Saturday, December 16, 2006

Interventionist Thoughts

I got a psychic message the other day about my current job. Today I got confirmation that I should take it.

Anyway, there were several things that got my mind working besides the slight altercation that had my blood raging for a full hour at work.

Things are OK, the cold Chicago brick house food artist, who I wanted to slap in the face with a poisonous jelly fish, and I are going out for a beer later. . . some time very later. I am still looking into some anger management type stuff. I get so worked up, it is like I am ready to fight entirely too much.

OK.

Interventionist Thoughts.

-- I saw a woman so pale that when she walked straight through moving traffic on 58th street tonight her skin and light hair reflected the beams radiating off the head lights of oncoming traffic. It was at about 10 o'clock pm and she was in a total daze, passing through the traffic without flinching, like a Shaolin monk in deep contemplation, wearing a black ankle length coat with a hood. But death was on her walk, she was almost hit.

-- I saw a Christmas tree near Bloomingdale's that I wish my grandmother could have seen. It was beautiful. I just realized that I have received a good amount of my aesthetic sensibility from her enjoyment in observation.

-- When I lived in Germany I sang in a gospel choir with Izora Armstead Rhodes from the Weather Girls. She was in my section, the tenor section, because she was a contralto. Amazingly we had 3 contraltos in the choir that were women. In the short time I knew her I learned a lot about music, and I also learned somethings about church that I did not expect. Izora was not one to change her behavior in a church or out of a church because God watches always. She also said in very direct language that discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation is simply not fair. I miss her in no uncertain terms and wish I could have sung more with her. I just thought of her this moment while writing this post.

There was another singer named Harriet who was the lead alto with Izora's daughter Dee, and mother of the choir. She is wonderful and still tours, but I will never forget when she was talking to me about her first coming to Germany from Philly and not knowing how to act. The world was so open and free to her that she walked the streets taking fruit from the fruit stands thinking it was free.

I don't know why that image visited me so strongly today. Harriet walking down the street, with her long long weave flowing through the air, in a shawl or cape, kept bouncing through my mind. I see her smiling with her bright glossy teeth and speaking to people, touching apples and quinces with her long finger nails, picking her fruit half heartedly because all of Germany is so sweet to her.

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