An Evening of Poetry, Laughs, MS, Horses and Kosher Dining

Helloooooooo!

Well, Dave & I had a date last night. Big Whoop, you say... well when you have to arrange babysitting and get the little one you are babysitting off to their parents in time so you can get to your destination in time, it is a big deal! :-)

So, Owen and Kenny are with their planned persons for the evening, Dave and I head out to the Brazos Book Store for the poetry reading. When we first got there the doors were locked and they weren't letting people in. While we were waiting, David's poetry professor came up, so I got to meet her and her husband. She working on her PHD in Poetry and is from California, her husband is from England. Well, now they are opening the doors, so no time to chat.

We choose our seats as the bookstore people are still trying to get the "technical difficulties" straightened out. It seems as though the majority of Dave's class is there to hear their prof's work. But first there is a reader before her.

There was a young lady, who is also in the doctoral program, introduced this tall, lanky fellow with nice dark hair(kinda like Herge's) with black rectagular glasses(like mine, in fact quite a few folks are wearing these same specs...) a white T-shirt that is too big for him and a pair of blue jeans, couldn't see his shoes... He's carrying a Houston Chronicle(local newspaper~rubbish, in my opinion.) hat and his folder up to the counter where he is about to read.

This fellow was an absolute hoot! He is concentrating his studies in fiction. As well he should. The man was hilarious!!! He had us laughing from the get-go. One of his stories was about a woman who had a baby, went on stage and threw the baby out into the crowd. Of course, as a mom, I was horrified by this at first, but I figured he must be going somewhere with this and he was. He talked about the baby breaking into a thousand pieces and what kind of people caught what piece. A little girl caught a foot, old man dressed quite properly only caught an atom and a kid in the back all pierced and leathered up was surprised to find that he had caught a huge chunk of baby. The story went on and a fox showed up in it and on old man with a long grey beard. They were each others nemesis. The fox had many a long string of curse words to say about the old man and I was thinking, he left out "tossser", "wanker", "wanking tosspot", "fucking cunt". The effect was funny nevertheless.

He also had a story of Stan the Stegosaurus. A small child had gone to a carnival with his parents and in a ring toss, won an inflatable Stegosaurus. He named him Stan. When Stan got into the car he piped up and said, "Either roll down the God Damn window or turn on the God Damn air! Get some air flowing in here!" The mother stated that she didn't like that language and the father said that he wasn't going to have that kind of language spoken around him and the little boy pushed Stan against the car door and told him to "shape up!". When they got home Stan said, "What's for GD(the whole phrase) Dinner!?" The boy told him, "You better shape up or Dad will stick a pin in you!" Then the next day the dad was raking leaves and Stan said while looking out the window, "Rake those GD leaves!" We were all rolling with laughter! Oh my goodness! He said it just like when Harry told Ron in #3 HP movie after Ron woke up from a nightmare where the spiders were trying to make him tap dance, "S-s-spiders, making me tap dance. I don't want to tap dance." Harry said, "You tell those spiders, Ron!". The effect was hilarious. We're still laughing about it, "Rake those GD leaves!" The dad came in with a pin and poked Stan the Stegosaurus. They boy looked at the deflated plastic in the trashcan and told him, "Should have shaped up, I told you he would do it." This writer, of which I have forgotten his name is going to be BIG someday or at least I hope so. He was great!

Then came Dave's professor. She is a sweet lady. She is petite in frame and of average height. She has beautiful milky white skin, dark hair cut in a swing with a couple of caramel highlights at the bangs. When I met her, I shook her hand and looked her directly in the eyes, which I usually do, and marveled at the colour of her eyes. They were a clear amber or chestnut colour with a dark brown rim around the outside of the iris, so beautiful. She had a little voice and was a true "lady". Her dress was a beautiful milk chocolate brown with powder blue flowers embroidered on it with a powder blue cardigan sweater and her shoes were gold and brown tapestry flats. Dave's profefssor has MS. She has had MS since she was a teenager. She must be in her mid 30's now, so that tells you how long she's been suffering through this illness. Right now she's on a good set of meds and they have calmed the tremors. Her poetry reflects the condition of her body.

