Experiments outside Laboratory

So the housekeeping continues: I sat in church today, maybe in the same seat from the first time I ever went at the end of last summer, feeling the newness wearing off and not minding, since it meant I liked it there enough to keep coming back, and borrowing books from Rev. Todd, and talking to Aria and them about reading and talking about Harry Potter, and Hobbit Camp, and running into Taylor from Spark up there to give a White Privilege/Supremacy workshop, and writing memoirs with people.

These books generated further reading, of course; these meetings further talking; and all of it might or might not turn into writing, in the llama book if nowhere else. From Romero's language about building the kingdom I thought, of course, about Pullman's about building a republic. Despite all the stuff about whiteness, or because of it, that I hear at church here and at the philosopher's talk downtown, I am reminded how little I care about politics, but how much I appreciate free speech and a free press--as long as it includes free silence, to read and write in. Or to walk down to the river the steps of the park built above the power plant, built by white people or at any rate owned by some, I figure.

If I affect a laconic, western style in these first-person paragraphs, put it down to reading Doig, The Last Bus to Wisdom, with the Literary Freedom book group at Auntie's. This might be their website? But to find them, you almost have to look at the paper calendar they give out by the register, which I love. A good question about love knowledge: do you only truly get to know people who care about you, and whom you care about? Are kind people the only people you can know authentically? If so, what a problematically circumscribed authenticity! But without pretentious preening, the book does fit into that classic American literary conversation with the likes of Huck and Antonia, sort of.

Still, I'd like to make it possible to find information about things like that book group more readily. Or Laboratory, which I heard about by word of mouth twice in one day, and had never heard of before--or at least, it didn't register. Their event last night wasn't starting till 9, though, way too late for the likes of me; besides, I had to help Steph with Mario, holding this or that tool, looking for a dropped bolt, while she fixed her car. Sounds like Spark will host some writing on local authors and such like goings on on their website. And I still aim to write for Love and Outrage a poem or two about the rainbows down there, or by Corbin Park, or above Kendall Yards, or in that image I just posted from Shell. Here's hoping.

It's weird. The library is still my ideal for this work of connecting people to books, to art, to culture, but as long as there is material somewhere along the line, there has to remain room for the serendipitous, too. Looking for a copy of Totoro that has gone missing, I found Pom Poko instead!