Awesome Feats of Literature and Strength

Miami finally had it's first cold front of the season, a welcome change from the blistering heat of the week prior. And, with the northwind swooped in the vultures, here again to grace the winter months that suddenly seem so near (it's heating up again already and won't get consistently moderate in temperature until Thanksgivingish). I got some frowns of disapproval at a recent program-centric social gathering when I warned a bunch of first-year students about the thousands of black and turkey vultures that rule these skies (apparently, I should be trying harder to find positive things to say--like "it's beautiful and perfect every day"). But seeing those birds is definitely gratifying for my negativity.

Not that I'm all that negative, really. Had quite an eventful weekend, really. The poetry collective was out again Friday night, working our classiest shindig to date, this being a benefit for the Lotus House women's shelter in Miami at a famous rich dude's art warehouse, which cost a pretty penny get into (but the poems still only cost as little as two dollars (we averaged around 10 dollars a poem though)). So this was cool, since it's nice to do benefit shows when we're all mostly either grad students or recent grads, and not really using the money we've been making for anything at all (other than t-shirts (would you like a miami poetry collective t-shirt? send me $10 plus shipping&handling and I'll get you one)). We wound up raising around $550 for the shelter, which is over double the most we'd ever made at any previous engagement. So that's awesome.

In the process I also wrote a single poem--of only seven lines--for a whopping $80. High pressure, to be sure--the requested topic was something to the extent of "in seven lines, answer the question of everything at the same time that you acknowledge that there is no answer". But I seem to have lived up to the pressure, since the person who ordered seemed quite thrilled with what I came up with. I also wrote what was easily the filthiest limerick in the history of the poem depot (someone ordered a filthy limerick, a genre for which, within the collective, I seem to have attained the reputation of being a specialist (aren't you proud, Mom and Dad?)). It's too filthy to reprint here, but may be robust enough to survive through the ages if it propagates at all. But that $80 poem may well be the most expensive poem I ever write in my entire life.

So pretty awesome, except that during the evening--rather early on into it, in fact--I also had a run-in with my solitary food allergy to brazil nuts, which, while never life-threatening was thoroughly unpleasant. And embarrassing too, since I should have noticed that the pesto pasta which was labelled as "containing nuts," though not specifying brazils, was right next to a brazil nut mousse and therefore incredibly likely to contain traces of brazil nuts itself. Luckily the serving cups were tiny so I didn't get too much, but it was still enough to have to have a friend run me out to a drug store to by benadryl to take the edge off the my-mouth-and-throat-are-melting-and-making-it-very-difficult-to-swallow feeling that happened.

It's also embarrassing because I'm not allergic to any other foods, so far as I know (white chocolate makes me feel sick, but in a different kind of way), and to have one's solitary allergy be something like brazil nuts requires an explanation that I simply don't have. But whatever the cause, it's an allergy which does knock my system for a pretty solid loop, since I woke up the next morning still a bit scratchy and with a strong feeling of heart burn. It's sad, when I think about the eventual future of mankind, and how the extra bone in my right leg will eventually evolve through the generations to become a kill-spike, that the kill-spike's only known weakness will be brazil nuts or brazil-nut-oil-like-compounds, causing a massive rift in post-human speciation. It's hard to predict all the specifics, but I imagine that the kill-spike bearers will eventually lose much of their eyesight (due to repeated sprayings with brazil-nut-like-compounds).

Saturday night featured a party for a visiting friend who had graduated two years ago. She was the social organizer and mover/shaker extraordinaire during her time in the program, so the party had the distinct feeling of having the old gang back together. And it was also cold enough to wear a hoodie and stand around a fire. Good times.

With the cold front came a stiff wind, so Sunday, when I went out with a couple friends to through a baseball around, throwing with the wind made daring feats of strength possible--when I throw with the wind, I can throw pretty far. I'd had a similar experience one last year playing football on the beach, where I wound up playing some QB and launching some serious bombs when throwing with the wind. Also, two weekends ago, I hit a baseball over the fence at a little league park--no less than 260 feet, but estimates put it at about 285'. Maybe not that impressive, but still, hitting a baseball over a fence feels good. Especially since the pitches were coming from maybe 40 feet away and moving very slowly, and very wildly. And there wasn't nearly so much wind that day. AWESOME POWER!