She opened with a funny poem. Someone had told her that at these "things" you should start out with a funny one. She told us that she wasn't sure if it was funny per se, but she thought it was. Her first poem was an "Ode to the Hair on My Upper Lip". It was pretty funny. She talked about the hair on her legs and her arm pits get shaved, but the hair on her upper lips gets waxed, bleached, flossed or depilitory cream put upon it. She had said that the hair that once lived on her upper lip now resided in wax. It was funny in it's own way and I'm not doing it justice here.

She also had a poem about Frankenstein and how he was mistakenly given a brain of somebody with MS. She talked about how Igor had dropped the brain marked "genius" all over the floor. He went to pick up another brain and passed over the one that said "abnormal" and chose the one that was labeled "Abi Normal". This was her brain and she brought with it MS. She spoke of how difficult it was to coordinate the monsters limbs to grasp, use his fingers, move his legs, shuffle his feet. And the longer he had her brain; the worse the symptoms were and the manifestation of these symptoms were making him more and more frustrated with his body and as a result, more monster-like. It was a really poinant look at what she goes through on a daily basis. We have a friend who is a master musician. He also has MS. I think that he would whole-heartedly agree with her assessment of this disease.

The third reader was from Huntsville, TX and was a "Cow Girl". She was tall, about 5' 8", with long dark brown hair and my same glasses. She wore a black dress shirt with dark grey paints and black pointed toe pumps. She sat across from Dave and I noticed that she had a tattoo on the arch of her foot. I wanted to ask her a bout it, but didn't get the chance. She had already won some literary awards for her writing. She is emphasizing fiction as her speciality course of study. She wrote about what she knew - cow girls.

Her story was about a young girl who was a barrell rider in rodeos. She had gone through all the things it took her to get to that rodeo and how she waited till it was her turn, planned out all the ways she could run the course. When it was her turn she was riding like never before, when something went horribly wrong. The saddle slipped and she fell off and hit the gate. Then the horse, trying to remove the saddle, kicked her hard in the "softplace between her hips and pelvis", her womb, and then he kicked again and broke her leg just below the hip and above her knee. She could feel the floor under the sand with her bone where they play basketball and have dances. I sat there while listening to all of this being described, horrified at the frailty of the human body. I had to fight back the tears as she read on and on. I was thinking, "If this is the first chapter, what happens to her in the rest of the book?" When she finished everybody was completely silent and heartbroken for her character. Everyone had the same expression, total horror of losing the ability to have children and the loss of use of limb, while holding back a flood of tears.

When the guy who ran the bookstore came up to speak, he had a hard time getting the words out. All he said at first was "Wow." Yep, that pretty much summed it up, "Wow". The night as a whole was great. We ran the emotional gammat as if we were running to light the Olympic Torch in Greece, a once in a lifetime whirlwind of feelings and expression, truly wonderful. It made me inspired to write, but then again I wondered if I could carry a train of thought to it's fruition. I suppose if I really knew about the subject of which I was writing, I could. We'll see.

After the reading we went to a place that we love to have Italian food at, Buca di Beppo. The wait was 1 hour at 8:30pm. We were starving because neither of us had eaten since 11 or 12 earlier that day. So what did we do? We went to Katz Deli, of course! We had fried pickles w/ ranch dressing, mmmmmm! I had a meatball sub and onion rings, Dave had Turkey and dressing with a cheesed filled potato and creamed spinich. The creamed spinich was to die for! So delicious! We shared the spinich. We were sitting at a table for two by a window, so in our stupor of sleepiness, we mostly looked out the window at the cars on Westheimer going by. Close to us was a table of 6 who were probably sampling the drinks at the bar, because when the song "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers came on they started singing along with it. A sure sign of being at least "slightly" inebriated. :-) Been there meself a time or two... We finished our dinners and asked for the check.

We made our way home and fell asleep quite quickly. It was surprising to wake up late on Saturday morning. I guess my body needed sleep because I didn't wake up and get out of bed until 10am. I haven't slept that late since before Owen was born. It was nice.

So there you have it, an evening of poetry, laughs, MS, horses and kosher dining. Wish you all could have been there with us, but I suppose this will have to do, for now. Love to you all! m.