cary head Fivepoints Arthouse 5 p.m. Sunday 9/26
I was riding the N Judah downtown five days a week working at Chevron in 1997 and writing in my Mead 100-page composition book, and I filled two notebooks with a free-form autobiographical poem in which I allowed images from the past to arise and make themselves known to me with little conscious mediation or shaping. What came out was electric and very beat-like, immediate, sometimes inscrutable, sensitive, at times private and opaque to others, at times mundane.
Since the theme of Sunday's reading is OMPHALOSKEPSIS or "navel-gazing," it occurred to me to go over these notebooks and read from them. I do not think I will edit the poetic material in the way one might edit poems, but simply mark the passages in the notebook that I want to read, and go through it. I quite like some of it.
cary head where?
Well, it's at 72 Tehama Street, and as luck would have it the Giants are playing in Colorado that day and Oracle Open World at Moscone will be over so parking might not be so bad, though the First Street bridge traffic can be a pain. BART or MUNI underground are always good options for that spot, as the Montgomery BART/MUNI station is just 0.3 miles away, about an 8-minute walk. And it's a cool alley. Kinda reminds you of the old South of Market industrial loft cheap art space days except not. no cheap art space. but sweet. nice space.
cary head what i'm reading
Here is a piece of it, more or less at random:

Sits on N Judah work all done
Contemplating time how to make it all work

Big boy shiny shoes blue sweater
Timekeeper riding sideways home
Full of -- after alcoholic failure
Stupid life moves blowing this band and that story
Here he is healthy and pink
Doing a bangup job at Chevron
21st floor Escravos Floating Storage Operation for
Liquid Petroleum Gas or LPG FSO Manual Update Group
Who knew this hair-slick
Articulate
Schedule-conscious eager-beaver
Ever slept a druggy half-sleep in
Beer-soaked carpet of windowless rock and roll
Rehearsal hall or drunkenly kissed foul bearded ladies
in rain-soaked street
Who knew that this
Practical crosser of T's and streets at the light and
Dotter of I's ever
lurked in secret Revolution Books bookshop storefront
Talking Marxist inevitability per Bob Avakian lunatic fringe with fellow floating
Hostility storage people in

dull-blunted political fog.
Who woulda thunk it?
Not Mat not Pa they never knew
How far down or out he went on his
Heroic sad course of bad miracles
///
cary head what is Portuguese Artists Colony?
The Portuguese Artists Colony (the name is utterly and inscrutably random so don't ask) grew out of the Friday Noon Writing Practice at Cafe la Boheme and now puts on monthly literary performances at the Fivepoints Arthouse off of Howard and Second in what I still and since my bike messenger days have considered to be downtown SF but which others may have other names for ...
cary head who else?
Well, this very talented core group of people -- referred to on the site as "founders" or "founding colonists" usually reads and then also brings in guests. So without getting into a big hoohaw about oh we're so talented and all that, I've been really pleased to be a part of this, and I do believe that in literary quality and seriousness of intent it is quite remarkable, and growing, and maybe I'll do the door or bring my guitar too.