'm out...

Sunday April 16 (easter Sunday) - 6:14PM - Pacific Time

So this is the first time i went to the wedding of someone i used to date (i think). interesting sensation, though no big deal since we work together all the time. i am now in the tucson airport, thoroughly tired, hungover and about to begin leg 1 of a three leg flight that will land me in new york if all goes well at 7:12AM tomorrow morning.

i'm also in the niddle of spring break and since i had to cuss out sheela morales (who is now my best friedn in the whole world) i think i've turned a corner with my class. i think sheela has turned a corner too, and i think most of the students have begun to have a better sense of why this work is meaningful. even if it goes terribly south from this pint on (knock on wood), i think this will have been a very very valuable experience. besides, i got at least three serviceable poems out of this class this semester.

the next few weeks are going to be busier than i know what to do with. next week, i do a benefit reading in new orleans with common ground for katrina hurricane victims. this is after an all day workshopping in new jersey on wednesday and LouderARTS slam semi-finals tomorrow evening, in which i compete against rachel mckibbens, fish vargas, carlos andres gomes and laura moran. it's quite a field, but my plan is to absolutely have a great friggin time. in fact, my plan is to slam all four rounds using poems about trinidad and see what happens.

then the week after new orleans is the teen poetry slam nationals here in new york and the following week, i'm in lake placid for three days and then cherry hill /philadelphia for a week and then bunches of other stuff. trust me, i'm not complaining. this means i'll eat throuhg the summer. i'm rambling now though and i know this is lackluster given that i haven't posted something in so long, but i'm tired. it was a wedding after all and weddings mean free liquor and i even liked the poem i wrote for it and you know how cheesy wedding poems can be.

soon. i'll post recent random pictures from various community parties and gatherings and maybe even something that makes more sense.

Monday April 3, 2006 - 10:10AM

So this teaching thing has begun to overtake my entire psche. i dream about the students. i talk about them incessantly, you know, like parents talk about their babies constantly for the like, the first three years of the child's life?

i have to apologize to folks now and say (after 20 minutes of droning on about the children) "oh i'm sorry, how are yr kids? or job? or life? what's yr name again? sometimes i've found by the time i'm done talking about the children and "what they did today", that the person to whom i'm speaking has already got up and left. at such time, i just pretend, i'm talking into a wireless headset that no-one else can see.

robin bird: thank you so much for writing to me. i couldn't answer you back channel, because the e-mail address comes up as anonymous blogger. so feel free to write me again at roger@louderarts.com and i'll send you a reply. today is our 8th anniversary show at the reading series at bar 13, so i'm kinda stoked. of course, today i also have to teach regular school and teach after-school before that happens.
how do teachers not all become raging alcoholics? how did my mother not become a raging alcoholic? she had to teach AND come home to me AND go to my parent/teacher conferences to hear how i'd been sleeping in class or not doing the work or refusing to attend detention (that one was a doozy) AND come home to my brother who was the exact opposite personality - she couldn't get me to stay in the house and she couldn't get him to leave it - and i'm droning on again, and this here would be a tangent.

but... it's april finally and it's getting warmer so i'm getting happier by the minute and i have a boatload of work coming my way including MASQUERADE which is happening in DC at Howard next Monday and in a theatre festival here in June. Read Alicia Ostriker. do it now!